Some of you may remember my recent thread, where I posted about finishing my first bass:
First bass, Zombie build, completed after 19 years
Well, I finished that on December 25, it's been about 6 weeks and I've started a second bass - plus a few side projects, which I mention more as an explanation of why the bass build will be slower than I'd prefer, although it will hopefully be quicker than the first bass I built!
I've always wanted to try a fretless. I've had a good mental image of what I want this bass to be for some time now, although the details have changed a bit as I've started to actually execute.
I've also always wanted to try a bass with an acoustic-style bridge, a semi-hollow body, and a piezo pickup under the saddle - no magnetic pickups, no (visible) controls, and so on. The goal with this approach is a good sounding instrument, but more importantly one with simple, clean lines. I want the whole instrument to look clean, fairly simple, modern, and sleek. A big part of my inspiration for this design is the furniture styles I enjoy - I like plain simple styles like Shaker and mid-century modern.
Which brings me to the first side projects: I figured I'd try to build at least one thing for the house, and one thing as a gift, for every bass I build. That should keep me on a good rhythm of different project styles. So after finishing the first bass, and before starting this one, I threw together a little side table for a spot next to a chair in our sitting room that's been empty since we moved here:
I found this piece of crotch walnut with a big bark inclusion that resulted in a void along the front edge, and I thought it would be really cool to try to cut a dovetail to fit into the inclusion, and a big butterfly tenon to hold the inclusion stable. Once I'd sized that leg I cut the other 3 to match.
Now that that's out of the way, we can start on the bass...
I have some plain hard maple for the neck, and a bunch of leftover cherry from furniture projects. I like to keep every scrap of wood and re-use what I can, the body wings for this bass are unused "practice" pieces for a trestle table that I never finished. I'm also using some extra strips of cherry in the neck from that same table project. I've never seen or heard a bass with cherry in it, but I know enough about it from furniture work to trust that it'll be OK. At least the neck will be mostly hard maple, so it should be stable.
Anyways, I sawed up the neck blank and glued it together last week:
Then I cut it square and true on the table saw.
The maple is nice straight grain and almost perfectly quartered. The cherry has some really gentle quilt figure, which should give it an interesting texture once it's finished. here's the neck blank from the side:
After getting the neck put together, I resawed a big chunk of gently flamed maple for the top of the body. Resawing something this big on the table saw isn't my favorite thing to do, but I don't have a bandsaw right now (a problem I hope to solve in the immediate future):
The woods I'm using in this build are pretty subdued compared to the more wildly-figured and exotic things I used in the first bass. No bubinga or wenge here, folks. Just good old fashioned New York State hardwoods. (Except the fingerboard, which will be ebony!)
I laid the body wing billets next to the neck blank to sketch the body shape. It's a near copy of the shape of my first bass, although thickened up a bit, mostly to keep the horns in proportion with the thickness of the body. My first bass was barely 1 1/8" thick, this one will be more like 1 3/4" and I didn't want narrow little horns on such a thick body. Anyways, here's the money shot of the body outline:
The chunk of cherry on the left is BARELY big enough, which makes me happy, since it means I'm maximizing the material and minimizing waste!
After that, I set the project aside and started on another side project. A few years ago, my brother (and avid guitarist) heard about the Gretsch factory liquidation and managed to get a few old bodies. I ended up with a body from an early Corvette. It's been on a shelf since then. I have a daughter who's got a birthday this summer, she's expressed an interest in guitar so I'm going to build out this body for her birthday present this year:
I'm going to route the pickup slot big enough for a filter-tron and I'm building a neck from scratch from more leftover maple. I had the neck all laid out to make from a single piece of flatsawn maple (a-la Fender) but I found a brilliant piece of flamed maple at Home Depot of all places. It's only 3/4" x 1.5" but it's 8 feet long, perfect to get a nicely figured stripe down the middle of a 3 piece neck. So I cut the maple up and glued up a neck blank, then I realized I had exactly enough of the plain maple board left to make a second neck, so I did.
Here's a closeup of the flamed maple, next to a piece of birdseye I plan on using for the fretboards. The birdseye is left over from the butterfly tenon I cut for that tabletop way up in the first photo:
And that, folks, brings us full circle and gets the project(s) caught up. No real plans on when I'll work on the bass next but I'll update here when I do.
First bass, Zombie build, completed after 19 years
Well, I finished that on December 25, it's been about 6 weeks and I've started a second bass - plus a few side projects, which I mention more as an explanation of why the bass build will be slower than I'd prefer, although it will hopefully be quicker than the first bass I built!
I've always wanted to try a fretless. I've had a good mental image of what I want this bass to be for some time now, although the details have changed a bit as I've started to actually execute.
I've also always wanted to try a bass with an acoustic-style bridge, a semi-hollow body, and a piezo pickup under the saddle - no magnetic pickups, no (visible) controls, and so on. The goal with this approach is a good sounding instrument, but more importantly one with simple, clean lines. I want the whole instrument to look clean, fairly simple, modern, and sleek. A big part of my inspiration for this design is the furniture styles I enjoy - I like plain simple styles like Shaker and mid-century modern.
Which brings me to the first side projects: I figured I'd try to build at least one thing for the house, and one thing as a gift, for every bass I build. That should keep me on a good rhythm of different project styles. So after finishing the first bass, and before starting this one, I threw together a little side table for a spot next to a chair in our sitting room that's been empty since we moved here:
I found this piece of crotch walnut with a big bark inclusion that resulted in a void along the front edge, and I thought it would be really cool to try to cut a dovetail to fit into the inclusion, and a big butterfly tenon to hold the inclusion stable. Once I'd sized that leg I cut the other 3 to match.
Now that that's out of the way, we can start on the bass...
I have some plain hard maple for the neck, and a bunch of leftover cherry from furniture projects. I like to keep every scrap of wood and re-use what I can, the body wings for this bass are unused "practice" pieces for a trestle table that I never finished. I'm also using some extra strips of cherry in the neck from that same table project. I've never seen or heard a bass with cherry in it, but I know enough about it from furniture work to trust that it'll be OK. At least the neck will be mostly hard maple, so it should be stable.
Anyways, I sawed up the neck blank and glued it together last week:
Then I cut it square and true on the table saw.
The maple is nice straight grain and almost perfectly quartered. The cherry has some really gentle quilt figure, which should give it an interesting texture once it's finished. here's the neck blank from the side:
After getting the neck put together, I resawed a big chunk of gently flamed maple for the top of the body. Resawing something this big on the table saw isn't my favorite thing to do, but I don't have a bandsaw right now (a problem I hope to solve in the immediate future):
The woods I'm using in this build are pretty subdued compared to the more wildly-figured and exotic things I used in the first bass. No bubinga or wenge here, folks. Just good old fashioned New York State hardwoods. (Except the fingerboard, which will be ebony!)
I laid the body wing billets next to the neck blank to sketch the body shape. It's a near copy of the shape of my first bass, although thickened up a bit, mostly to keep the horns in proportion with the thickness of the body. My first bass was barely 1 1/8" thick, this one will be more like 1 3/4" and I didn't want narrow little horns on such a thick body. Anyways, here's the money shot of the body outline:
The chunk of cherry on the left is BARELY big enough, which makes me happy, since it means I'm maximizing the material and minimizing waste!
After that, I set the project aside and started on another side project. A few years ago, my brother (and avid guitarist) heard about the Gretsch factory liquidation and managed to get a few old bodies. I ended up with a body from an early Corvette. It's been on a shelf since then. I have a daughter who's got a birthday this summer, she's expressed an interest in guitar so I'm going to build out this body for her birthday present this year:
I'm going to route the pickup slot big enough for a filter-tron and I'm building a neck from scratch from more leftover maple. I had the neck all laid out to make from a single piece of flatsawn maple (a-la Fender) but I found a brilliant piece of flamed maple at Home Depot of all places. It's only 3/4" x 1.5" but it's 8 feet long, perfect to get a nicely figured stripe down the middle of a 3 piece neck. So I cut the maple up and glued up a neck blank, then I realized I had exactly enough of the plain maple board left to make a second neck, so I did.
Here's a closeup of the flamed maple, next to a piece of birdseye I plan on using for the fretboards. The birdseye is left over from the butterfly tenon I cut for that tabletop way up in the first photo:
And that, folks, brings us full circle and gets the project(s) caught up. No real plans on when I'll work on the bass next but I'll update here when I do.
