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I realized my PH bass is gonna be heavy heavy heavy. To fix this I'm considering routing out extra cavities in the body to cut down the weight. Is this a good idea? Are there problems associated with this such as structural integrity or undesirable sound altering? Are there better ways to cut down weight that I may not know/have thought of?

bump

Christian buddy I am happy to bump this too for ya....

You have a few choices to cut weight. You can do a sandwich construction with a lighter wood in the middle, you can make cavities, or you can make cavities and fill them with a lighter wood (so the outside appearance is unaltered but there is no resonating airspace inside). Structurally you should be fine unless you completely gut it 'til there's no wood left to take, sound-wise I'll just say IMO you'll be OK.

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Lightening the body with cavities is a good idea, but just be sure that your neck is also light or you will end up with an unbalanced neck-heavy instrument.

Well I guess you need to define heavy (I dont know what PH stands for ??) .... in a bass, sometimes thats not all bad.

here is a bass that a good friend of mine Steve and I made about 15 years ago ... we patterned it off an Anthony Jackson Fodera model. The centre log is rock maple with bubinga accents, the wings are bigleaf curly split, and then glued back up with bubinga centre lams. FB is ebony, and there are CF bars in the neck as well. The neck is HUGE ... about .900 at the nut to well over an inch at the body joint - the fact the upper half of the body supports the neck makes a huge difference in tone and sustain.

Steve was a semi pro bassist since the late 60s as a young teen (he laid down bass tracks for the Montreal 67 expo) .. his father was a pro teacher, who sold guitar strings to everyone in Birmingham England in the late 50s/early 60s ( like the beatles, stevie winwood, sabbath ....) before moving to Canada and working out of a local guitar shop .... they owned almost every guitar/bass and amp made thru the 60s and early 70s at one time or another (oh to have them all now !!!) and Steve has yet to find a bass that compares to the tone and sustain of this one IHO (plugged thru a 200w swr head and small carbon fibre cab 3 way extended range bass enclosure thats about the size of an average stereo speaker). Many a sound man has chuckled when he walks in with his little setup - then he plugs in and their jaws hit the floor. But, this guit aint for standing up with for any period of time. It will kill your shoulders in minutes. Good thing he plays sitting down. he has since added a second PU in the bridge as well for more growling tones.

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

PH= purpleheart and it weighs 55lbs/ft^3. I know I won't be using that much, but even a couple board feet of it will kill the shoulders after a while.

ah .. Purple heart .. so is the whole guitar made out of it ?? body and neck ???? If you want to lighten it up some, consider adding ash or soft maple in a sandwich, with whatever you want to see as the top layer.

I helped another friend years back with something similar, a P bass .. I think we only did the neck thru part as PH though, cant remember what the body wings were. But it was still pretty heavy.

a couple pix might help if you have....

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

Actually the neck is gonna be a thru neck of a wood I have yet to decide on(I'm looking for something that would create an eye pleasing color scheme with the PH body and whatever fretboard I decide on