What is it?

[rickwrench]

Here's one I haven't seen before. Fretboard appears to be compressed and glued plywood or thick veneers. Looking at the heel of the fretboard, the plies/veneers were sawn 45˚ from vertical. This neck was in a big box of junk parts, so no provenance is possible. Looks like it was a paddle head at one point. In the pic, you can see where the plys have been compressed, filling a void in the plies.

The frets have razor sharp ends, never dressed in any way, and the fretboard has shrunk a bit, exposing them further. The neck itself is dead flat. It's had "abandoned project" dried out masking tape on it so long, the exposed wood is badly sun bleached vs the darker masked wood. Probably sand out fine. But... years.
A flat junk neck for a future junk bass build (good enough for me).

Still, what the hell is it? Compressed plywood? Some other proprietary fretboard wood alternative?

Rick

 

[chinjazz]

On the top it looks like a horizontal slice of birch ply. The huge fret slots reveal none of that same pattern. I wonder if it was intended to be fretless. Interesting piece of neck

 

[Matt Liebenau]

I guess one of the ebanol or richlite type materials but I think of those as being newer and if the neck is truly old... Dunno. Curbow was making necks with diamondwood (which I realize is a different material. I’m just saying alternate wood based materials have been around for a while) a number of years ago so I suppose it’s possible.

 

[chinjazz]

I’m officially blind. My eyes were playing tricks on me and I saw the frets as channels. Lol, sorry

 

[rickwrench]

Thanks for the "DymondWood" lead. Reading up on it shows 29-30 layers per inch of resin impregnated birch ply. Looking again at the heel of this neck shows the bias cut on the original block of material is actually 20˚. That works out to the fretboard being just about 1" of layers at the heel, layed over. I count 29 layers at the heel end.

Close enough for me.
Still, the comically bad fret ends scream cheap import. Yet MOP dots...

Truss rod nut is currently seized, but I've dropped in some penetrating oil. We'll see, I guess.
I pulled the frets this morning anyway, they were bronze. I pulled a very slight back bow into it when pulling. There was very minimal chipping. After pulling the frets and release from the fixture, the shrunken fret board pulled a 1/8" face bow into the previously dead flat/fretted neck. Maple veneer will go in the slots once the truss rod is free, and I've evened the color out. I'll probably dye it darker (before the veneers go in, of course). CA final finish. Hopefully the sunburn isn't too deep.
Could still be junk.

20˚ cut, 29 layers per inch:

Sunburn line at the 10th fret slot. Ancient tape residue. Frets yanked. CA on slot ends, just in case. Still needs a lot of work:

Rick

 

[rickwrench]

Update-
I've done several defret jobs in the past. For the most part, seeing the lines (for me anyway) can be sketchy in low light when using typical .022" filler strips. For this one I widened the slots to a smidge over .030" with a handy fine tooth hacksaw blade. The veneers were also around .030", so they fit without any thinning. Set with CA. I also cut down through the bass side of the fingerboard almost to the join, since that is the part of the neck I see. 50% bigger is 50% easier to see. I probably should have enlarged the (poorly placed) side dots, too. But I didn't.
I also plugged the badly misaligned tuner holes and put a veneer over the head stock. Fender style head stocks kinda suck to veneer, since you need to dig under the end of the fret board a bit and bend the veneer.
The sunburn on the fingerboard sanded out fine.
Sanded and CA sealed:

Now it just needs a body.

Rick

 

[rickwrench]

And the P-ish body, wiped down with a damp cloth.

This is planed off 2x2 redwood grape stakes (wings), 2 stakes, cut into 3 pieces each. The spine is a laminated stack of 3x 3/4" poplar board leftovers. It still needs some profiling on the lower horn.
And a tummy cut, arm relief, neck pocket, roundovers, etc. I'll back load this one. Haven't decided on pickups. Either reverse double Ps, or maybe no mags and a piezo bridge, or... both? Finish will be something handy over a couple wiped coats of 2# garnet shellac. Garnet + greenish poplar = brown.

On the grape stakes. They are 50-90 years old, made from old (very old) growth redwood. I have a couple large stacks of various types- splits, bare heartwood, and some dipped in copper napthenate, saved for "someday" projects. The dipped stakes are the "newest", mostly from the 60's and early 70's. The bare stakes are from the 50's, and the "splits" are from the 30's and 40's. "Splits" aren't milled, the grain is so straight that they are just cleaved off in perfect six foot long 2x2s. I was working with dipped stakes on this body, since they were on top of the close stack...

Most redwood is far too soft to do anything with. Warehouse store redwood has about 3-5 rings per inch, and feels like old styrofoam. The dipped stakes have between 50 and 60, and are considerably harder. For redwood anyway. The bare stakes are between 50 and 60 rings per inch as well. The "split" stake growth rings are so tight you need a magnifying glass to count them, upwards of a 100 per inch.

Here's a cut-off of one of the dipped stakes. About 100 years of growth in this scrap:

More later.

Rick

 

[bound'n'blocked]

I had an old guitar neck about 30 years ago that was thin plys of wood (maple) like this. The fretboard was a normal piece of maple, but the core of the neck and the headstock were plys like these. I always assumed that because of that, it was cheap and worthless, but now looking back, I think about how that might have not been the case. Making something like that must take some time to get done right.

BnB

 

[rickwrench]

Getting closer.

Rick

 

[Biffa]

Fingerboard looks like Zebrawood to me

 

[ctmullins]

Double reverse P is so great!

 

[Five String]

Very interesting build.

 

[wraub]

TBH, not in love with the body, but the neck has much interest...

 

[rickwrench]

With cream pickup (covers) in the routes and a several wipes of garnet shellac:

Clear/platina is next, sand smooth, then lacquer.
On the neck - I wiped on some iron acetate to darken up the maple, then garnet shellac and lacquer. It really needed the tuner holes plugged, they were offset quite a bit from where they should have been drilled. That meant adding a veneer face. I'll drill new holes when I figure out what tuners I'm going to use. The truss rod nut is free now.

 

[Beej]

Looks nice, a really mellow vibe with the cream pickup covers.

 

[rickwrench]

Ready for the good stuff.

Simple(ish) 3 knob wiring. No toggles. One volume, one tone, one 6-way rotary.
#1 Piezo
#2 Bridge pair
#3 Inner pair
#4 Both pairs, series
#5 Outer pair
#6 Neck pair

Might do a rotary 5 way + piezo on a blend (post switch), too. That's 4 knobs.
Don't know. Still stewing. I have to build the piezo buffer and conversion bridge "mono saddle" first, anyway.

Rick

 

[Matt Liebenau]

Definitely try it first but, on my electrics anyway, I don’t usually like the piezo on its own. You may want to be able to blend in some magnetic pickup also.

 

[wraub]

Apparently, the body has grown on me... This looks really nice imo.

Ready for the good stuff.

Simple(ish) 3 knob wiring. No toggles. One volume, one tone, one 6-way rotary.
#1 Piezo
#2 Bridge pair
#3 Inner pair
#4 Both pairs, series
#5 Outer pair
#6 Neck pair

Might do a rotary 5 way + piezo on a blend (post switch), too. That's 4 knobs.
Don't know. Still stewing. I have to build the piezo buffer and conversion bridge "mono saddle" first, anyway.
View attachment 3429135

Rick

 

[rickwrench]

All done.
w/ Roto 77s.
Old bakelite cupcake knobs (1 V, 1 T), aluminum chicken head rotary on brass plate. DIY double piezo bridge "mono-saddle", split bone insert. Generic a5 pups, 10.34 bridge and 10.28 neck.
Pots: V is a 250k CTS, T is a 1M Dimarzio. "Vintage" wiring (tone on the output). Cap is .22uf (no, not .022uf). Deep, deep mud can be found at the bottom of the tone range. Wide open is crisp and bright. Rolled off just a bit and you're golden. No blend pot between piezo and mags.
Not paying attention, I cut the nut to jazz width string spacing. Someday I may fix it (probably not). String spacing at the bridge is .75"/19mm. I'd thought I had an extra bent p-bass bridge, but I couldn't find it. So I fished out a piece of .125" plate from the scrap box, cut one out and hammered it over. Same with the neck plate. The neck is secured with 10-32 inserts and oval head bolts. Finally, a bass for the boat anchor Grover titans. Spent 5¢ on the string retainer, buffed a well used screw.

6 way, 4 pole Rotary switch needed some surgery to accommodate all the selections...
1 - Piezos (double, full length, sound nice passive, not too clacky)
2 - Bridge Pup (bright and crisp)
3 - Neck EA, Bridge DG (sounds like a P-bass)
4 - Both, series (face punchy)
5 - Bridge EA, Neck DG (clean bottom, warm top)
6 - Neck Pup. (like a p-bass, a bit warmer up top)

Other than the piezos, no surprises.
I figured I'd need to build at least a piezo buffer, but I used two full length acoustic guitar piezos (parallel) which, it turns out, sound really nice without a buffer or pre. Sorry Mouser.
Slight pup misalignment, but then I cut the routes pretty tight early on, good enough for me. And, I ended up shimming the neck with a .020" heel shim.

It hasn't completely settled out yet, but it plays pretty damned good. The CA fret board is very growly at medium/low action. The wider cut maple fret slot fillers (.035" vs .023") are quite a bit easier to see in dim light.

Rick

 

[ctmullins]

Whoa. That is awesome.