"the EMBEE" plywood trial - first build

[MARCOvdBoogert]

Hi guys,

I'm new to the luthierscorner but I'm active for some time on the wishbass section.
My first work on a bass was to refin a purchased wishbass from Steve himself. It was also my first fretless bass and I totally love it!

Finishing this bass gave me the inspiration to design my own model.
The goal was to make a very comfortable, ergonomical, well balanced 5 string bass.
With all the inspiration from the wishbasses I came up with the EMBEE model.
Because wood is extremely expensive overhere, my first build and lack of good machinery I decided to try to make a full plywood, neck through bass, wenge enforced with a headless and fretless (of course). Hardware is from hipshot, an old gotoh humbucker and rotosound 88's. Pics are all iphone shots so excuse the quality of them.

From my neighbour carpenter I got some 27mm thick birch ply which he had sawn into 40mm strips. In this way I was able to stack a lot of fine strips together to create a nice pattern.

I glued them neck and bodywings and after sanding (in neighbours pro workshop I finished up with a nice, very flat and straight piece of lumber!
I drew my design in sketchup so I was able to make a full size template to cut out the shape. Pretty easy and usefull mainly because the hardware was in backorder for a long time....

Cutting the stacked ply already gave some ideas about the effect of sanded ply.

The total shape:

After this I routed the shape of the neck roughly with a handrouter and a guide.

For shaping the neck and body I mainly use my drill and a tool like this:

don't know how to call them.
After roughly shaping the "grain" really starts to show!

I like fat necks but 40mm without FB is a bit to much and to heavy also. I made a jig so I was able to use my router to route my neck thinner. I freehanded the transition.

After preinstalling the wengé Fingerboard I was able to really start turning the piece of lumber into a flowing, smooth bass.

After finishing the shape I started on the hardware.
Routing the pup cavity and installing the tunerbridge. It went pretty easy!

After radiusing the FB to 12" it was glued to the neck and the headpiece and nut were installed. A bolt on job, no worries!
The nut was made from scrap wengé of course to fit the FB

After several coats of sealer I drilled the controlcavity.

Veneered a piece of 1mm ply with wengé.....

and freehanded a knob for the pickup switch.

The other knobs were freehanded also but that is just a temporarily solution. I will order nice wengé dome knobs later.

So after hard labour, lots of fun and a lot of mental rethinking this project I finished up with this:

I can honestly say it works! The bass is very sturdy. No problems with bending or cracks. Perfect balance, very comfortable and it sounds awesome and looks the business!

Project well done and I am proud of my first build. OK, still a lot of things that can be inproved on it. Not the best of finishes and absolutely a "arts and crafts" bass in stead of a professional build but that's totally in line with wishbasses and their owners

I hope you liked this "novice" report on luthierswork. Comments are welcome!

 

[Stealth]

Oh wow. This is unusual, but very cool.

Can we hear it?

 

[herndonbassist]

Nice work! Seriously, considering that this is a first "from scratch build" for you, I'm thoroughly impressed.

 

[dave64o]

I tend to buy pretty traditional looking basses (my FNA Jazzman is the "wildest" bass I've ever owned), but I still think that's cool. Really nice job, especially for a first build!

 

[SolidFooting]

Well done indeed. The body shape isn't really my thing, but you should be very proud. It's a nice bass.

 

[roberthabraken]

Nice work Marco! You have a feeling for this. I like the horns and the look. Does it sound good? Any clips?

 

[monkeyking]

Great job Marco. I remember your refin on the Wish ( I have one too).

I think the new bass looks great and, frankly, I think you should leave the switch and knobs just as they are.

Knowing it's your first from scratch makes the results even more impressive. Well done!!

 

[hover]

Hey, plywood worked for Kubicki.

I think that bass is awesome, and you did a fine, fine job with the design, I too would love to hear it.

 

[Hopkins]

Personally I think those "freehand" knobs look pretty damn cool. Did you not install a truss rod?

 

[MARCOvdBoogert]

Thanks for all the kind complements!
The neck is like a baseballbat if compared with a fender jazz. I haven't measured it but o guess it's over 1.5 inch in total. I'm a former pianoplayer with big hands. I really like "grip" aka I prefer a "Rubens" girl in stead of a bag of bones.
So, totally in style of the wishbasses, there is no trussrod. No need for it.
I made two short soundfiles on the iPhone.
Nothing special and bad quality.
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The thing I really want to change is the action. I can't play fast on it now. I saw a
Luthierstopic here where the bridge was routed into the body for a few mm. Maybe I have to do the same to lower the action. First I will tweak the nut this week. I played the bass yesterday on our bluesnight. The sound is really acoustic even over a crappy hartke amp.

 

[roberthabraken]

Great that you've included samples, but your links do not seem to work. Did you use your context menu to 'Copy public link' via Dropbox? The URL formatting seems to be different from what I'm used to considering public links (normally it's something like dl.dropbox.com/u/NUMBER/DOCUMENTNAME). Looks like you've copied the link from your within your logged in web viewer of Dropbox.

By the way, an adjustable truss rod is not for strength, but enables you to adjust the [DEL]action[/DEL] relief.

 

[octaedro7]

Very nice my friend. I even like the look of Plywood

 

[Meatrus]

By the way, an adjustable truss rod is not for strength, but enables you to adjust the action.

Noooooo! Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious and you already knew this, but the above is misleading to others.

Action should be set at the bridge, the truss rod sets the relief. Action and relief are two different things. Marco said what he did because if you have a very strong neck (AKA massive) the chances of it bowing (which is when you would correct it with the truss) with string changes and humidity is less likely than if it were thin.

 

[roberthabraken]

Noooooo! Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious and you already knew this, but the above is misleading to others.

Action should be set at the bridge, the truss rod sets the relief. Action and relief are two different things. Marco said what he did because if you have a very strong neck (AKA massive) the chances of it bowing (which is when you would correct it with the truss) with string changes and humidity is less likely than if it were thin.

Sorry, you're absolutely correct, I used the wrong word in English. It's relief indeed. I now action is set at nut and bridge. But still, I think for being able to get a good action, you need a slight forward bow. I think you are very lucky if you got the exact amount of bow right away after your build. It's not controllable without a truss rod. That's what I actually meant to say

 

[Meatrus]

I thought it must have been a language thing, based on your awesome build I know you know what your doing!

 

[roberthabraken]

I thought it must have been a language thing, based on your awesome build I know you know what your doing!

Well, I do need more experience in setting up guitars, so I consider myself a rookie on that expertise. I made a wrong shortcut to explaining what I meant there, partly language thing.. but thanks for the compliment and even more for pointing out my false statement!

 

[MARCOvdBoogert]

I hope these links will work. Still crap recordings but it's better as nothing.
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Here are two shots from my first build. Steve glued and roughly shaped the wood. I finished it to this piece. This bass got no iron in it what so ever. Neck through, string through. Really good playable low action bass. The hardware is a bit on the cheap side. Have to upgrade it to really let this bass roar.

After playing a fender jazz for a few years (with TR) I really fell in love with the wood sound of an full wooden bass. The resonance and sustain on those basses are just much more natural sounding, kinda accoustic. It fits my style of music. I play jazz and bluesrock most of the time. A straight neck is good enough for me but I agree that for some types of basses a TR is a must have. For my style and neckthickness it's just a waste of time and will only influence the sound of the bass in a negative way. IMO of course....

 

[grisezd]

That seems to be a much nicer and more uniform plywood than what I can get locally. I'd considered a plywood build of my own, but the stuff I see at the building supply just doesn't seem worth it when I look at it on end.

Nice work!

 

[iamlowsound]

That seems to be a much nicer and more uniform plywood than what I can get locally. I'd considered a plywood build of my own, but the stuff I see at the building supply just doesn't seem worth it when I look at it on end.

Nice work!

Get birch plywood, good one side. Or, if you can find it, birch plywood, good both sides. That is what is used here.

lowsound

 

[MARCOvdBoogert]

Normal DIY isn't the best. You're right. This one isn't best quality but better as normal DIY. Look for AA grade ply, airplane quality ply or "doorply" those are the best.
A good wholesaler or sawmill got AA birch in stock most of the times.