Last summer I took up an old plan of mine to see if I could build my own bass. I have no experience whatsoever on the craft of lutherie.
So I looked around if there was some sort of course I could join. And there happened to be one only a few miles from where I live.
So I started drawing and sketching the ideas I had.
It is going to based on my favorite bass. But it has to be different, because I don't need another bass that is the same.
So this is what I came up with:
- Shortscale bass shaped like a Les Paul (surprise)
- Mahogany body with a contoured bookmatched flamed maple top.
- To save some weight, the upper bout of the body is chambered and there is a Rickenbacker-ish F-hole.
- Mahogany neck with a volute at the topnut.
- The truss rod will be accesible by unscrewing the two 24th fretmarkers and lifting the last two positions of the fretboard.
- At the neck there will be two G3 single coils.
- At the bridge there is going to be an Artec AlNiCO mudbucker.
- At the upper horn I've planned a 6 way rotary switch that allows me to choose:
• neck G3 pickup,
• middle G3 pickup,
• both G3's as humbucker,
• bridge Artec pickup,
• neck G3 pickup plus bridge Artec pickup,
• all 3 pickups.
- On the top side I will have one volume potmeter.
- On the back side I'm going to make a small hole in the control cavity plate that allows me to dial a hidden tone potmeter with a small screwdriver if desired. I will probably not use it very often. And I'd like to keep the top side clean.
- The bridge is a BaCHbird bridge with saddles notched at 17,5 mm stringspacing
I bought a tune-o-matic for bass first, but that one had the saddles spaced at 19mm (which I think is too wide for shortscale)
- And behind the bridge the stings are going to be anchored string through body. Because I always use heavy gauge strings on short scale basses, I made the distance on the E and A string ferrules a bit longer. This way I don't have any trouble with too thick string at the stringposts.
- The tuners are light weight Gotoh Res-O-Lites, with wide string posts.
It is going to be a very educational journey for me. And a few good lessons in patience (which is not my strongest point)
The course is only once in every two weeks. And most of the time I have to wait because the tutor is helping some other guy.
Here's the thick log of mahogany that I cut out with the router using an MDF template that I made.
Plus a small beam of mahogany for the neck. I cut it with a sawbench from a big 30 year old log. You can see the blade ran hot...
Here's the body with the chamber in the upper bout where the F-hole will be.
Plus the rosewood fretboard. You can see I have yet to cut the last two fret slots.
Here's the bookmatched maple glued together and roughly cut, ready to glue upon the mahogany.
I found the beautiful bookmatched pair at
www.northridgehardwoods.comPlus the fretboard cut to short scale (by cutting it off at the second fret)
The pickups. The G3 pickups were bought from Greatdealz at Ebay. Originally I had in mind to turn them into a Thunderbird humbucker for the BaCHbird. But I never could bring myself to destroy these perfect NOS pickups.
The AlNiCo mudbucker is an Artec. About a year ago a few guys on a Dutch forum got together and ordered a whole bunch of pickups straight from mr Sy Suk of the Artec Company. So I joined in, not knowing where to put it. But now I have a destination for this thing. I got the idea from that cheap-ass Stagg EB0 copy we discussed a while ago. They had the mudbucker straight at the bridge. Which is a bit too much. You only get "ploppy" sounds there. But I'm guessing a centimeter or two from the bridge should work just fine.
The tuners. Gotoh Res-O-Lites. Kinda hard to find for a non-retailer like me. I eventually found them at a luthier from Slovakia
www.sollerguitars.comThey are extremely light weight. I really prefer those over the small post Schaller tuners that Les Paul have usually have. Stringing extra heavy gauge long scale
strings on a shortscale bass can be a pita. Hence the wide stringpost tuners.
The wrong bridge. A tune-o-matic style bridge for bass. Sold on Ebay as Les Paul bridge. A fine bridge really, but no use for this project because the string spacing is too wide.
The body and top glued together and routed flush.
In the back the scarfed beam that will become the neck
This project is going very s-l-o-w-l-y. And I have a
long way to go.
But I will try to keep y'all updated if I make any progress.
For me this certainly is a great new hobby I found. I really like to spend hours and hours figuring out how to get it right. And to find the right components from all over the world.
