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Greetings, folks! It's been a while!

I finished my first bass build a few weeks ago, but I didn't update my thread here because I had a snafu with my photobucket account which caused me to lose about 95% of my uploaded images. Anyway, I had to delay finishing it for the summer, because it was simply too hot to work in my non-climate-controlled shop. Here are the results of my first build:






And now I'm starting another bass build.

It's a pointy V bass I've been designing for a long time, a subcontra bass guitar based on the Jackson King V. It's a 36" scale 5-string abomination, to be tuned F#0, B0, E1, A1, D2.

So here's the body design:



Here's the neck design:



And here they are together:



The little stinger looking thing where the bass side of the body meets the neck is there to help counteract the neck dive effect that is present on V shaped guitars. It extends the body (and strap attachment) to about the 14th fret, so that the center of balance of the whole thing is shifted toward the butt end of the guitar. How effective it will be remains to be seen, but I think it will help at least a bit.

The body is going to be Honduran Mahogany, the neck will be Rock Maple, and the fretboard will be Bloodwood.

The mahogany body and maple neck will be painted black with a deep gloss finish. I chose mahogany solely for weight. The body blank I acquired for it is definitely paint-grade, as I requested. The bloodwood fretboard will likely remain unfinished except for a polishing. The edges of the body will be beveled, and I plan to silverleaf the edges.

For pickups, I am using a pair of EMG 40DC active bass humbucker pickups. It'll be wired for 18v operation. Due to the small size of the electronics cavity, it will not have an active onboard EQ. It will have passive volume, active pickup blend (EMG ABC), and an active tone control. I may also install an EMG PA2 boost switch.

The hardware will be hipshot. The bridge will be a black hipshot model A for 5-string basses with 0.750" (19mm) string spacing. The tuners will be black hipshot ultralites, 3 on the bass side, 2 on the treble side.

Frets will be LMI Evo gold FWG74 fretwire.

Wood-wise, I have only the body blank so far. I've had it for about a year. It is planed to thickness and I've transferred the design. It's ready to be worked.



The neck and fingerboard wood should be here this week.

First, I used a Forstner bit to hog out as much wood as possible from the areas to be routed:



Then use the router to clean up the edges and route the entire neck pocket to final depth:



Repeat the same process for pickup cavities:



The pocket corners will be squared with a chisel..later.

The planer skip on the body is annoying, but not a big deal. The pores will be filled, there will be a slathering of sanding sealer, and the body will be smoothed and painted. It shouldn't show.

Went over to a buddy's shop after lunch today and borrowed his bandsaw for a few minutes:



Left some meat around the neck pocket for adjustment when I fit the neck.

I'm hoping the neck materials will be here soon.

That looks awesome! I love the extra support around around the neck pocket. Also the shaping adds some interesting detail that will make it unique. Cool design.

Thanks, BRC!

I got tracking info from LMII, and my neck wood and parts will be here friday.

While waiting on my copy of Battlefield 3 to be delivered today, I routed the output jack recess and the battery box cavity on the back of the body:





In related news: Craftsman router bits suck, and stewmac's pattern bits are awesome.

So the remaining wood showed up.



The rock maple neck blank and bloodwood fingerboard blank are for this project, and the ebony board is pre-slotted with 24 fret slots with a 27.5" scale for a 7-string baritone project. (LMI's guitar boards were too short, so I had to order a bass board for it.)

I also grabbed this awesome curly maple fingerboard blank from Bell Forest Products:



I'm not 100% sure what it's going to be used for yet, but I'll find something.

So I cut the scarf, planed the headstock piece down to 5/8", and glued it up:



Tomorrow I'm going to route the truss rod channel and taper the neck. Then it'll be another delay while I wait on a serviceable fret saw and come up with a fret slot sawing jig.

Well...when the neck is tapered, I can do "final" sizing on the neck pocket and cut the excess around the pocket off.

After the clamps came off, I found the center line and routed the truss rod channel:



I did it in about 4 passes. The truss rod is from Grizzly, and is about 1/4" thick and 3/8" tall. I routed the channel just a touch deep, so that when I wrap the end blocks in masking tape, it'll sit tight and flush.

Then I lined up my paper template:



And drew my taper lines on the back:



Set up the straight edge:



And setup the 1/2x2" pattern cutter bit:



And get to work:



Lots of shavings. I am going to save them and give them to my blacksmith friend for kindling for his forge.

Neck is tapered:



But not without some collateral damage:



The first side I tapered went very smoothly. The second side was problematic. The wood started splitting toward the headstock. I went slowly but it still happened. Two things saved me here:

First, the split areas are all going to be cut off anyway. Second, I drew the line slightly outside of where I wanted the actual edge, anticipating problems. So the uneven parts of the taper will also be removed before the thing is finished.

That said, I wicked some glue into the split and clamped it up. I have some carving to do on the headstock, and I don't want the splits spreading to somewhere more important.

Lesson #1 learned today: Rough cut the taper on a bandsaw.
Lesson #2: Buy a bandsaw.

I did a couple of hours worth of work this weekend.

Fist I rough cut the headstock profile out. I use some cuttings from that process to glue ears onto the wider bits:



The next day, I cut the rest of the headstock out:



There's still a little work left to do on the spindle sander.

Once I got the neck cut to length and shaped to its final taper, I squared the corners of the neck profile and widened it by about 0.05" so that the neck would fit in. I also routed the pocket about 0.4" deeper so that the neck sits about 1/8" proud of the body:



Here it is next to the inspiration to build it:


It's a big boy.

Cell phone pictures suck, and I need to mop.

After lunch today, I removed the excess wood around the neck pocket: