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The official "Show your basses" thread part 19!

#14,541
fretno said:
Cool huh. It works. I think Modulus did a similar thing but it makes sense. Why not use graphite stringers. I’m surprised we don’t see this more often.
Click to expand...
It's heavier than the wood it replaces.
It's hard to work.
Working (sanding / cutting) it is a health hazard from the chems and dust.
It's expensive.
Relief is still needed for frets 1-7, that means the relief must be engineered into the component .
The wood moves it doesn't so there may be separations.
Roasted maple would be more stable.

Yeah, I've considered doing it.
I'd use a lighter weight more stable roasted Ash or maple.
 
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#14,543
/\/\3phist0 said:
It's heavier than the wood it replaces.
It's hard to work.
Working (sanding / cutting) it is a health hazard from the chems and dust.
It's expensive.
Relief is still needed for frets 1-7, that means the relief must be engineered into the component .
The wood moves it doesn't so there may be separations.
Roasted maple would be more stable.

Yeah, I've considered doing it.
I'd use a lighter weight more stable roasted Ash or maple.
Click to expand...
Wenge being the most stable neck I’ve played. Perhaps aside from a Carbon fibre Zon.
But for woods. Wenge all day!
 
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#14,544
AB Nate said:
Wenge being the most stable neck I’ve played. Perhaps aside from a Carbon fibre Zon.
But for woods. Wenge all day!
Click to expand...
I agree, but it's lead heavy, and is hard to work, brittle and splintery, and toxic.
Splinters in your skin, or dust in the lungs is not good.

I love a Wenge neck though.
 
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#14,545
/\/\3phist0 said:
It's heavier than the wood it replaces.
It's hard to work.
Working (sanding / cutting) it is a health hazard from the chems and dust.
It's expensive.
Relief is still needed for frets 1-7, that means the relief must be engineered into the component .
The wood moves it doesn't so there may be separations.
Roasted maple would be more stable.

Yeah, I've considered doing it.
I'd use a lighter weight more stable roasted Ash or maple.
Click to expand...
all the reasons I'll never try it lol . Thanks man , that sheds some light .
 
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#14,546
Hey ..Wenge Maple Wenge you say ?
6ALJxpfl.jpg
 
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#14,547
/\/\3phist0 said:
I agree, but it's lead heavy, and is hard to work, brittle and splintery, and toxic.
Splinters in your skin, or dust in the lungs is not good.

I love a Wenge neck though.
Click to expand...


I have heard it’s unpleasant to work with for sure. I’m glad my fav luthiers chose to use it(safely). I don’t find any weight trades to be a burden compared to the rewards of stability.


I just got this beauty back. Wenge neck. 8 1/2 lbs IIRC :)

F3119F5E-4F5F-4C2B-8DF9-F3298B28577D.jpeg
 
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#14,549
AB Nate said:
I have heard it’s unpleasant to work with for sure. I’m glad my fav luthiers chose to use it(safely). I don’t find any weight trades to be a burden compared to the rewards of stability.


I just got this beauty back. Wenge neck. 8 1/2 lbs IIRC :)

View attachment 4321167
Click to expand...

Yeah I'm going to need to confiscate that bass for... reasons... ;P

What a BEAUT! Congrats!
 
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#14,555
Well, they're nothing impressive and there's an acoustic downstairs that is so cheap I can't even be bothered to photograph it, but here are three of my current four, including the blue one in the middle which my boy and I have just finished building together this afternoon:
ThreeInARowCropped.jpg


Left is a Squier VM 5-string that I managed to get just before they stopped making them and switched over to the "Classic Vibe" style. That was my first bass. At the moment it's wearing flats and accompanying me in my somewhat hopeless quest to learn a load of Jazz.

Right is an Ibby SR400EMQM which might have been the last one in England, the trouble I had getting hold of it. Again, at the time I bought it, a few months into lockdown, they'd stopped making them and the new version came out with rosewood(?) necks, but I wanted maple and eventually found one after some months of searching. That's my main bass now - very comfortable to play and the tonal range is great for messing around.

The middle one is a Bobling Penguin Bass. I wanted a P-bass and the boy needed a project, so we ordered a DIY kit and put it together. It's actually come out a lot better than I expected - painting it was a bit of a nightmare, but now sanded and polished, the end result is actually pretty bloody good, which surprised me rather a lot, I have to say.

Anyway. The boy's nickname is "Bobling" (no, no idea) and he's obsessed with penguins, so he agreed to help me on the condition that it had a "penguin theme". Thus, the arse-end looks like this:
Completed Bass 1 Cropped.jpg


As a reward for his efforts, we also put a decal on the headstock - could be the next great brand of guitars (if / when all the others go out of business), so that people in the church band would naturally ask what I was playing this week and I could explain that we'd done it together and give him yet another opportunity to bore us all to tears on the subject of penguins...
Completed Bass 2 Cropped.jpg

With apologies to Leo Fender, c. 1967... :)
 
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