Very nice !!! Blocked/bound Jazz basses are bad*ss !
My most recent main gigging bass is this one …. (I unfortunately haven’t been able to gig for a while, healthwise… )
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.
What bass builds do you have planned ?
- Thread starter Dark Horse
- Start date
Very nice !!! Blocked/bound Jazz basses are bad*ss !
My most recent main gigging bass is this one …. (I unfortunately haven’t been able to gig for a while, healthwise… )
Oh man, those all sound like solid ideas.
Really interested in the EAST/Turner bass ! (Make it headless and call it the Head Turner
) Seriously though, I hope you do a build thread for it in the luthier forum… I’d love to see that one materialize !
That’s gonna be a beauty of a build ! I was already following your thread !
Wow, that bass is absolutely stunning! Probably the nicest P bass (with J pickups) I've ever seen!
- Jun 30, 2010
- 49,618
- 222,151
- Disclosures
- musician/artist/owner - Gildaxe
Nice ! I especially want to see that Devil fretless !
You probably remember @mapleglo did a devil build a little while back - that turned out great !!!
I think @JIO did one as well, IIRC
Here’s a link to Mapleglo’s build ….
Since it's within the rules, I'll throw my planned devil bass in the ring.
Headless, with a head (huh?), Eye of Sauron, all maple, bolt-on, 5 string, 33.25" scale. No idea what pickup(s).
Here's the wood:
The smaller piece will be the body - one piece.
Here's the bridge and tuners:
No sawdust yet. I was planning on building a template from 3/4" plywood first, though I might start on the neck first. I never built a bolt on neck. I actually have a cast off from my last build where I totally messed up the neck blank, but I may be able...
I just ordered this very nice 1 piece slab of Honduran mahogany from North Ridge Hardwoods (Sumas Washington) for my next project. It's 1-5/8" x 14" X 21" and weighs 8.8 lbs and it is kiln dried. I will be planing it down to 1-1/4" and hope to have a body around 4lbs when it's done.
I have the neck for it - a vintage mahogany Ovation Magnum that I stripped and had Pat Wilkins do his magic on. Finish condition when it arrived:
Before: (stripped)
After:
Schaller lightweight tuners - drop in replacements...
I have the neck for it - a vintage mahogany Ovation Magnum that I stripped and had Pat Wilkins do his magic on. Finish condition when it arrived:
Before: (stripped)
After:
Schaller lightweight tuners - drop in replacements...
Wow, that bass is absolutely stunning! Probably the nicest P bass (with J pickups) I've ever seen!
Thank you so much for the kind words ! It was a joy to design and build.
Here are a few more photos of it…
No new build plans this spring/summer, but a couple years back, on one of my scratch builds, I wanted to see if I liked a bit fatter neck. I kinda don't. Sorta baseball bat like. So one of my projects will be to yank the neck and take the Shinto rasp to it and reshape/refinish.
There are some mods I would like to do too. I have a parts P/J that I want to remove the P, make a new pickguard to hide the cavity and replace the J with some sort of MM humbucker. (not sure what yet) The other mod I'm considering is to replace the pickups and pre in an Ibanez EHB1005SMS I picked up to try the multi scale thing. Nice little bass. 32" scale B, and 30" scale G. Sounds decent, but I think with a PU swap and a filter pre for each PU, it will be mo better to me.
There are some mods I would like to do too. I have a parts P/J that I want to remove the P, make a new pickguard to hide the cavity and replace the J with some sort of MM humbucker. (not sure what yet) The other mod I'm considering is to replace the pickups and pre in an Ibanez EHB1005SMS I picked up to try the multi scale thing. Nice little bass. 32" scale B, and 30" scale G. Sounds decent, but I think with a PU swap and a filter pre for each PU, it will be mo better to me.
Slowly getting back into it after a winter that was too cold for working in the garage and too distracting in other ways. Top of my list is to finish a guitar and a lap steel nearing completion, along with a conversion neck to turn a friend's Squier Bass VI into a baritone guitar. A few ideas have come, gone, returned, and changed during all that downtime, but finally settling down. I saw the Chameleons on tour last month, and being a very suggestible person, Mark Burgess's SG/EB-type bass got me thinking more about the general class of "short scale basses with thin bodies." I sort of ruled out the mudbucker as "not for me," but I have two short scale 6-string Bass VI-type builds and find them really comfortable. Rounding out the 30-inch scale set with a couple 4-strings feels right. So once the projects-in-progress are done, plans are:
1. An Ibanez-SR-inspired bass. 4-string, SR-inspired in terms of neck and body geometry. Natural mahogany body, pau ferro/mahogany 5-piece neck, and I finally settled on Delano JMVC FE/M2 pickups. That will get a blackwood tek fretboard. I'm really looking forward to body-carving time on this one.
2. A 30" scale 4-string modeled loosely on the Ephiphone Newport, but built as a neck-through. This will get a set of 916 Pickups Super Ferrites I originally planned to put in the SR-inspired build, but reassigned. I'm going to paint this body and neck a solid color, some nice metallicy blue or green, so wood choices might follow what I have laying around. Laminate mostly- or all maple neck in any case, pau ferro fretboard.
3. A 30" scale 4-string fretless, following the body shape of my Vingen build, though scaled down a bit to put the bridge right at the end of the body. Neck-through, though, and I'm going to do a more elaborate three-wood 9 or more piece laminate with maple, mahogany, and probably walnut. This will be a natural-wood design, but I haven't settled on the wings -- I have some rather elaborate bookmatched walnut tops that someone left in the "discard" bin at my Makerspace, and also a mulberry top set with some veiny voids filled with black epoxy. We'll see how both look in a mockup, when I get there. Probably mahogany under the wings, but maybe hackberry, haven't decided. Fingerboard will be olivewood -- I've been itching to try an olivewood fretless board. A single Lace Aluma Bass Bar, slightly foward of the typical J bridge position.
An ambitious summer, with both my first "fully sculpted" body and my first neck-through builds. Looking forward to it. I'll document in my build thread, of course.
1. An Ibanez-SR-inspired bass. 4-string, SR-inspired in terms of neck and body geometry. Natural mahogany body, pau ferro/mahogany 5-piece neck, and I finally settled on Delano JMVC FE/M2 pickups. That will get a blackwood tek fretboard. I'm really looking forward to body-carving time on this one.
2. A 30" scale 4-string modeled loosely on the Ephiphone Newport, but built as a neck-through. This will get a set of 916 Pickups Super Ferrites I originally planned to put in the SR-inspired build, but reassigned. I'm going to paint this body and neck a solid color, some nice metallicy blue or green, so wood choices might follow what I have laying around. Laminate mostly- or all maple neck in any case, pau ferro fretboard.
3. A 30" scale 4-string fretless, following the body shape of my Vingen build, though scaled down a bit to put the bridge right at the end of the body. Neck-through, though, and I'm going to do a more elaborate three-wood 9 or more piece laminate with maple, mahogany, and probably walnut. This will be a natural-wood design, but I haven't settled on the wings -- I have some rather elaborate bookmatched walnut tops that someone left in the "discard" bin at my Makerspace, and also a mulberry top set with some veiny voids filled with black epoxy. We'll see how both look in a mockup, when I get there. Probably mahogany under the wings, but maybe hackberry, haven't decided. Fingerboard will be olivewood -- I've been itching to try an olivewood fretless board. A single Lace Aluma Bass Bar, slightly foward of the typical J bridge position.
An ambitious summer, with both my first "fully sculpted" body and my first neck-through builds. Looking forward to it. I'll document in my build thread, of course.
Excellent concept.
But "chat" is what my Irish Grandmother called some of that AI-generated nonsense. Or was that shite?
Build on!
But "chat" is what my Irish Grandmother called some of that AI-generated nonsense. Or was that shite?
Build on!
Oh man, those all sound like solid ideas.
Really interested in the EAST/Turner bass ! (Make it headless and call it the Head Turner
The East and Turner builds would be two separate builds. The Turner multi-coil pickups would be paired with an Underwood Full English preamp to more closely match a Wal.
Interesting I actually have a ChatGPT mark up that I did too. I want to make a medium scale fretless P. Not sure which specs to go with tho.
Won the PB body , installing some old Fender PB pickups from the 60's I got my hands on from a second hand shop passing thru Akron ,OH last year . Talked myself out of doing a heavy relic on it ..........just play the damn thing .
More parts builds, including -
- Something with the bronco body I've got (I think 2 P90s?)
- A 30" scale bass with a danelectro body and maxon pickups
- A bass IV rascal build with 3 burns trisonic-style pickups and some way to enable all 3 pickups at once (without separate pickup switches)
- The kit build that's been sitting in my shop for some time
- The jazzray build I've been in the middle of for...months (don't judge)
- A 32" scale bass built around the neck that @cholyoke graciously sent me
- A stingray style bass using one of the Squier wide range bass humbuckers from a parted out rascal
I have a 33 inch scale 4 string single cut in the works. Titanium rods on either side of the pinwheel truss rod. Stainless frets. Chambered sides with a sound hole instead of traditional F hole.
That Newport-ish bass sounds awesome ! And I had those 916 super ferrites on my watch list a while back, they could be really interesting. I love the original Peavey SF’s !
Excellent concept.
But "chat" is what my Irish Grandmother called some of that AI-generated nonsense. Or was that shite?
Build on!
Awww, sh*te !!!
Love option 2, personally …. A flamed redwood top would be cool on it as an alternative to the roasted maple
