Starting A Neckthrough 5 String Bass (pics!)

[Narcissism]

Hi!

I've been working on this for quite some time now. The end result should be a 5 string fretless bass with a body based off of the Sonic Feather by Sonic Designs, and a headstock that resembles a Ken Lawrence style guitar. The original idea was to make the body out of Bubinga; however, bubinga is very hard to come by. I spent literally months looking for it on Ebay, Lumber Yards all around New England, etc. I found a supplier in Epsom, New Hampshire, but they were fresh out. What i did come across was a very nicely wave figured piece of South American Mahogany. I jumped on that because i didn't think i'd ever come across that again.

So here we go:

I ordered my neck from Carvin. I don't have the patients or tools to build my own neck, and i really liked the feel of the one that Ken Francis sold me a while back. Its a 5 string, fretless, oversized headstock, unlined, dotted, 24 fret, 34" scale length. You can see that, here:

Here's the headstock design with rough tuner hole placements. I won't make the placements for those until i have a bridge so i can line up strings for a straight shot to the tuning peg.

I spent a few days drawing, and i decided that a rhomboid would be a pretty good mathematical shape to work off of to modify the Feather design. In this next picture, i have the neck between my already cut mahogany with the rough design drawn out on it. I used a cardboard blueprint to trace my stencle onto the planks.

I then cut out the bottom wing using a hand jigsaw that i bought from Lowe's.

Then i cut out the top wing. This picture showes the top wing all cut out, and my sanding process. I used little folded up pieces of sand paper that go from 60 grit, all the way up to 600 grit. you can't tell from the picture, but its smooth enough to see yourself in!

Here's the two wings. Its kind of a before and after shot as far as the sanding process goes.

I haven't cut any of the neck yet, because i was waiting for a bridge to come in. That way, i could figure out where the 34" scale ends and where i could place the bridge, so that if i cut it, part of the bridge won't be hanging off of the end of the body. But here's a picture of what the roughly put together unglued not completed body without any hardware should look like.

I just got a bridge in the mail the other day, and right now i'm working on leveling the wings so i can route out a passage for the wiring on the side of the neck and glue the wings to the body nice and flush. I'll update as I go!

Edited December 9, 2008 by Narcissism

[Bryan316]

Here's my suggestion, and YES, I have a reason for it!

You're gonna bash your knee on it. Over and over and over. Trust me on this one, you've got the bottom of your bass waaaay low in a similar way as the BC Rich Ignitor:

I know, I know... you wanna keep that rhomboid outline. But having the bottom of that bass THAT low down there is just gonna beat your knee up. And if you take a large step, it'll knock your bass crooked and you'll miss a few notes. Yes, a wicked-awesome shape with originality is a great achievement. No, a good looking bass that is uncomfortable to play ain't gonna justify the shape and design.

I'm not suggesting to chop away too much, just enough that it won't make it uncomfortable to play, and (by the way) will fit inside a regularly available guitar case like a Jackon King V case with its foam reshaped for your body style. Cuz trust me, that design ain't going in no gig bag! Remember to make sure you'll be able to find a case to fit it. Making guitar cases SUCKS compared to making guitars!

[WAK Guitars]

I gotta say that I agree with that, also you dont want something that makes it hard to sit down and play.

Apart from that though, the shape is good. Keep it up!

Edited June 23, 2008 by WAK Guitars

[Narcissism]

wow, i never thought of the knee thing. Sitting down and playing isn't going to be an issue for me though, because i hang my bass off the side of my body when i sit. It hurts my shoulders and wrists to play with a guitar or bass resting on my thigh.

Tell ya what: I'll finish gluing the body together just so i can see if it'll bug me. I didn't notice any bumpage when i put the design tamplate over one of my other basses and played around for a while, but seeing as i was wearing pants cuz it was winter, and the tamplate was made of cardboard instead of heavy mahogany, you are probably right. Its gonna be hard to cut that corner though lol

Just for shits and giggles, here's the bass i'm "bass"ing this off of:

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/dar...eatherFlame.jpg

[Bryan316]

I really like your front horns better than that photo you just posted. That bass is ugly, yours is definitely more refined and flows more naturally. That golden one seems forced, stiff, and angular.

Now... I'm not here to rain on your parade or criticize you for this, but my brother noticed a distinct similarity. I'm pointing this out, because I don't wanna see you get into too much trouble over this, nor start any unwarranted arguments:

This is an 8-string axe by Ran Guitars. Notice the headstock.

Now... I personally don't care! And dead-honest truth, the headstock I have planned looks enough like this one to make me want to adjust a few things on my design. But the similarity between yours and this Ran axe, is going to draw attention.

Please understand, I don't give a damn, here! I'm just serving as a warning, here. I see plenty of people on here that make replicas of plenty of big-name corporate guitars. There's plenty of people here building their own version of a P-bass, a flying V, a Les Paul, a Strat, all the classics. And I'm fine with that! Cuz to be dead honest, I'll never touch a Fender or a Gibson or a Rick, because there are better builders out there, making finer guitars with less problems and better cosmetic excellence than the Big Names could ever produce these days. I don't care if you rip off an old classic. Doesn't matter these days.

But... as my discussion went, I don't wanna see a small shop with a single guy working his ass off, get into issues with other builders. And I try to make conscious efforts to help the little guys, cuz they're the ones who deserve the help.

So, in closing of my gigantic speech here, heh heh, I'm just bringing this issue up so that you don't get into hot water over something as trivial as another guy's headstock shape. It's cool you're giving a nod to another guy's design! It shows respect and as they say, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, right? That's cool as hell by me.

Enough of my rambling now. Your design is damn cool, and with some tweaks, you'll refine it and make it an excellent product.

Oh, and don't forget to use some REALLY long strap button screws. Please, from experience with very sharp horns and how screws behave with them, go get some really long screws that fit snugly into your strap buttons, and pilot-hole deep into that upper horn to assure the end doesn't fracture away and ruin everything for you. I'm talking 2" long screws or longer if you can manage it. Make sure that anchor goes in as deep as you can get it. Sometimes, depending on the style, you can drill out your strap button to allow a fatter, stronger screw through it. I'd also recommend that. Make that front button as strong and reliable as you can. Right now, I can't stand how my upper horn is slowly chipping away as the screw puts a side load against the wood. It looks horrible, and proves why this body was a 2nd prototype, and NOT a finished design. Learn a little from mistakes, and learn a lot from others' mistakes!!!

[WezV]

bryan, have a look at ken lawrence guitars or any of the KL imitations on this board (Ken is mentioned in the first post)

this isnt a headstock shape designed by RAN as far as i aware... anyway, generally if its for his own use he wont get in trouble... if its for sale he might.

[Prostheta]

Ran sell those instruments to spec, although I doubt Ken would try any legal issues since they build in Poland :-D

The instrument looks like it would work to me, although perhaps the thigh position for playing sat down may be a little too far to the left. Keep it up - looks like a good project.

(Bryan....that's a seven....my eights look better than that anyway!)

[Bryan316]

Cool. Just wanna make sure he's good to go, and doesn't have someone arguing with him in the future.

[Narcissism]

Thank you very much for the compliments on the flow! I sat there for hours with a pencle and eraser moving lines mm by mm for the template, and the compliment helps a lot!

As far as that headstock design goes, I actually pulled the blueprints from this very forum. I suppose i should give credit to them... i can't find the thread that had this CadKey blueprint in it. Someone should recognize it:

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/dar...s/194325541.jpg

Whoever drew that gets credit for my headstock's shape i guess, lol. Its the guy who made a set of twin KL style explorers.

Anywho, yesterday i got myself a hand planer, tuned it up so its completely flat according to the CNC Milling Machine's calibrater, and made me a little shooting board out of a glass cutting board. So now my contact points are all nice and square and they're almost ready to be glued. I just gotta get some pickup measurements, and figure out what configuration i want, and then i'll mark off my routing points and use a dremel to make a small channel through the lower side of the neck for the wiring to pass through.

I've also measured out where the bridge should be placed, and i drilled some pilot holes for the mounting screws.

That's definately a good idea as far as the screws for the strap pins go. I've had multiple guitars and basses that have had to have those screws replaced because the pin just plain fell out, sending a few guitars crashing to the ground

Deep Screws = Stable Strap Pins.

[Bryan316]

I've actually quit using strap buttons. Eye bolts for me now, baby! more METAL!

Zakk Wylde has his axes hung with eye bolts and small carabiner clips. Tell ya what... VERY sturdy. And it's easy to take your strap off completely when packing things away. But the eyebolts I used had really heavy screw threads, almost look like lag screws for deck work! Got 2" long screws, and buried them into the body. If they ever fail me, it's cuz a whole chunk of the body fractures off! HAHA!!!

As for your headstock design, mine is kindasorta similar, except I was doing it to reflect the shapes of the horns on my body, and I'm making the tuners blend into the flow of the lines. It's funny how very similar the two designs are, when I just did mine blindly as I copied my horns' shape and then made it fit as a headstock. Metal minds think alike!! \m/ \m/

I just found the small schematics of the Gotoh sealed tuners, so I drew them up into my CAD layout. Turns out, to keep the lines I intended, gotta make my headstock larger. Not so sure if I wanna do that... already had many reasons to hate basses with terrible neck dive, like Spectors and Thunderbirds.

[ElysianGuitars]

I really like your front horns better than that photo you just posted. That bass is ugly, yours is definitely more refined and flows more naturally. That golden one seems forced, stiff, and angular.

Now... I'm not here to rain on your parade or criticize you for this, but my brother noticed a distinct similarity. I'm pointing this out, because I don't wanna see you get into too much trouble over this, nor start any unwarranted arguments:

This is an 8-string axe by Ran Guitars. Notice the headstock.

thats a 7

[Bryan316]

Shu'up. Beer was involved.

The more I drink, the more strings it appears to have.

"HEY Yoush guysh, thek out thish 14 tring mudda mudda! YEAAAASH!!!!" *burp*

[Bryan316]

Any updates on this build? Did you try a "test fit" to see if it'll be comfy enough for you?

[Narcissism]

Horay, an update!

It took me a while, because i wanted to research and test out different planing techniques. I tried out the hand planer... i failed at that. I tuned the planer perfect and everything. *shrugs* So then i tried the shooting board. That worked out pretty well, but unfortunately, i don't have a true flat surface available to me. So i discussed this with some coworkers, (I work at Lowe's) and my buddy, Ray in Hardware brought in his electric hand planer for me to use. It was basically a jointer that was hand held, which i couldn't have asked more of Well, a jointer would have been nice, but i have no room/money for one of those, seeing as this is the only time i'm going to use one. So i planed it, and it came out perfect.

I glued the upper wing onto the neck first, because i couldn't find a method or pattern to do both wings at the same time accurately. I'm also waiting for my pickups to come in so i can use them as a tamplate for the routed cavities, as well as a reference for how far away i can put my controls. I'll also use that to determine where to put the channel that the wiring will fit in when i glue it together. Here's the top half clamped to the neck.

I used Titebond II to hold the two together as that's what was used on one of the tutorials on this site. I later read that Titebond original is the trusted glue here, but whatcha gonna do? This stuff worked perfectly well. I did a test piece first using a piece of scrap mahogany from the original cut. I basically cut it in half with the jig saw as flat as i could (didn't bother to plane it) and then i glued and clamped them together. The next day, they were officially stuck. I gave it a good hard pull and wrenched with a screwdriver to see if i could pull it apart, but all i did was chip the wood. So i trusted it, used it on the upper wing, and now i have this:

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/dar...ss/IMG_0880.jpg

Here's the joint for anyone who's interested:

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/dar...ss/IMG_0875.jpg

More to come as soon as the pickups come in!

Edited December 9, 2008 by Narcissism

[Narcissism]

Did you try a "test fit" to see if it'll be comfy enough for you?

As far as a test fit goes, when i originally redesigned and drew out the bass, i had a cardboard cutout of what the end result would have been. I put that over my old 5 string (which i've sold and unfortunately don't have a picture of) and i basically just cut it out little by little until it was comfortable.

When i hold this bass, my palm goes along one of the top edges so that the edge lines up right with the heart line in my hand. It feels perfect

[Bryan316]

Looking good. Damn good.

Now, any progress on how you want to sculpt the bottom corner? Gonna leave it, or still considering testing ideas?

Since you've got the top board in place, are you brave enough to drill in a strap button screw right now? Then you could go cut the bottom wing from a plain ol' pine 2x4 or 2x6 to make changes and cut off wood. Just use some masking tape on the front and back to stick the bottom wing to the neck, and see how everything feels. Once you come up with a bottom wing you like, trace it to the good wood.

[Narcissism]

Yeah, i think i'm going to keep the bottom wing the way it is. I may hit my knee on it, or I may just adapt to playing with it and hold it to the side when walking with it. Either way's doable. Today i received my pickup in the mail, so i spent most of the day measuring and drilling control holes. I used pennies as markers for where the knobs will be, as i don't have 3 gold knobs. I only have 2 silver ones, and one gold one so i don't get quite the effect of gold hardware from the 3. The pickup(s) will be offset diagionally / so as to go along with the body shape.

I also drilled some pilot holes and attached the bridge. A while ago, i measured out the placement of the bridge by using the spot on the saddles where the strings sit as my point. The scale length of the neck is a standard carvin 34" 24 fret fretless. So all i had to do is measure 34" from the nut down to the middle part of where all the saddles sit, make it even, slap an old tuner knob in there, and make sure it was intonated correctly. I used Stu-Mac's fret calcuator to do that. Its kind of hard with a fretless, but i managed with some masking tape as fretlines.

(edit)

Here's a picture with the bridge attached, the pickup location drawn out, and the wiring channel. I grinded out the channel with a dremel that my friend let me borrow.

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w13/dar...ss/IMG_0882.jpg

The Channel leads to a diagional hole in the bottom wing which leads to the first drilled pilot hole for the first knob.

And here's a pic of the other half of the body being glued on:

Edited December 9, 2008 by Narcissism

[Narcissism]

Just a quick update as to what i'm doing,

Over the past week, i've glued both wings to the neck. Right now what i'm working on is profiling the body to the heel of the neck. After that, i'm going to sand down the side profile of the part of the neck that goes through the body. As of right now, the neck itself is thicker than my body wings. For the profiling of the body to the heel of the neck, i'm using a big ugly file that's just made for ripping wood off. Should be good!

[Prostheta]

That's a nice industrious looking bridge. Who makes that?

[Narcissism]

I'm going to assume that there's a company out there called "TK" because this is where i got the bridge:

http://www.warmoth.com/hardware/bridges/br...fuseaction=tk_5

The chrome one is the one shown, but on backorder, they have gold and black.

[Narcissism]

The past two weeks i've been working on my bass, all i've done is sand sand sand. The end result is pretty nice though! I spent about 3.5 hours sanding the back part of the neck that sticks out of the body. What ended up happening was pretty much a whole lotta nothing. So what i did was i got out the dremel, rounded off the edges of it and just contured it to the rest of the body. Its a good temporary solution until i get the patients to grind the entire thing down level. I also used a file and a palm sander to contour the horns a little bit too. Here's how that turned out:

Then i got ambitious and started playing with my router. I used some of the scrap wood and carved a few L's into it using a square and a few clamps. It worked out pretty well, and seemed easy enough. So little by little, i carved out my first pickup cavity! Its not done yet. I still have some fine routing to do, but this is a rough cut:

After i'm all done routing, i'm gonna go over the entire body one more time with 600 grit sandpaper. then i'll work on the headstock once the tuning machines i ordered come in!

Edited December 9, 2008 by Narcissism

[Bryan316]

Suggestions - Make clamped-on rails so your router can't go past them.

Use some straight scraps of wood or go buy fresh clean straight boards. Build a box around your router's base, to assure that you don't move it further than you want it to go. That will guarantee the right size pickup cavity and straight clean edges.

Good work so far. You should look into buying a Microplane to do your neck heel cleanup. They're my favorite new woodworking tool.

[Narcissism]

Well, i've been working quite a bit this weekend. I managed to get both pickup holes completely routed and zipped in there perfect. there's a mistake in the bridge position one, because the router hit the clamp that was holding my template and it came lose. Its not too bad, but its definately a little ugly. Whatever, i'll call it character. Its my first bass *shrugs*

I also dug out that screw i broke off using a drill. I drilled two holes next to each other right up against the broken screw that was lost in the body. Then i pulled/dug the broken screw out with a pair of needle nose pliars. Then i cleaned up the hole with a 1/2" bit using the drill. Then to clean that up and make it straight and even, i used the plunge router. That thing's become my friend!

Anyway, i filled the 1/2" hole with a hardwood dowil that my local hardware store happened to carry. I also bought some nice stainless screws so this wouldn't happen again.

So here's the progress so far!

[edit]

Brian

in the picture on top of the magazine is my hand plane. I used it to level off the dowil to the body. Its pretty handy for everything except making good joints so far. I'll try it out on the heal though!

Edited July 26, 2008 by Narcissism

[Narcissism]

Well, i haven't worked on this in a while due to a move and other expenses. So i've just been kinda doodling on it and pencling in contour marks and input jack locations, and neck contour lines.

So, i have money and a question for suggestions. Where should i put the input jack? I definately want to put it on the side on the bottom wing. I'm not sure if i should put it somewhere inside the circle, or on the far left flat part in the pic in the post above. What do you guys (and occasional gals) think?

[black_labb]

have you thought of a strat style jack (the boat shaped ones) but mounted on the side of the guitar, so the lead comes out at an angle? could work well on the flat bottom piece. where are your knobs and the rest of the control cavity going to be? i've made a jack that was in the control cavity, and a hole in the body where the plug was pushed in. if your cavity will be close to the edge, that could be a consideration. keep in mind that it will limit you to leads that fit into the hole (angled leads ususally wont, and some have larger than usual heads)