That CB binding is almost making me wish I'd given it a stab on mine. Almost. On the other hand, I've been enjoying playing bindingless bass for months now. Kudos to your vast patience!
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
The Hossenfeffer Bass Build
- Thread starter Gilmourisgod
- Start date
Ron
I'm trying to picture the best binding for the Rickenbarner, maybe slightly rusty nail heads all the way around?
Never mind, your bass needs nothing with all that rustic mojo.
That hard binding edge is not the most comfortable feature on a Ric, but I play like a dork with my elbow stuck out a little, so it doesn't bother me. No worse than the average Tele or acoustic guitar I guess. The bound elbow relief on Chinabackers and Aerodynes is pretty slick, but you need a real binding jig or CNC to pull that off.
I'm trying to picture the best binding for the Rickenbarner, maybe slightly rusty nail heads all the way around?
Never mind, your bass needs nothing with all that rustic mojo.That hard binding edge is not the most comfortable feature on a Ric, but I play like a dork with my elbow stuck out a little, so it doesn't bother me. No worse than the average Tele or acoustic guitar I guess. The bound elbow relief on Chinabackers and Aerodynes is pretty slick, but you need a real binding jig or CNC to pull that off.
So here's the shenannigans I had to get up to by making the neck beam parallel instead of continuous taper. Ouch! It works, but what a train wreck. The little notch at the top of this mess is to receive the binding coming in from the body wing. NEVER AGAIN. My next Ric build (4003W for my Son), will have a continous taper neck beam.
Finally got to the Fingerboard glue-up stage. Trussrod works: check
Some 3/32" aluminum rod as registration for the fingerboard:
silicone spooge at ends and middle of TR to prevent rattle:
Roller glue slathering: (and yes, I did remember to take the tape off)
Clamp-o-Rama
Fun with Frets Next. Thanks for looking...
Finally got to the Fingerboard glue-up stage. Trussrod works: check
Some 3/32" aluminum rod as registration for the fingerboard:
silicone spooge at ends and middle of TR to prevent rattle:
Roller glue slathering: (and yes, I did remember to take the tape off)
Clamp-o-Rama
Fun with Frets Next. Thanks for looking...
There is no simple thing I can't make more complex after hours of careful consideration. Still screwing things up the old fashioned way... one step at a time!
Gig, (Gilmourisgod),
Awesome build your picture of the neck mount . . . Ive seen skyscrapers with fewer steps! How in the world do you figure that stuff all out? Advanced trigonometry?? Can't wait to see the end product. Someday I will attempt a Rick style build. Still finishing up my first bolt on neck original. . . Gotta walk before i can run like many of you here do!
Awesome build your picture of the neck mount . . . Ive seen skyscrapers with fewer steps! How in the world do you figure that stuff all out? Advanced trigonometry?? Can't wait to see the end product. Someday I will attempt a Rick style build. Still finishing up my first bolt on neck original. . . Gotta walk before i can run like many of you here do!
I decided to run really fast before walking, per usual, resulting in multiple face-plants. Thank god for opaque paint jobs. The plan is to make all the really stupid mistakes on this one before a second attempt with oil finish over walnut, a ho-made 4003w. Mapleglo is the current reigning champ of walnut Ric builds, watching her work like a hawk.
Rôckhewer
Commercial User
- Feb 28, 2015
- 2,922
- 9,028
- Disclosures
- Owner/Builder- RockHewer Custom Guitars LLC
So......
I'm not really sure what's even going on here.... (no don't explain it again, my head hurts enough already )
But, look on the bright side man!
That's some really nice woodworking going on there, ya'know? ...I mean... no tore up endgrain...nice clean steps, no burn, sharp square corners....
You should be....kinda proud of ....um....whatever this is
And just think of the education that this ....must have given you! Some people pay big $ for training like that!
& whatever ....ah.... happened, You're not likely to forget it
Good stuff!
Oh yeah...also, I'm totally going to steal your idea of using a little disposable paint roller for applying glue quickly. That looks like it works really well! I have honestly never thought of that.
I've been using one of those hard rubber roller thingies that screws on to a glue bottle that is supposed to be able to feed the glue onto the roller as you go.... I don't like it ... I still have to squeeze glue on from another bottle anyway....& then I sometimes wind up with too much & have to roll a big puddle off the edge ....etc...etc....
Rôckhewer
Commercial User
- Feb 28, 2015
- 2,922
- 9,028
- Disclosures
- Owner/Builder- RockHewer Custom Guitars LLC
Honestly man, you are doing a great job on this build.
What color did you plan on painting it?
What kind of paint & so forth?
What color did you plan on painting it?
What kind of paint & so forth?
Thanks Rock, that means something coming from you. The whole project is my "mid-life crisis nostalgia trip", a re-creation of my first bass, a 1979 Ric 4001 in Jetglo (black), $450 brand new with HSC. My how times have changed. I stupidly sold it during my breIf Jaco Wannabe phase under pressure from band mates, and almost instantly regretted it. Like breaking up with your first girlfriend for no reason you can remember. So of course, it has to be black with clearcoat. I've inhaled/ingested more than my share of toxic chemicals, so I'm strongly considering one of the new water based poly finishes like Varathane for clearcoat, still not sure what to use for color coats. I own zero painting equipment, so it's a clean slate. I have access to a compressor, but don't own a gun. Some people report decent results with cheap HF guns, may go that route. Otherwise it's rattle cans or a Preval unit. There's a whole thread devoted to using the WB finishes here:
Using water based products for instrument finishing, Target Coatings 9000 6000 and Varathane WB
Using water based products for instrument finishing, Target Coatings 9000 6000 and Varathane WB
Rôckhewer
Commercial User
- Feb 28, 2015
- 2,922
- 9,028
- Disclosures
- Owner/Builder- RockHewer Custom Guitars LLC
I would stay clear of rattle cans
(Or "bomb cans" ...cause they're only good for throwing into a fire to watch them explode)
If I was doing black, what immediately comes to mind is lacquer. But then I am not a painter. And I dont know what water based products are out now that will give you that same deep dark jet black ...blackness...
The $15 guns at HF aren't horrible....that's what I used on my last bass clear coat.
But like I said. ..not a painter, so I probably don't know any better
(Or "bomb cans" ...cause they're only good for throwing into a fire to watch them explode)
If I was doing black, what immediately comes to mind is lacquer. But then I am not a painter. And I dont know what water based products are out now that will give you that same deep dark jet black ...blackness...
The $15 guns at HF aren't horrible....that's what I used on my last bass clear coat.
But like I said. ..not a painter, so I probably don't know any better
My other consideration is cost, of course (two boys in college!) This may be the only painted bass I ever build, as I tend to prefer oil finishes. I can't justify outfitting myself with a lot of equipment for one or two paint jobs. I do know I'm not using nitro, it's just too fragile, I like em' pretty long term. I've done some light auto body paint with a Preval, worked ok once I got the mix right. I'm going to have to decide soon, hoping to spray in early September when we get some nice warm, low humidity weather on Cape Cod. As usual, advice appreciated!
Ct mullins
In the absence of new progress to show, blabbering is about all I can do, so blabber away. Are you using rock maple for the necks? My neck beam (two piece lamination) is extremely rigid in it's current state, still 1-3/8" thick by about 2-1/2" wide, but that's pre-carved of course. This is my current neck profile at First, Seventh, and Twelfth frets below, based on dimensions taken off an original 4001 bass (Thanks Blindrabbit!). Ric necks are all over the place thickness-wise front to back, but have remained consistent across the fingerboard. I'm going to carve to these profiles, which seems to give me some safe distance between the carbon stiffeners (outer rectangles in the section profiles) and bottom of neck. If it feels too chunky when it's carved, I can always shave a little more. Ric necks derive a lot of the overall neck thickness from an unusually thick (3/8" +/-) fingerboard, so the maple section isn't really all that deep to house stiffeners and trussrod. Comments or constructive criticism highly welcome.
How did you get that neck profile? It looks similar to the one one my two fav basses, an atk 305 and an atk 805 of mine. It's so difficult to find necks like that. Everything is "modern C", magic wand, or shaped like a 1 by plank of home depot pine.
Strictly speaking, I don't have that neck profile yet, because I haven't carved it yet! If you mean the cross-sectional drawings, I generated them using the Autocad Ellipse tool based on current production 4003 neck thickness dimensions generously provided by another TB member. I tend to like "D" shaped neck profiles, "C" feels too fat to me, so I just created an ellipse using the thickness and width data at each point along the neck. I had originally intended to use a scary-thin 4001 "D" profile, but kind of backed myself into corner with minimum depth under the trussrod, and a slavish adherence to the super-thick (3/8") Ric fingerboard. I'll probably bag the exposed strip of bubinga below the neck binding, or apply a bubinga binding to "fake it" on the next one. Then I could get the TR higher up into a thinner fingerboard. The neck carve will be the last thing I do before gluing the body wings, after fretting and level/polish.
C (or what's advertised as C) feels skinny to me. It feels like it has smaller shoulders than a D profile, for necks of the same thickness. I have two Ibanez ATK805e. One has a fat neck (which I strongly prefer) and the other one feels standard (meh). They both have the same thickness from fret board to back of neck all the way down the neck, measured with a caliper. The difference is in in the neck profile, my fav is fat.
I can see why you would say that D is skinnier than C. If one slims a standard C shaped neck down the middle then it would have a flatter and thinner feel that would look like a shallow letter D.
To anyone truly perplexed by that little parallel neck beam fiasco, and my hack solution to it, I offer two photos=1000 words:
Neck out of the clamps with fingerboard on. Depite my best efforts, the FB "creeped" a hair towards the G side of the neck, maybe 1/128" or so. I had to shave the FB edge back flush with the neck, resulting in a white binding that is visibly thinner by that amount on the G side. Sigh.... No biggy, but I'll always notice it. I should have used the .060" thick binding I used on the body instead of .040", would have given me a little leeway. Live and learn.
I got a set of 24 "Fender Standard" bass frets, which I think translates to medium jumbo, about what I'm used to. I never liked the thin, flat Ric wire, its only good for one refret. This wire is pre-radiused to 9", so it should have enough over-bend for my 10" radius board (I hope). I found that my cheap Ebay nippers have a tough time cutting off the tang without distorting the wire a little. I can't justify an expensive fret tang nipper, any advice on how best to do this without a tang nipper appreciated. You can see in the photo, the right side is bent up a little. I did the undercuts with the nippers and then a hand file, pretty slow going for 20 frets. The package came with 24, so I can afford to screw up a couple.
Neck out of the clamps with fingerboard on. Depite my best efforts, the FB "creeped" a hair towards the G side of the neck, maybe 1/128" or so. I had to shave the FB edge back flush with the neck, resulting in a white binding that is visibly thinner by that amount on the G side. Sigh.... No biggy, but I'll always notice it. I should have used the .060" thick binding I used on the body instead of .040", would have given me a little leeway. Live and learn.
I got a set of 24 "Fender Standard" bass frets, which I think translates to medium jumbo, about what I'm used to. I never liked the thin, flat Ric wire, its only good for one refret. This wire is pre-radiused to 9", so it should have enough over-bend for my 10" radius board (I hope). I found that my cheap Ebay nippers have a tough time cutting off the tang without distorting the wire a little. I can't justify an expensive fret tang nipper, any advice on how best to do this without a tang nipper appreciated. You can see in the photo, the right side is bent up a little. I did the undercuts with the nippers and then a hand file, pretty slow going for 20 frets. The package came with 24, so I can afford to screw up a couple.
