Time Machine Bass Project - Build Thread

[Doner Designs]

More pics - Rush Time Machine Tour. Having a lot of fun with this one. Excited to branch out from our military themes.

 

[Doner Designs]

And a few other miscellaneous...

 

[Awesome Sauce]

The top needs to made of wormy chestnut, so can say your time machine bass is full of worm holes. :smile: Oh, yes. I went there.

 

[Doner Designs]

The top needs to made of wormy chestnut, so can say your time machine bass is full of worm holes. :smile: Oh, yes. I went there.

Or perhaps a slab of ash that has been attacked by emerald ash borers.

 

[Awesome Sauce]

And maybe on the forearm cut, you could inlay "Be excellent to each other"

 

[Awesome Sauce]

Well, there's certainly plenty of that in Chicagoland right now.

 

[Doner Designs]

Richard is home from college and ready to start work on the time circuits so I ordered an alder Iceman body today (I figger if yer gonna build a time machine into a bass, why not do it with some style).

Will be cut for a single P pickup initially so we have plenty of room to work with, but we may add a Nordstrand DC in the bridge position if there's extra room.

 

[Mosstone]

A few of mine:

Very cool...

 

[Doner Designs]

Also on our workbench at this time...

 

[Doner Designs]

Toying with a few ideas here. Richard is thinking that the core functionality could be a dial that selects a four digit year for the destination with a pot that dials it in and a switch that would turn on the flux capacitor after a year is selected. Might use a circuit board pickguard or mount some functional boards on the outside.

This is not the neck for the time machine, but gives a better sense of what it might look like.

 

[Doner Designs]

Ordered a maple neck with plain ebony fingerboard today (no inlays). We might do pinstripes around the neck at each fret so that it looks like the frets go all the way around and maybe give the illusion that the neck is a wormhole. The pinstripes could continue up to the end of the headstock.

 

[Doner Designs]

We have the body and the neck is on order. Have started playing with layouts a bit. This is VERY preliminary - just brainstorming at this point.

Conceptually, we are looking at a 70's/80's version of Steampunk (using electronic parts rather than gears and pistons, etc) Not sure what to call it. Electropunk? Digipunk? Analogpunk? Cyberpunk is already a thing.

So far my son (an engineering student) wants to have a destination year that you can actually dial in and then a button that engages the flux capacitor. Looks like it is possible to light up a vacuum tube with a battery, so that might be a part of it. One concern is that batteries may take up too much space.

I'll probably try to get a bucket of old surplus electronic parts so we can be a little more sophisticated and precise with the layout. What's shown below is preliminary and butt ugly, but our early mock ups always look that way.

 

[Doner Designs]

There seem to be a few futuristic guitars out there. A blend of genres may actually make sense for a time machine. Remember Mr. Fusion and the locomotive time machine in BTF?

 

[Doner Designs]

Neck arrived today. Looks good.

 

[Doner Designs]

A pile of parts for the TMB...

 

[Doner Designs]

A couple of potential layouts....

 

[Doner Designs]

Mad scientist "Doc" Richard Doner at work. The thing on the breadboard is part of the chasing LED circuitry for the Flux Capacitor. Pretty cool that he's getting a chance to use his EE college work on one of our guitars.

Still waiting for a visit from our future selves.

 

[tubedude]

Don't forget the 60's.classic. Time Tunnel.

 

[gfen]

You need to work in a classic phone pad (wired to switches?) for the best time machine of all:

Party on, Steve.

 

[Doner Designs]

Don't forget the 60's.classic. Time Tunnel.

View attachment 927233

We were thinking of painting pinstripes around the back of the neck at the fretlines for a bit of a vortex look which could continue onto the headstock.