And so I made the first steps in building a Thunderbird.

[Blazer]

Well all those build reports posted here of people making thunderbirds and Fenderbirds themselves had me inspired and so I set out to go and build one myself.

Problem was that the T-bird is a difficult to find bass and that I needed one to at least trace the body outline so I could make a template. It took me a while but I found a shop that had an Epiphone T-Bird and so I went there armed with a marker and an A2 sized sheet of paper, within two minutes I had what I came for.

After that I bought myself some plywood which will be the base material for the templates of both the body and the neck.

My idea was to make a T-bird from mahogany with a plain maple top finished in two tone sunburst with a single P-bass pickup. And our bassplayer already asked me if I could build him a matte black non reverse with a mirror scratchplate.

Then I had this idea of making "Fenderbird" guitars, to marry the neck and pickups of a Stratocaster to the Firebird body style.

I'll keep you guys imformed.

[drbassman]

Not all Strat pickups will sound good in a bass!

[Blazer]

Not all Strat pickups will sound good in a bass!

Re-read what I said in my post...

[drbassman]

Re-read what I said in my post...

Opps, I had bass on the brain!  Sorry.

[eb2]

I would be curious as to how plywood will work tonally.  Structurally it will hold together fine, as many owners of early 60s Japanese guitars will attest, but most modern plywood is a bit heavy on both glue and resinous softwoods.  Unless you are using a type of laminated scrap hardwood, like butcher block.

[Blazer]

I would be curious as to how plywood will work tonally.  Structurally it will hold together fine, as many owners of early 60s Japanese guitars will attest, but most modern plywood is a bit heavy on both glue and resinous softwoods.  Unless you are using a type of laminated scrap hardwood, like butcher block.

Again re-read my post, I am going to use plywood to make routing templates from, not the bodies themselves.

[Dave W]

Hey, at least I read it right the first time. 

Be sure those templates are finished in thin nitro. 

[Blazer]

Well here's the finished routing template. Now to get some wood to make bodies from.