Andyjr1515

Yes - it's an option, but it means a control chamber cover that I'm trying to avoid. While I don't think that there is much chance of splitting the body - trust me, the jack would bend before this wood split! - I understand where you are coming from and, normally would probably opt to do it like that. However, this present option is a concept that Tom and I talked about quite a lot and think maybe it could work. I have the prototype done. I'll post it shortly.

And today's challenge. Can I make something like that on the left with something like this on the right?

Beautiful job. Top drawer!

And for a mere king's ransom....

So - the jack. This is one of those areas where Tom and I will be PMing in the background to bounce off the ideas. But the concept is something along these lines: ie, cable round the strap and then in at the back, from the top and at an angle. Could be an actual upside down strat jackplate like above, or it could be a carved piece of timber with that kind of shape - not sure yet. Why not use a strat plate in the normal position? Because the body is so slim, the jack would poke through at the front! Using an actual reversed strat plate, then I would use a conventional jack. If I did a carved solution, then I would probably use a cylinder jack: Anyway - that's the concept. The actual solution will develop anon

And when I say I have a long drill bit for the cable runs, I mean a LONG drill bit! It performed better than I had expected. The second run - from the jack connection point to the rear chamber - will have to wait until I've done my experimenting...

Although this is going to have the wenge pickup rings and so a close fit of the chambers isn't critical, it's nevertheless decent practice to pretend that they are needing to be close fitted. Each to their own, but regular viewers of my builds know that I don't generally use templates. As always, this is just the way I do it - not that this is the way it should be done. I draw round the pickup directly onto the top, then get a drill of the right radius to get the four corners, and an appropriate drill size if there are lugs like these humbuckers have to do the same to mark the lug positions: Then I use a Forstner to hog out to the edge of the line, around 3mm shallower than the final depth: I then chisel away the wave peaks up to the line and to at least the depth of my router bit bearing: Then my most-used router bit - this diddy bearing-guided one to firstly clean up the sides, and then to reach the final chamber depth: And I then have the two chambers: Into which, happily, two humbuckers fit nicely into :

It's a very reasonable question, Si. For many years I was, too, a bit mystified - and put it down to eye-catching claptrap to be honest - until I had the task of building Pete's Piccolo bass: Because that was going to be guitar scale and guitar pitch, how was I going to make it NOT sound like the bottom 4 strings of a guitar. And the problem is usually the G - on a guitar it is often the string where 'smooth bassy' suddenly becomes 'jarry tinny'. And - and yes, I know you can dial a lot of it out at the amp - but I have always thought the same about basses. Might be just me, but through a completely clean and neutral EQ amp, I find that very often the G sounds 'different' to the other three strings. To my ears, it often doesn't have the tone by brain is expecting from a bass. So the simple theory of multiscale - and you have to always remember that the pitch you tune to is unchanged to standard - is as follows: Let's assume that it is like Tom's - 33" for the bottom E and 31" for the G and therefore to compare it with a fixed scale length bass of 32" : - The longer scale length of 33" of the bottom E string means that, to reach standard pitch, you have to tighten the string more than the 32" fixed scale bass. It's the same pitch, but the note will be a little more 'strident' than on the 32" bass, because the string is tighter. - The shorter scale of 31" on the G means that, to reach standard pitch, the string will need to be loosened more than the 32" fixed scale bass. Again, it's the same pitch, but that lower tension will give a warmer sound than the 32" bass next to it. So instead of having a slightly boomy E and slightly jangly G, you have a touch more clarity on the E and a slightly softer G. You can, of course, achieve similar effects by changing string gauges across the range, but that brings its own challenges. And you lose out on the eye-catching claptrap too It worked a treat on Pete's Piccolo - which sounds NOTHING like a guitar and where the G is very much in the same tonal character as the E. And I could do a direct comparison because I had an electric guitar with the same rails pickup at the same average scale length. But it could have been better. The bit I never thought through at the time was the need to also angle the pickup. But I'm not telling Pete, that

Next couple of challenges - pickups. And more importantly, cable access for the pickups. We're going for an Artec Ric-ish set of Humbucker and mini humbucker that I bought for another project and never got round to using, so I can gift these to Tom's project. I also rate Artec products. And for anyone fitting an acoustic under-saddle piezo, particularly their piezos. Fraction of the cost of many other piezos and, in my view, just as good. Tom prefers the 'full fat' sound of series humbuckers, and also pickups wired in series (I've fitted series/parallel switching in the past for him, but he generally sticks with the series setting). So these two will be hardwired in series, straight to the jack. And positioning. The whole point of multi-scale is to balance the tone of each string. Putting in pickups at right angles to the strings would completely negate that, by effectively putting the treble strings much closer to the bridge saddles. So the pickups need to be also angled. You can see I've tried a few options, but I reckon this is a pretty good final configuration: I will be making some wenge pickup rings from some last bits of constructional wenge veneer (2mm) that will also be used for the headstock plate. This will mean that adjustment of the pickup heights to get the balance just-so should be straightforward. Now - the big challenge. getting control wire passages in without having to resort to covered channels at the back. I have some super-long bradpoint drills that would actually be long enough to drill through the back of the neck pocket to both chambers, and also from the back to the rear chamber: - but, this is exceptionally hard wood and the drills are not the best quality. I will cut the chambers first and then experiment. It is also not certain yet actually where the rear one would be drilled, as it isn't fixed yet how the jack will be secured and accessed. Tom and I are thinking rear-edge access and angled - a bit Stratocaster/Ibanez style. I need to do some careful thinking where the jack needs to be, where the access and fixing needs to be and where the bridge element fixings are going to be - trying to screw a bridge through a wire-filled passage wouldn't be a great idea Anyway - a bit more measuring, pondering and experimenting before the first step of cutting the chambers

That is superb @Rexel Matador. So ridiculously stylish. Off the scale - really.

Ah - sorry, misunderstood. No - I'll do that with a wood plane. I'll take the inserts out so I don't knacker the blade and just pop a teeny angle on the heel of the neck. Don't have a photo of it, but it's the other side of this:

To be honest, just taking the highspots off with a cabinet scraper or the lightest skim with my trusty block plane. It's just to make sure that the plate is sitting on a flat piece of wood in that area to maximise the compression from the machine screws without overstressing small areas because of any unevenness.

Square would have fit fine - and I'm sure would have been structurally fine too - but once I have reshaped the curve of the pocket, I'm hoping this will add just a soupcon of je ne sais quoi.

Following morning and it's starting to look more like a bass: The carve of the body - almost certainly hand carved from a solid block of wood - is thinner at the top horn than the main body. As such, this looks skewwhiff, but is actually in line with the bridge plane: What I might do is split the difference - angle the neck heel a touch to maybe halve this effect and sink in the bridge elements on the same side to keep the geometry right. The body carve is also slightly wavy - which I want to retain - but at the plate here, it will need to be flattened so I don't have any crack-inducing high spots: Nowadays, I would normally chisel round and underneath something like this to inset the plate flush with the top - it is a small job but makes it look super classy - but in this case I daren't. That pocket base is simply too thin and too unknown strengthwise to risk it. I think next job is probably back to the body and starting to sort the pickup chambers. Got a busy day or two coming up but I'll let you all know how I get on when I get back to it

OK...this has gone a bit weird

But yes, @SpondonBassed - you can certainly never have too many clamps when it comes to fixing the fretboard My normal method - I use a series of radius blocks as clamping cauls and a hardwood caul at the back to be able to apply significant pressure

OK - I'll admit that this is a generous number of clamps just for the truss rod capping strip : They're only lightly tightened while the glue sets. I was going to use a wooden beam and a single clamp but then I thought about it properly

My wife always has to repeat what she says to me too

Ref @SpondonBassed 's query, the fret tang nibbler/nipper is like a mini punch tool. The fretwire slots into the shaped die: Firm squeeze and your tang is well and truly nibbled (now then, John! Keep it clean! ) Cut in the middle and you have a fret where the tang won't end up as the irritating sharp bit as the neck and fretboard progressively settle down after assembly and finishing: And that gives a sneak preview of the inserts I've just fitted to the neck: I normally use M4 (4mm) machine screws but for this one, because I want maximum clamping on the unknown timber neck pocket floor, I'm using M5 screws: When I tidy up the body carve, I will make the pocket run parallel with the curve of the plate - it will take very little off the area of the pocket but will make it look like it was always meant to be attached like that So I'm pretty sure I can fit the trussrod and glue the fretboard... ...and it's tipping it down so no chance of any useful outdoor domestic stuff just at the moment

Tang nipper, tang nibbler. I'm going to call mine Bert. Easier to remember.

I sometimes get my nibs mixed up with my tangs. But I'll take a photo tomorrow to show what it does, whatever it's called!

Excepting a small triangular needle file that I draw along the slots to relieve the sharp edges, this is pretty much my whole fretting equipment: The de-nibber is one of those tools that, once I got one, I couldn't imagine how I could do it without! Worth every penny. In terms of method, I : - de-tang one end of the wire - measure from where that end will position in the slot to the edge of other end of the fretboard - detang there - cut the de-tanged notch at the middle and I have my fret, de-tanged at both ends - run a teeny bead of Titebond along the tangs - place it in the slot, hammer one end, hammer the other end, hammer the middle to spread the tang barbs under the wood - wipe the glue squeeze-out with a dampened cloth - clamp a radius block over it - move to the next slot and repeat. Once dry, I trim the overhanging ends, then sand the remaining overhang by drawing each side along my emery-papered levelling beam. Then I tilt the board 45 degrees on the beam to create the bevel. And here we have a fretted board ready for fitting at the appropriate time

Stunning!

For the same reason, I am actually contemplating a variation on that theme

After the quadruple checking, I marked up the neck pocket to start the initial hog-out and rout. The first step serves a second purpose - what are the properties of this unknown wood species? The last African Bass gave some challenges - and this is the same species, albeit a different cut. I hogged out with one of my best Forstner bits - a Fisch Wave Cutter. Quite expensive but stupendous bits if you want to minimise cutting issues. The wood was, as I expected, very hard - the hardest wood I think I have dealt with (yes - harder than ebony in my experience) and quite brittle. It doesn't matter because in both cases these are going to be cut away, but pinged some bits despite some very careful and steady cutting: But that answered me a question. Based on the grain pattern in this area, as you see below radiating from the centre of a knot, I might have to rethink the best way to attach the neck: I used a chisel to straighten the sides and then a teeny bearing flush bit to rout down to the planned depth: And then had a look and a think. My concern is that, to do the original plan means I need to cut the pocket even shorter to square it up for the neck heel to butt up against: That's a lot of useful length to lose when the pocket base is quite thin and potentially very brittle - especially if I'm going to cut a biscuit slot in it as well! So I've decided to leave the body heel where it is and use a cut-away neck plate (like this one I did recently on @scrumpymike 's Rascal): With that decided, I could cut the neck blank. There is no heel as such, the whole blank up to the volute is cut at 15mm which will give me a maximum neck thickness of around 22mm. And it will look something like this: