Shergold Marathon 6 bass short scale custom build

[hypercarrots]

In 2017, after researching shergold marathon 6 basses and finding out that only 95 were made, I looked at alternative short scale sixes to see how close they could come.

I bought and sold a schecter hellcat as that wasn't fulfilling the sound and feel I wanted. I bought an Ernie Ball music man silhouette bass after learning the nut was wider than most short scale sixes. It has great build quality and tonal variety but the strings aren't thick enough. I also wanted a wider string spacing. Almost all short scale six strings have guitar bridge spacing. That's something between 52-56mm. Marathon 6 string spacing is 65mm.

I figured it would be cheaper, easier and faster to build something custom with similar specs than to wait for a real one to come up for sale. Real ones also have their shortcomings so I wanted to do a custom build to make some improvements. I knew the problems would be sourcing the neck and the bridge because of the string spacing.

After wasting a couple months trying to get a NOS neck from someone in UK, I realized I would have to have the neck and body custom made. To save time and money I decided to go warmoth for the body and find a local luthier who would agree to make a neck that could fit the fender neck pocket.

Original pickups and reproductions were too hard to get so I'm using a Seymour Duncan nyc since that's one of the routs that warmoth does.

Once I found the luthier that would build the neck, I ordered the body and hoped a solution for the bridge would present itself along the way. That was mid February 2018.

 

[hypercarrots]

The warmoth body was delivered on April 11. Only 45 days after I ordered it. I requested the CNC index hole doweled and truss rod channel omitted. Even though it's poplar, it's a relatively heavy 5lb 12.25oz. The color is charcoal frost metallic.

Here's a picture of it with an American standard fender jazz in charcoal frost metallic. Slight difference.

Schaller m4 90 tuners in nickel came on April 13. Shipping direct from Schaller in Germany only took one week. They weigh 42g each. I was concerned about neck dive but since the body came out so heavy it doesn't matter now.

 

[hypercarrots]

pickup and electronics came in and a reproduction control plate was sourced from France.

 

[hypercarrots]

i received the neck in early september.
the luthier did an excellent job. fit and finish is very well done.

another luthier made a bridge and it was almost perfect except the grooves in the saddles weren't in line with the ball ends so the heavy gauge strings were pulling the saddles to the side. it's a shame because it was otherwise beautifully made.

consequently i'm still in search of a bridge for this build. i'll need to match these holes

here's how it should look when finished. string ends were cut. i left the ends on temporarily to make sure i had enough wrap.

 

[Jonithen]

That looks like it's going to be a lot of fun once you get the bridge sorted out! I love short scale 6's. That's a very nice color you went with.
What's the plan for the bridge? I wonder if making channels in the underlying plate for the saddle screws to ride in would keep them true inspite of the lateral string pull?

Good luck, I have every faith it's going to be awesome once you finally get it completed.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Nice. I like the zero fret. It is 30" scale, or there about? Are tuning it E to e an octave down from guitar or B to C?

 

[hypercarrots]

That looks like it's going to be a lot of fun once you get the bridge sorted out! I love short scale 6's. That's a very nice color you went with.
What's the plan for the bridge? I wonder if making channels in the underlying plate for the saddle screws to ride in would keep them true inspite of the lateral string pull?

Good luck, I have every faith it's going to be awesome once you finally get it completed.

thanks! the luthier tried making channels but it still didn't work

i'm still looking for a shop to make a bridge

Nice. I like the zero fret. It is 30" scale, or there about? Are tuning it E to e an octave down from guitar or B to C?

it is 30" scale. It will be E to E.

 

[hypercarrots]

i may have to go to the hardware store and make my own bridge

 

[hypercarrots]

i've emailed 3 machine shops/luthiers about custom work or purchasing custom bridges and i havent gotten any replies. getting this bass assembled is turning out to be tough.

 

[India_Sierra]

Does anyone remember the long-gone TB'er 'Fassa Albrecht'? She had an unusual obsession with Shergold basses.

 

[IPA]

Cool build...guessing you tried a Bass VI and didn't care for it?

 

[hypercarrots]

Cool build...guessing you tried a Bass VI and didn't care for it?

Yeah I mentioned those in the first post

 

[IPA]

Yeah I mentioned those in the first post

Oops! I just scroll looking for pretty pictures drool

 

[hypercarrots]

Oops! I just scroll looking for pretty pictures drool

I do like the fender bass VI. Just not what I'm looking for in this build.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

I'll step up and explain what happened here with this custom bridge. I'm the mysterious unnamed Luthier who built it. And screwed up the job....

Hypercarrots got my buddy Keith Horne to make up the custom neck for this project. Keith's shop is right across the hall from me, and I regularly make custom hardware for his instruments. I used to make up some one-off special bridges for individual customers but I stopped offering that service about two years ago. They didn't make any sense business-wise. Every time I did one of those custom jobs, I lost so much money on it, that I swore I'd never do another one.

But Hypercarrots and Keith asked me to make up a custom bridge for this project, because there really was nothing available that would work. And the Shergold design was standard Fender-style bent-plate and barrels construction. I'd made plenty of that type of bridges before. This one was just six strings and narrow spacing. Should be simple enough. So I agreed to do it. Even though I was booked solid with all my other work.

And it was a simple enough bridge to build. I worked from pictures of the Shergold bridge that he sent me, and designed it all up in AutoCad. But there's an inherent problem with this bridge design. The saddles end up being very narrow because of the string spacing. There's barely enough space on each saddle for the threaded holes for the intonation screw and the two jacking setscrews, plus the V-groove for the string. The saddles are tall and narrow.

Plus, the whole bridge is quite shallow in height. The flange at the back of the base plate is low, and the holes for the strings have to go beside the intonation screws. That puts the anchor ends of the strings out of line with the saddles. On the Shergold, they positioned the V-grooves right over against the right side jacking setscrew. That didn't look right to me. It looked like the saddles would be unstable, and would tend to tip sideways or buzz. So, in my design, I moved the V-grooves over a bit to the left, putting them closer to the center of the saddles, which would make them more stable. Right? It also made the whole bridge more symmetrical and neater looking.

I finished the design of the parts and made them up. No real problems making them and assembling the bridge. I spent about 5 hours on the job, including the AutoCad design time. I charged Hypercarrots $125, which works out to $25 per hour for me. I normally charge $35-$40 per hour as my shop rate. You've seen my threads about how the finances work in the Luthier business, and how that's calculated. That's not my actual "pay". When you take out the overhead, at $25 per hour, I'm actually earning less than $10 per hour for my work. But that's another long subject. I was okay with $125 for the bridge. It was a Help Out job.

So, here's the bridge, all nice and pretty. A cleaned up version of the simple Shergold design.

I delivered the bridge to Keith, and he mounted it on the bass and strung it up. Then the problems started. When he brought it up to tune, the small offset of the string anchor holes in relation to the V-grooves caused the saddles to all shift sideways, out of position. Aaargh! I guess I should have foreseen that was going to happen. But I was trying to prevent the saddles from tipping up on one leg.

So, we pulled the bridge off the bass and I took it all apart. I went back in the computer and worked out a series of small parallel grooves in the base plate, for the tips of the saddle jacking screws to ride in. That should keep the saddles lined up correctly!

I mounted the base plate back in the mill and cut the little grooves with a tiny end mill. A delicate job, but I did it successfully.

And there it is back together with the grooves.

It should work now!

I've got to get out to the shop.....I'll continue the story tomorrow.

 

[devnulljp]

Wow, this is so cool. I loved the old Shergolds. Always wanted one.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Continuing on with the saga of the bridge:

Okay, with the little grooves in the base, the saddles should stay in place, right? Keith put the bridge back on the bass and strung it up again. The saddles stayed in line correctly, but now they want to tip up on one foot. The offset of the string anchors pulls the saddle sideways and, with the right side jacking setscrew captured in the slot, the left side jacking setscrew starts lifting off the base. The high E saddle was the worst, wanting to really tip over. But they all were only lightly touching on the left jacking setscrews. That's sure to lead to buzzing problems. More Aaarghs. Now what?

I thought about it for a while and had one more idea: I made up a brass strap bar that fit across behind the saddles, to pull the strings sideways and take the side load off the saddles. It was a little tricky to assemble it and fit it in there, but it functionally worked. Keith installed it and set it up. The saddles stayed in place and intonated correctly.

Fixed? When Hypercarrots saw the pictures, he said that this wasn't acceptable. It didn't look right, looked like a patch job (which it definitely was). He didn't think it was right to pay $125 for a custom bridge and get this. He wanted me to make up new saddles to move the grooves over to the right, like on the Shergold bridge.

Unfortunately, to do that would also require making a whole new base plate. The bridge had already been screwed down to the body, so moving the grooves to the right would mean that the new base would have to be offset to the left, keeping the holes in the same place. And widened a little bit on the right side to make it symmetrical and neat looking. Basically, I would be starting the whole job over from scratch. Reworking the computer drawing, making all the parts, assembling and fitting it to the instrument. About another 5 hours of work.

And the worst part is that I'm not sure it would fix the problem. If you look at the geometry from the top, the centerline of each string from the anchor goes right directly over the right jacking setscrew. If I put the groove over right against the jacking screw, it still would be pushing sideways. And lightening the load on the left jacking screw. I could do the whole job over and it still probably wouldn't work right. I don't see any easy answer here. The Fender barrel and bent-plate bridge is a real simple design, but when you squeeze it this narrow, it brings up a serious geometry problem.

At this point I had 12 hours in to a job that was supposed to be 5 hours. Financially, I was down below zero. I wasn't just working for free, it was actually costing me money out of my pocket to continue trying to make this bridge work. There was no way I was going to sink any more time into it.

So I bailed out. I refunded Hypercarrot's $125 and took the bridge off the bass. It's here on a shelf in my machine shop. I'm not angry at Hypercarrot. He thought $125 was a reasonable price to pay for a custom bridge for his project. I tried to help him, but this quickly turned into a stupid job from my point of view.

I wanted to tell all of you this story, so you understand the business side of custom instrument work. To you, the customer, you're just asking me to make up some parts. They're only a little bit different from ones that you can buy. What's the problem? The thing is, a small unforeseen engineering problem, like we had here, can completely blow up a job. Fixing it isn't a matter of just putting in an extra hour; it means doubling or tripling the overall cost of the job. But, we agreed on a fixed price that's based on it being built right one time, with no problems.

Out in general industry, custom work like this is usually done on Time & Materials basis. That is, I bill you for the labor hours and materials that it took to make the device work, even if it took extra hours and several iterations. If I did that here, this bridge could end up costing $400. He's not going to be willing to pay that much.

And sadly, jobs that go bad like this aren't once-in-a-while. It's a constant thing in custom instrument work. There are so many little details that can go wrong. And the customer expects us to fix it by doing the whole job over for free. Jobs that are a financial failure far outnumber jobs that are a financial success.

And that's exactly why I don't do custom instrument jobs like this anymore. And it's hard to find anyone who does.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

Here are some pictures of me making this bridge, so you can see how it's done. I've made a lot of Fender-style bridges before, so I've got the process worked out pretty efficiently. I've got it all drawn out in AutoCad first.

The saddles are made from a single length of round brass bar stock. I start out by putting it in the milling machine and milling the flat face down one side.

I clamp in the vise against the flat side and drill all the intonation screw holes. This is all six saddles in a row, with the hole positions set on the digital readout, per the drawing. Then I turn it 90 degrees, setting the flat on a scrap aluminum bar, and drill all the jacking setscrew holes.

Here's the brass bar with the rows of holes drilled and tapped. The intonation screw holes are 6-32 and the jacking screw holes are 4-40. Note how I've also precisely located spots where the string grooves go.

Next, the bar goes in a collet in the lathe. I use a V-tool bit to cut the string grooves at the spots, and a slight groove where each cutoff point will be.

Here's the bar of the six saddles, ready to be separated.

I use my Barker mill to saw them off, apart from each other.

I didn't catch a picture, but they each went back in the collet in the lathe to face off the two end surfaces and bring them to the exact length. Here are the finished saddles.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

The base starts out as a piece of 16 ga 304 stainless steel plate stock. I draw out a long rectangle with a Sharpie and a ruler, and bandsaw it to the rough size. With it still long, I use my small sheet metal brake to bend the 90 degree flange on one end.

In my steel-cutting bandsaw, I saw off the top of the flange and the length.

Here's the drawing, printed out and clipped up next to the mill.

Drilling the holes for the intonation screws and strings in the back flange, in the mill, positioning them with the digital readouts.

Drilling the holes for the mounting screws.

Milling the top edge of the flange.

Skipped a few steps, but the edges and radiused corners are ground on the belt sander, the holes are countersunk and deburred, and the whole base is cleaned up and brush-sanded. Here it is with the saddles.

 

[quindecima]

I looked at this and it appears that the only way this is going to work is a taller back flange with the intonation and string holes directly above each other and the bridge inletted into the base itself. Years ago I was a tool and die apprentice but I actually don't know squat about this stuff.