Jabba_the_gut

Really nice and really quickly made!!

Hi Mike. Hope all is good with you and glad you're still enjoying the fretless! Take care and hopefully catch up at the SW Bash next year. Just watch out for @Frank Blank though.... All the best

I might well take you up on that at some point. Cheers

Cheers Ped. I must work out how to record it - I've got the gear but no idea!!!!

I've made a couple of 4 string mini basses which I'm really pleased with so the time has come to make a 5 string version! It is going to have the same body shape as the previous build but just be a little wider to accommodate the extra string. I'm thinking of the 5th string being high rather than low - I've tried a low string on the previous basses just to see what it was like and I don't think it was quite defined enough. I will try a couple of different things before I make the final decision. Going for a more minimal look in terms of wood finish this time. The body will be ash (nearly quarter sawn), plain maple for the neck and padauk for the fretboard. Hardware will be chrome for this one. I've made a start, cut the templates for neck and body and headstock. I've also cut and trimmed the body. I've also got a body left from a previous mini bass that I have veneered the top with maple and cherry layers but haven't decided what it will become yet!! This will be another slow build as I've got loads of jobs to do around the house.......

Finally took this to pieces to finish the last couple of bits off and ow it is complete!! Here's a few pictures of the finished bass:

Just my opinion....... If you buy a pre-slotted fretboard, the board is generally not radiused and the fret slots will be a uniform depth. Many luthiers will use a specialist, thin circular saw to cut the slots and home builders often use the StewMac fret slotting jig, again both of these cut a slot parallel to the bottom of the fretboard and therefore when the frets are fitted, there will be a small gap behind the fret when fitted. You can get a guide that fits to a fretsaw to control the depth of cut. If you were slotting a radiused board then this would give you a slot that follows the radius. Does it make any difference? I have seen a website for a boutique builder (can't remember who) that claims these voids cold be heard but I tend to be a little sceptical and wonder if it did, could the vast majority of us notice and why do we always assume things like this have a negative impact. When a fret is fitted it is the bottom of the fret that is the contact area with the fretboard, the tang with it barbs is there to prevent the fret from coming out. Some folk will glue frets in that might fill this void, some don't. I think getting the slots in the right place as not to affect intonation is probably the most important thing and what we would notice if it wasn't correct. That's where accurate jigs like this come in. As say, just my opinion!!!

I’m guessing there are two strips top and bottom running horizontally that the vertical pieces are glued to and the fretboard sits between these (if that makes sense!!)

I do like their stuff - could spend ages looking though their catalogue!

The Axminster ones are really good: Here's one I found earlier!!😊

You should just be able to replace the EMG passive tone with the BTC unit as far as I am aware. I've used a few of them and swapped out the passive tone pot with a BTC unit or an active tone pot and this has just been plug and play (quite literally). https://www.emgpickups.com/pub/media/Mageants/b/t/btc_control_0230-0206rc.pdf

Fantastic tools and couldn't live without mine. Good quality cutters, decent templates and patience are the key things in my experience.

I’ll be there! Cheers

You might also be surprised as to how little you need to change to make it feel different. I built two basses essentially the same but one felt slightly nicer (to me as this is a personal preference). I measured them with calipers and rechecked the profile. I probably only took a mm off the back of the neck and changed the profile by a similar amount in places and it felt much better to me. He interested to see what you think as you do this. Cheers

That really is lovely. The quality of the routing that really shows the quality of the build. I like to see things being done well even though they will be hidden in the final assembly. The neck pickup route on this is just such an example - many builders will just route a big hole for the pickup to go in, not a nice tidy job like this. Proper craftmanship.

Very nice - I think those pickup covers work better with this design rather than the standard EMG look. Every cloud has a silver lining!!

I like that!

Pm'd

Great idea. Twice as much food....

I reckon I’ll have half a dozen new basses I haven’t taken there before!! Absolutely!!

Yep, the two I built were 23" scale so a little longer. I'm going to make another couple of necks to try; one will be 27" the other 17". You're quite right about headed versions in particular as they require custom strings but headless ones with strings clamps allow a wider choice of strings. As Ped says, these super short scale basses are really great fun but also sound the business. And you don;t have to stretch so far.....

Neil is really helpful and the product is great too

I’ve used Newtone strings for the two 27” scale headed basses I build recently. Really impressed with them. Not sure who else supplies strings to this scale but there are more very short scale basses appearing all the time. The two 23” headless basses use any strings you like as they have string clamps at the head stock. I’m going to make an additional neck for one of them at 27” scale to see how that feels. I built the first of these as a travel bass but since then have found the 27” scale really comfy to play. They’re all tuned at normal pitch and all sound like ‘proper’ basses. Cheers