Winter Build-Off 2024: A Big Funky Mikro

[TheBloodyBarber]

The best bass for being my first build

I'm doing my first build! Since I'm buying my neck prebuilt, this'll be a partial build. The design is an original sketch based off my Mikro's proportions, my Japanese jazz knockoff's offset, and my idea of the horns from a Talman. (edit: I ended up doing some rearranging to set my bridge farther back and did some pretty drastic changes to the original design. It's become a mikro scale riff on a Carl Thompson vibe.)

The stuff:

• Locally sawn curly maple top with mahogany pinstripes
• Locally sawn cherry back
• Import neck, maple/rosewood/block MoP inlay (edit: that was a nice thought but the seller sold me a guitar scale neck. I'm building a scratch neck from local curly maple and local walnut.)
  
• Gotoh GB11W tuners (edit: the baseplate was too big to fit my headstock design. I went with Gotoh GB707s)
  
• Gotoh 201B-4 bridge

• Artec Big Pole single coil pickup
• D'addario XL regular medium roundwounds

I love my Mikro but the extra short scale has my E string floppier than I like. This build will be a 30" scale and I'll be wiring it V/V, skipping the tone knob to wring out all the clanky brightness I can.

I've spent a few mornings in the old man's shop ripping, joining, planing, and gluing the top and back. Today we did a finish test with amber shellac on the top. Then we glued and clamped the top and back together.

 

[Matt Liebenau]

You could always make it the best bass for being a macro micro.

 

[Alex Xander]

Post the secret sentence and call it a partial build. It looks gray so far - join the fun!

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Here's what I have for parts so far. I bought my neck, should be here in the next week or two. For now the body block gets to sit around the old man's shop looking damn pretty.

 

[Bruce Johnson]

View attachment 5301920

Here's what I have for parts so far. I bought my neck, should be here in the next week or two. For now the body block gets to sit around the old man's shop looking damn pretty.

Looking good so far!

General sequence advice: Leave the body as a rectangular blank while you do all the routing of the neck pocket, pickup cavities, control cavity, etc. Do all the precision internal work before you bandsaw out the perimeter shape. It's much easier to lock down routing templates when you have that extra wood around the outside. You can literally screw them down.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Looking good so far!

General sequence advice: Leave the body as a rectangular blank while you do all the routing of the neck pocket, pickup cavities, control cavity, etc. Do all the precision internal work before you bandsaw out the perimeter shape. It's much easier to lock down routing templates when you have that extra wood around the outside. You can literally screw them down.

That was the plan. I'll square it up and get some straight lines drawn for references. My pickup templates aren't big enough to screw down so I'm going to use double sided tape. I'll make my neck pocket and control cavity templates big enough to screw down for sure.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

I just got my neck and it's a standard scale guitar neck with dots instead of a 30in scale neck with blocks. Since it took six weeks to get here and I'm disinclined to wait that long again, it appears I'm making a neck. I'll hopefully head out to my lumber guy on Thursday. It'll be a one piece curly maple neck with roasted walnut fretboard if everything goes to plan.

Does anyone have a recommended page or video on building a scratch neck?

 

[T_Bone_TL]

Well, there's a pretty good thread on here, but it's much more in favor of a 3-piece beam with some rearrangement - cut all 3 pieces from your one board, and a 4th for a fingerboard/fretboard if you mean that much one piece, but stability-wise slicing and restacking the structural part offers benefits...

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/about-that-quartersawn-maple.1265053/

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Well, there's a pretty good thread on here, but it's much more in favor of a 3-piece beam with some rearrangement - cut all 3 pieces from your one board, and a 4th for a fingerboard/fretboard if you mean that much one piece, but stability-wise slicing and restacking the structural part offers benefits...

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/about-that-quartersawn-maple.1265053/

I meant one piece like a Fender neck without a scarf joint. That's great, thanks!

 

[2groggy]

You could use the neck and choose appropropriate string gauges for a 25" scale bass. I've made a couple that way. The string gauges from a BEAD set are the same as EADG at guitar scale. I do suggest that you wind back the outer outer wrap on the thicker two strings to between the nut and tuner.

Here's one example, from the summer build off:

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

We thickness planed a couple walnut fretboard blanks and the neck blank. Then we cut them to finished length then cut and sanded ahead of the nut. The neck is some rift sawn curly maple that pretty closely matches the body. We ripped and planed it last week and let it relax to see if it moved at all. It wasn't a long test but it stayed flat and straight. July will really tell the tale, I imagine.

My truss rod should be here tomorrow so I'll hopefully make some distance on the neck on Thursday.

 

[2groggy]

We thickness planed a couple walnut fretboard blanks and the neck blank. Then we cut them to finished length and cut and sanded ahead of the nut. The neck is some rift sawn curly maple that pretty closely matches the body. We ripped and planed it last week and let it relax to see if it moved at all. It wasn't a long test but it stayed flat and straight. July will really tell the tale, I imagine.

My truss rod should be here tomorrow so I'll hopefully make some distance on the neck on Thursday.

View attachment 5310511
View attachment 5310513View attachment 5310512

How did you machine the radius down to headstock thickness? Mine always look like I use stone tools.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

How did you machine the radius down to headstock thickness? Mine always look like I use stone tools.

We used the spindle end of my dad's oscillating belt sander to rough in the radius, cut back to the sanded radius on the bandsaw, then cleaned it all up with the oscillating belt sander again.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

I had the morning off work so I headed over to get some more work done on the neck. We got the truss rod installed and the fretboard ripped to the heel width. Next week I'll get after cutting fret slots. It feels like we've got the neck on the run now.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Today we built a little fret cutting jig, cut fret slots, cut the fretboard taper, rough shaped the neck, and got it glued up. I found out that the tuners I bought are too big to fit my headstock so I have smaller Gotohs on the way.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Snowy weather made for a dead midday at work so I spent a couple hours in front of the oscillating belt sander and with a sanding block in hand. The neck is about done being shaped.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Today we did some rearranging after realizing that my bridge was going to sit farther forward than I wanted. What was going to be a simple retro shape in the vein of a Talman and a jazz bass took a hard left into Thompson territory. I used Les' "Antimatter" as a rough idea of the top horn shape and got weird with the recurved lower horn.

While we were in creative mode, I sketched out a pattern for the control plate which will be polished aluminum. The stock is what's left of a neighborhood watch sign, dubiously gifted to me by a friend in college.

Once the sketching was done we struck some lines and set up for routing the neck pocket. We taped down guides instead of making a template first and proceeded to route it out. The fit is flawless but I learned my lesson about digging too deep too fast. There's some very light chatter in one side of the pocket. Next time I'll route it in three passes.

Tomorrow we're playing with pickup cavities, installing tuners, and probably cutting out the body.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

Today we did everything I hoped to get done. We routed pickup cavities, installed tuners, and cut out the body. My tuner locations looked fine until I actually installed them. My D string tuner should have been installed about 1/2" closer to the edge. Oh well, live and learn.

We've got it on the run now.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

My D string tuner should have been installed about 1/2" closer to the edge.

...move the edge.

 

[TheBloodyBarber]

...move the edge.

I could but I really like the shape. I just ordered a 5/8" plug cutter. I'll cut some plugs from some curly maple scrap and see how close I can get it.