i need some help gang - Colby Bass

[drbassman]

FINALLY!  I got the neck pocket routed.  The jig is really worth the effort and I've got 5 ideas how to improve it (after this bass is finished!).  The pocket is 5/8" at the deepest point, as per my drawings.  I'll tape the bridge on later and double check it for proper height, angle later in the week. 

[sniper]

WOW the jig did its job for sure. looking fine except i have been blessed with short pudgy little hands and fingers so i would love to see the fret surface of the neck (as it is now without the fretboard) almost meet the face of the body so i can reach around that hog. like this EB:


see where the bottom of the fretboard is almost onto the body at the junction point?

i don't care if the bridge would have to be inset a bit, i have to be able to reach the upper register and a deep set neck (thickness wise) and maybe a sculpted back side around that lower horn bout would sure help.

see what you can figure out when you lay it out later this week would you please? if you can, slam that sucker deep as possible then dowel it when you glue it up.

i know that body is plenty thick and some more glue surface into that hard Ash would be a good thing verses relying on that soft spalted Maple.

i knew i waited two years for the right builder. this online build with all these pictures being posted is showing me things i never thought of.

how does it balance right now?

[drbassman]

Well, you're gonna get your wish!  I set things up with the neck and bridge taped in place and the neck pock needs to be a good 1/4" deeper.  So, we'll meet the bottom of the fret board for sure, maybe even overlap just a mm or 2.  It'll look more like that EB than I had planned.  I think I didn't allow enough for the fret board/fret thickness when I measured but I was pretty sure I did.  If anything,  I might have to put a 1/16 or 1/8" block under the bridge to help things along.  Man, you should have hired a pro!!! 

So, it'll go back into the jig for some more routing as soon as I get more time later this week.  I'm teaching 4 nights this week!  Ugh, work is such an interruption to my real love!!!!

[drbassman]

BTW, the dowels will work just fine when I glue it up and the balance looks good.  I'll check that again after the next routing.

[dadagoboi]

Edit:  here's a slope chart
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/52066983/Slope-Conversion-Tables

[sniper]

i know it is a combination of factors: depth of the pocket, bridge adjustment, type etc and this build might not support a 3 degree neck angle but i am sure Bill will get as much as he can be it 2, 2.5 or 3 degrees. it is simply what it is.

nice new avatar Carlo

[drbassman]

Edit:  here's a slope chart
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/52066983/Slope-Conversion-Tables

Thanks Carlo, that will come in handy.

[drbassman]

i know it is a combination of factors: depth of the pocket, bridge adjustment, type etc and this build might not support a 3 degree neck angle but i am sure Bill will get as much as he can be it 2, 2.5 or 3 degrees. it is simply what it is.

nice new avatar Carlo

We'll be fine.  Before routing, I reduced the angle from 3 degrees to about 2.5.  I just didn't think the bridge could handle and I was correct.  Once I rout deeper, I think it's gonna be a nice fit all the way around.

[sniper]

a lot of that "body meets fretboard look" will disappear when you round the edges of the body

[drbassman]

a lot of that "body meets fretboard look" will disappear when you round the edges of the body

I agree.  And the "look" will be fine as well since you'll get good fret access with the neck deep into the body.  Form follows function, as Bucky used to say!

[dadagoboi]

I love Bucky but IMO he was not a strict adherent to the philosophy.  Dymaxion was probably the worst example. 

Mar 20,2011 from Articleworld:

"Form follows function is one of the long-standing slogans of modern architecture. Its use was pioneered by turn-of-the-century skyscraper architect Louis Sullivan, complemented by Adolf Loos's 1908 assertion that 'Ornament is crime', adapted by Frank Lloyd Wright and adopted by Modernists and Bauhaus desginers such as Mies van der Rohe ('Less is more'), Walter Groupius etc. Originally meant to be defiantly honest – let the form of a building or product result from its function and no more – and anti-style, it eventually evolved into yet another set of un-interrogated conventions, and is now being both challenged and re-worked."

[drbassman]

I love Bucky but IMO he was not a strict adherent to the philosophy.  Dymaxion was probably the worst example. 

Mar 20,2011 from Articleworld:

"Form follows function is one of the long-standing slogans of modern architecture. Its use was pioneered by turn-of-the-century skyscraper architect Louis Sullivan, complemented by Adolf Loos's 1908 assertion that 'Ornament is crime', adapted by Frank Lloyd Wright and adopted by Modernists and Bauhaus desginers such as Mies van der Rohe ('Less is more'), Walter Groupius etc. Originally meant to be defiantly honest – let the form of a building or product result from its function and no more – and anti-style, it eventually evolved into yet another set of un-interrogated conventions, and is now being both challenged and re-worked."

True.  Any axiom or concept can (and sometimes should) be bent.  Then there's the folks who take it to the extreme, e.g. the Bauhaus movement.

[Dave W]

True.  Any axiom or concept can (and sometimes should) be bent.  Then there's the folks who take it to the extreme, e.g. the Bauhaus movement.

Do you think that Gropius was extreme enough to have designed one of those singlecut basses with the big deformed hump? 

[Pilgrim]

Having tried to sit in some of the chairs that Frank Lloyd Wright designed, I would assert that his forms did NOT always follow function.

That said, I find him to be the greatest "eye" of any architect/designer in US history.

[drbassman]

Proof that humans can find beauty in many bizarre designs!!!!!