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… )
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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
- 49,619
- 222,152
- 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
