Rosewood P Bass

[cstar]

Oh and great tip about working on some maple first. I have a crappy piece of maple I can practice on. I started making an ash neck a while ago too, so hopefully I can work all my bugs out.

Thanks for the links. I'll check them out.

 

[ctmullins]

Would the stiffening rods make my neck TOO stiff?

Depends on a lot of things. Depends on the thickness of the neck after final carve, as well as the grain orientation and general mechanical properties of your particular piece of rosewood. Also depends on the thickness and rigidity of your fingerboard, as well as how well it's glued to the neck.

I've built a handful of necks so far, and all of them are incredibly stable. It might be because they're all three (or more) piece laminated necks, with quartersawn grain. It might be because I like a chunky neck. It might be because I've been using LMII fingerboards that are thicker than some others. I can tell you that, on the one guitar that I built, string tension alone did not induce any relief in the neck. I actually had to force some relief with the truss rod - thank deity it was a double-action rod!

...there was a definite difference in tone when I swapped my AllParts neck for a Warmoth one.

You can't necessarily attribute that to the stiffening rods. It could have been due to differences between those two pieces of maple, differences between the two fingerboards, even differences in the quality of the body/neck joint (old, sloppy neck screw holes versus new, tight ones...).

 

[cstar]

That's very helpful. Thanks.

My neck blank is quartersawn if that makes a huge difference. Obviously it's not a laminate neck, but that must add to the stiffness.

It is not a particularly heavy piece of rosewood so my guess is that it is not as stiff as others pieces might be, but then again I am no expert I also like chunky necks, so I guess all of this must be considered. Assuming I use a double expanding rod, and I used the stiffening rods, I could force some relief if I had to? I hope to use some fairly heavy strings so I don't know if that would make a huge difference either. I don't know specifically what gauges yet but I had 55-110 on my jazz bass before and I liked that.

Thank you for pointing that out. I guess I got a little ahead of myself. There definitely is no way to know for sure if the rods made that difference. I figured it must have been the difference, but the rosewood finger board is thicker now and the maple could be accounting for some difference too. I do know, though, that if I knock on the neck while muting the strings, it sounds like I can very faintly hear the rods vibrating, so I figure they must affect the sound at least a little bit.

 

[cstar]

Well, these are the parts so far. Not an exact pic of my body blank, but the others are. Hopefully I'll see the body wood really soon. Very happy with my neck blank. Hoping it will all match well. Can't decide on finish? Thinking tung oil or gloss nitro clear... thoughts?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/121036731767?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251158590370?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2648

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251187640853?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2648