Well I went ahead and ordered the tuners I wanted direct from Schaller Germany. $135 for tuners. I must be nuts! 
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Second bass: Maple/cherry fretless piezo, plus some side projects
- Thread starter dwizum
- Start date
Apparently the attachment showing the tuners is broken somehow...
Anyways, took the day off yesterday and spent most of it sanding. I hate sanding. Have I mentioned that before? Probably at least partly because my stiff pre-arthritic fingers can't take it for more than a few minutes at a time without a break. I might need to find some different tools or techniques.
Anyways, besides sanding, I drilled the butterfly tenon for the strings. I only did a small countersink because I want the balls on the string ends visible.
More sanding, then I glued the bridge on:
I took the clamps off this morning and was dusting it off, turning it over and looking at it, feeling how smooth and light it feels, and I decided that I needed to take 5 minutes to throw a string on and hear a few notes before proceeding with a finish. So I put an unshaped bridge saddle blank in the bridge and slapped a nut and a tuner on, and gave it a try.
Fingerboard is level, no dead spots or buzz, and man oh man I love this thing. It's just magic. Unfinished and with only one string on, I just can't put it down. It's light and easy to hold, the neck profile is just right, and the 32" scale makes a big difference in fingering ease. This is essentially my first time playing a fretless, with the lines and markers it was much easier than I expected to have my fingers always falling in the right spots.
Now I'm motivated to get this thing done ASAP. Unfortunately, I need to wait a bit before putting the finish on because I'm waiting for a custom wood brand to show up so I can mark the back of the headstock. It should be here next week some time. I may put the electronics in as a test run later this weekend if I get time, but since this is the first real warm spring weekend (it's gonna hit 50) I will probably spend most of the weekend getting my bike ready for riding this season.
Anyways, took the day off yesterday and spent most of it sanding. I hate sanding. Have I mentioned that before? Probably at least partly because my stiff pre-arthritic fingers can't take it for more than a few minutes at a time without a break. I might need to find some different tools or techniques.
Anyways, besides sanding, I drilled the butterfly tenon for the strings. I only did a small countersink because I want the balls on the string ends visible.
More sanding, then I glued the bridge on:
I took the clamps off this morning and was dusting it off, turning it over and looking at it, feeling how smooth and light it feels, and I decided that I needed to take 5 minutes to throw a string on and hear a few notes before proceeding with a finish. So I put an unshaped bridge saddle blank in the bridge and slapped a nut and a tuner on, and gave it a try.
Fingerboard is level, no dead spots or buzz, and man oh man I love this thing. It's just magic. Unfinished and with only one string on, I just can't put it down. It's light and easy to hold, the neck profile is just right, and the 32" scale makes a big difference in fingering ease. This is essentially my first time playing a fretless, with the lines and markers it was much easier than I expected to have my fingers always falling in the right spots.
Now I'm motivated to get this thing done ASAP. Unfortunately, I need to wait a bit before putting the finish on because I'm waiting for a custom wood brand to show up so I can mark the back of the headstock. It should be here next week some time. I may put the electronics in as a test run later this weekend if I get time, but since this is the first real warm spring weekend (it's gonna hit 50) I will probably spend most of the weekend getting my bike ready for riding this season.
Also I weighed it. As is without finish or the rest of the hardware, it's only 4 pounds 13 ounces! With 3 more tuners, finish, and electronics it should be well under 6 pounds.
^ Looks good, despite your balls being visible....
When you put it that way, suddenly I want to countersink a little deeper!
CA finish on the fretboard today. I did maybe 8 total coats, stopped and sanded after the 4th. I can see the attractiveness of this method, it's really easy. It was in the 60's so I worked in the garage.
I put three coats of shellac on the guitar body, sanding back after each one, to finish sealing the grain. This reminded me of two things. One, I like working with shellac. Two, I hate trying to grain-fill porous wood like mahogany.
I put three coats of shellac on the guitar body, sanding back after each one, to finish sealing the grain. This reminded me of two things. One, I like working with shellac. Two, I hate trying to grain-fill porous wood like mahogany.
Tuners are here! I still can't believe I "let" myself spend so much on them, but I think they're going to look really great, the copper has a lot of the same browns and oranges as the walnut. Plus, I just really like the Schaller logo. All I need now is for the brand to show up, then I can finish both instruments.
I did me a Berger 18 years ago, i'm not very experienced wood jobs but it does the do.
Branding iron showed up today, I only had a few spare minutes but I managed to make some practice marks.
Hopefully I get some time to start finishing this weekend.
Hopefully I get some time to start finishing this weekend.
Super fun, to the extent that I am literally walking around my house looking at all my old woodworking projects and deciding which of them I'm going to find a discrete spot to put the brand on!
Frustrating at the same time, if you're picky. I'm having trouble getting the right combination of temp and dwell time on the wood to get a nicely colored brand that's even and clean. I've done a bunch of "good enough" brands on practice, but of course when I went to do it on the instruments, they weren't as good as my best. I sanded the brand off the back of the guitar headstock twice before I was happy. The one on the bass was a little too dark so I gently sanded it to take some of the burnt wood out. Here's some in progress shots.
I think this was one of the attempts that got sanded off:
And here's the brand on the bass after I touched it up:
Frustrating at the same time, if you're picky. I'm having trouble getting the right combination of temp and dwell time on the wood to get a nicely colored brand that's even and clean. I've done a bunch of "good enough" brands on practice, but of course when I went to do it on the instruments, they weren't as good as my best. I sanded the brand off the back of the guitar headstock twice before I was happy. The one on the bass was a little too dark so I gently sanded it to take some of the burnt wood out. Here's some in progress shots.
I think this was one of the attempts that got sanded off:
And here's the brand on the bass after I touched it up:
I got it from a place called brandnew.net - it was like $80 or so I think. There are a handful of places that do these, I just shopped prices and then reached out to this place with a few questions because they were near the cheaper end. He was really responsive on email and even suggested a few tweaks to my logo in order to get a cleaner mark. I got it in about a week, their website quotes 1 - 2 weeks.
They make them in copper, brass, or bronze depending on the specifics of your logo and how you're planning on using it. He suggested copper for mine so that's what I went with. I got the flame heated version so it comes with a little wood handle. The copper brand is brazed to a nut on the end of a shaft that's fixed in the handle. I'm thinking about cutting the handle off and threading the end of the shaft, or leaving it straight and using a coupler, so I can switch between the wood handle and putting it in an arbor press. The biggest problem I have with this thing is stability, if it rocks a bit to one side when you're branding you get an uneven mark. Using the press would solve that, for little stuff like instrument headstocks that's easy to clamp down. Then for bigger things (like, branding the bottom of a big live edge table or other piece of furniture) I could put it in the wood handle.
I've been putting finish on the bass and guitar neck for the last few days, I'm up to 3 coats. I went with oil based poly, I was thinking about water based because I wasn't sure if I would like the amber tint from oil based poly on the walnut, but I did a scrap and it was fine. I thought I'd had the last coat on the bass last night but there's a big run on the front so I'll sand it back and do hopefully just one more coat.
I also sprayed some color on the guitar body. I like the color but (surprise surprise) my grain fill on the mahogany was pretty incomplete. I think what was happening was that I was sanding too deeply between coats of shellac and getting down to new wood with new pores. So once this color is nice and hardened I'll go over it with some auto body glaze and fill the remaining grain that way, then do more color.
So for now it's just lots of parts hanging in the dark corners of my basement...
And now I have a question for people who do set neck instruments. Do you glue the neck in before or after finishing? Since I'm doing a totally different finish on the two parts it seemed natural to finish them before gluing them, but I'm guessing I may have some touch up on the seam once they're glued together so maybe that wasn't the smartest move.
They make them in copper, brass, or bronze depending on the specifics of your logo and how you're planning on using it. He suggested copper for mine so that's what I went with. I got the flame heated version so it comes with a little wood handle. The copper brand is brazed to a nut on the end of a shaft that's fixed in the handle. I'm thinking about cutting the handle off and threading the end of the shaft, or leaving it straight and using a coupler, so I can switch between the wood handle and putting it in an arbor press. The biggest problem I have with this thing is stability, if it rocks a bit to one side when you're branding you get an uneven mark. Using the press would solve that, for little stuff like instrument headstocks that's easy to clamp down. Then for bigger things (like, branding the bottom of a big live edge table or other piece of furniture) I could put it in the wood handle.
I've been putting finish on the bass and guitar neck for the last few days, I'm up to 3 coats. I went with oil based poly, I was thinking about water based because I wasn't sure if I would like the amber tint from oil based poly on the walnut, but I did a scrap and it was fine. I thought I'd had the last coat on the bass last night but there's a big run on the front so I'll sand it back and do hopefully just one more coat.
I also sprayed some color on the guitar body. I like the color but (surprise surprise) my grain fill on the mahogany was pretty incomplete. I think what was happening was that I was sanding too deeply between coats of shellac and getting down to new wood with new pores. So once this color is nice and hardened I'll go over it with some auto body glaze and fill the remaining grain that way, then do more color.
So for now it's just lots of parts hanging in the dark corners of my basement...
And now I have a question for people who do set neck instruments. Do you glue the neck in before or after finishing? Since I'm doing a totally different finish on the two parts it seemed natural to finish them before gluing them, but I'm guessing I may have some touch up on the seam once they're glued together so maybe that wasn't the smartest move.
Finish on the bass is done, I polished the fingerboard last night. Few minutes to do some hardware assembly before things get crazy today. My guitar-playing brother is coming over tonight, I will probably finish the hardware and string it up then. I guess I've got a habit of finishing instruments on major holidays. Happy Easter everyone!
Strung it up last night and played the heck out of it. I'm very happy. The tone is great - it's very clear, probably clearer than any of my conventional basses. I was a little worried it might come off as muddy but that's definitely not the case. There's enough of the upright-esque thumpy-punch. You can get really sharp attack if you want and avoid the mid-heavy mwah (which I don't like, despite how popular it seems for fretless players).
The electronics are usable. The condenser mic really doesn't pick up any musical tone, it doesn't seem sensitive enough. But rolling it on and off does change the character and helps with attack. It's almost like a "tone control" for attack, string noise, and other non-tone characteristics.
The piezo has a volume and a tone control - the tone almost seems to be a "mid high" band, it's low enough that it's not just scraping off the highest treble. It really changes the character. With the tone all the way on, it gains a lot of brightness. Tone rolled off, it's very dark.
It's definitely louder than a solid body when unplugged. After stringing it, I was sitting in a room of quietly chatting people and I could hear the bass over the chatter but it wasn't loud enough to be disturbing anyone. This is a nice feature, it means I can "practice" while hanging out with the family or whatever, and not need an amp.
I may try to record it some time but I'm not set up to record at home right now.
I took some photos:
The soft maple on the back really "woke up" under the finish, it looks great:
The figure in the walnut is a little hard to capture, it looks really "active" in person but doesn't photograph well.
And the rays in the quartered cherry lamination in the neck blank matched up really well with the rays in the quartered maple, it almost looks like one set of rays across the various pieces:
All this talk about figure, I can't forget the fingerboard:
And here's one showing how the thumbwheels for the controls turned out:
I can't believe it's finally done! I put a strap on it, and now it can officially move out of the workshop and on to the rack of players next to my amp.
It didn't change tuning at all over night, so I'm pretty confident that the butterfly-tenon-tailpiece-thing is holding solidly and not shifting at all. I fiddled with the nut for a while to set the action and I think it's pretty much done, the saddle turned out pretty much perfect on the first try so no adjustments needed there.
I may make a small paper label to glue in the soundhole like people do on acoustic guitars, but otherwise this thing is DONE!
The electronics are usable. The condenser mic really doesn't pick up any musical tone, it doesn't seem sensitive enough. But rolling it on and off does change the character and helps with attack. It's almost like a "tone control" for attack, string noise, and other non-tone characteristics.
The piezo has a volume and a tone control - the tone almost seems to be a "mid high" band, it's low enough that it's not just scraping off the highest treble. It really changes the character. With the tone all the way on, it gains a lot of brightness. Tone rolled off, it's very dark.
It's definitely louder than a solid body when unplugged. After stringing it, I was sitting in a room of quietly chatting people and I could hear the bass over the chatter but it wasn't loud enough to be disturbing anyone. This is a nice feature, it means I can "practice" while hanging out with the family or whatever, and not need an amp.
I may try to record it some time but I'm not set up to record at home right now.
I took some photos:
The soft maple on the back really "woke up" under the finish, it looks great:
The figure in the walnut is a little hard to capture, it looks really "active" in person but doesn't photograph well.
And the rays in the quartered cherry lamination in the neck blank matched up really well with the rays in the quartered maple, it almost looks like one set of rays across the various pieces:
All this talk about figure, I can't forget the fingerboard:
And here's one showing how the thumbwheels for the controls turned out:
I can't believe it's finally done! I put a strap on it, and now it can officially move out of the workshop and on to the rack of players next to my amp.
It didn't change tuning at all over night, so I'm pretty confident that the butterfly-tenon-tailpiece-thing is holding solidly and not shifting at all. I fiddled with the nut for a while to set the action and I think it's pretty much done, the saddle turned out pretty much perfect on the first try so no adjustments needed there.
I may make a small paper label to glue in the soundhole like people do on acoustic guitars, but otherwise this thing is DONE!
That came out great, really nice. It's an interesting transition when an instrument goes from being in the shop to in the stand!
Yeah, I really like the butterfly tail piece serving as a control panel cover and held in place by string tension like an upright. Clever idea. You also achieved a really clean look with the hidden knobs. Congratulations on a great build!
