show us your first builds everyone

[DavidRavenMoon]

This was my first, it's a bolt on, and I never finished it to pursue a set neck design. This was made in 1994. I just recently started working on it again.

It's got a cherry body with flamed maple top. maple and walnut neck, with a phenolic fingerboard bound with rosewood, and rosewood headplate. The neck has two truss rods and CF reinforcement.

 

[Suburban]

that is awsome! Fantastic artsy looking bass. Where did you rout for the eq that is on the horn? It's hard to tell from the photo of the back.
by the way, the web site is really nice. Some good tone explanations and good looking ergo designs of instruments. What are the prices in $, or euros? I would love to hear one of those.

Thanks!
If you look carefully, you will see that there are three hatches on the back. One where we are used to find them (3 black screws and one blank), one at the 'horn' (4 blank screws) and one on the other side of the neck from the first (5 black screws). I really screwed the screws up, didn't I? Mixing black allen screws with blank cross recess...

Re. BassLab and prices, I suggest you go to basslab.de for €'s and to ghservices.com for $'s. I only cover Scandinavia.

 

[tdogg]

WOW all of your first builds look sooooo good. +1 on the home depot lumber. im planning my first build and i think im just gonna use lumber yard maple nd mahogany just in case it doesnt turn out as good as these. i think you guys are gutsy as hell to use high end lumber on your first builds

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

WOW all of your first builds look sooooo good. +1 on the home depot lumber. im planning my first build and i think im just gonna use lumber yard maple nd mahogany just in case it doesnt turn out as good as these. i think you guys are gutsy as hell to use high end lumber on your first builds

We still use wood from lumberyards. Some of our figured maple even came from Home Depot! There's a lot of fine lumber yards that have good hardwood selections, even some exotic stuff.

But for maple, mahogany, cherry, poplar, etc., we go to a lumber yard. That flamed maple top you see above was from a local lumber yard. The whole board was maybe $15. I resawed and bookmatched it myself.

The first two necks I made were from maple and walnut from a wood working machine store!

I got some wood from Ken Smith also.

 

[PaleMelanesian]

All we have in stores here - Lowes and HD - are Oak, Poplar, and pine. Oh, and MDF! I have to go to an exotic wood store an hour away just to find maple.

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Poplar makes a great sounding body, and even necks. it's not pretty to look at though.

 

[PaleMelanesian]

...and my #2 bass is all-poplar (neck & fb, even) and #4 is a poplar body. Not a bad wood at all.

 

[eleonn]

All we have in stores here - Lowes and HD - are Oak, Poplar, and pine. Oh, and MDF! I have to go to an exotic wood store an hour away just to find maple.

At least you have maple there!!!

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

Poplar neck, oak top and limba body...

(built by my partner at SGD, John Gagliano)

 

[PaleMelanesian]

Ouch. Sorry about that. That's a real pain!

 

[Alex]

Man a lot of you guys made some pretty amazing stuff on just your first builds. I wouldn't have the balls to do that stuff.

 

[Ray Holt]

These both kind of happened simultaneously at school, so I'll post them both.

First electric...
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First acoustic...
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[tdogg]

hey i wanted to see pics of everyones first builds. I really wanna see basses but if you have other first builds feel free to show them too i wanna se where everyone came from to see how i did on my first one. oh and no id didnt build the neck but im gonna build one in the future

you should a darkstar, piezo's and a whammy bar and call that your swiss army bass

 

[JSPguitars]

I lost the pictures of my first when my computer took a dump (maybe that's a good thing though)
Dustin, take a new pic for me!

 

[DavidRavenMoon]

These both kind of happened simultaneously at school, so I'll post them both.

First electric...
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That's a beautiful guitar Ray!

 

[Nino Valenti]

Here is my very 1st build. A friend of mine gave me a stripped 79 P body with a really, REALLY poor J routed at the bridge. I ordered a Warmoth Maple/Rosewood neck. I put a set of BassLines 1/4LB PJ's, Mirrored p/g, Schaller Tuning Keys, BadAss II. THe bass was REALLY heavy buy sounded pretty damned good!!!!

 

[SDB Guitars]

Okay... I'll break down and post my first one... it was a wedding present for a friend. I'm *so* glad that I've improved since then.

I offered to take it back and build him a new (better) one, but he won't go for it... now if I could just get him to look at the damned camera...

 

[treebranch13]

the frets look *slightly* off. but it looks beautiful, i wouldn't give it back either

 

[SDB Guitars]

Yeah, that was my first attempt at a multi-scale fretboard... the 24th fret is slightly out, mostly noticable on the G string, all other frets intonate fine. I offered to re-fret it, I even offered to build him a new one. He said that he never plays that far up, and that it adds "character".

It's a constant reminder to me that it's the little thinge that will haunt you... I now triple check all measurements before cutting, even if I'm using a template.

 

[BarkerBass]

this is my first build aged 17 and with a veryvery tight budget. the neck and bridge were taken from a cheap ebay buy, solid mahogony body and wilkinson cheap electronics. all in all costme about £200 i hope to replace the electronics some day

i got the neck pickup placement slightly wrong and its not got a stratchplate to cover the reroute pics to come.