Andyjr1515

No physical cutting yet, but there has been a gathering of materials and a number of question/answers with @Matt P to pin down the remaining questions on the spec. And I think we are pretty much there - at least enough to start ordering stuff and cutting and joining some of the pieces One of the first things I do in my slightly unconventional way of building neck throughs is join and cut the top - I actually use the top as my template...and no, you won't see that in the text books and so it probably sits in the don't do this at home territory And to do this, I needed to know which orientation of the four available @Matt P preferred. And we're going for this one: The light line in the middle is just an edge and won't appear once I've jointed it properly. This is dampened to show the depth and tone of colour but the finish will make the figuring pop out beautifully! Clearly the 5-string fretboard will be wider than @Fishman 's borrowed Wal one here, but this is broadly where the book-matching will be hidden by board, bridge and pickup. And that's going to be a SimS 5-er Super-Quad It's going to have an oak back...and don't panic!! I know oak is heavy but it's oak from the same plank as this, which was the lightest guitar I've ever built And it will have a 'sucked lozenge' carve at the extremes, similar to this same build: It's going to be a 7-piece laminated neck of maple, walnut and purpleheart and a bound ebony board with demarcation stripes So in short - it's going to be flippin' beautiful

Personally, I'm a fan of seeing laminates on the top

Yes - @Jabba_the_gut is right

You are absolutely right, Jez... Great thought! It would make it 33.036", that is, less than a mm longer.

The binding looks good, Jez.

^ This If you are a bit nervous, then just assemble and adjust that saddle without the spring at all (the spring is only there to keep the adjuster screw tight against the body while the lock screw is loose and you are adjusting the position - once the lock screw is tight, then the spring doesn't do anything). The Babicz has an immense amount of adjustment with the three tapped holes for the locking screw and so it is unlikely that it can't get far enough back. However, the spring has to be long enough for the furthest forward position. As such, long springs can have a tendency to fully compress before the full range of rear adjustment can be reached...hence, sometimes, you need to snip the spring.

This is a VERY nice design and build

I think it will be fine

I've just drawn this out full-size and cut a reverse paper template so that I can bounce off @Matt P the choices he has in terms of orientation of the grain I'll post a photo in the morning of how the top will look in terms of the body shape and bridge/pickup positions. And NO - I'm not going to show you all the choices...there's only one guy's opinion that matters here

Ah - correction...not 33"

In normal times, David Dyke offers a c.£10 fret cutting service with options for a number of scale lengths on blanks bought from them - although I suspect that this service is suspended until Covid lockdown is lifted...

Back to your original question, @Dazed - I think it depends what it is you are wanting to do. Primarily, is the desire to have a shorter physical neck or to have the relative ease of playing a 32" scale rather than a 34"? Starting with the easy (second) one of the two, then a capo on the 1st fret and detune the strings a semitone gets you to a 32.1" scale, near as makes no difference. And, actually, can transform the feel and playability of a long scale bass. Changing the physical length of a neck-through would be challenging on many fronts, almost all in the category of high risk of failure, quite (to very) difficult and ultimately not worth the trip. Changing the physical length and scale of a bolt-on is more feasible

Not sure yet. I'm sure that will be one of many ponderings

Yes - @Fishman requested a flat board rather than the 14(?)" of the original.

Thanks, @TrevorR . That means a great deal - much appreciated

Attaboy!

You've never heard me play, clearly We'll try to persuade @Fishman to do a sound clip when Boris allows us to pass it across. There's not much point from here - I only have an electric guitar amp and that will never do this justice

And...the finished shots

Fascinating. Great info - thanks. Well, last couple of jobs before final reassembly are done, including the strap buttons. For both buttons, but especially the one on the top horn, nowadays I always inset them - it's neater and much more secure. I just use a forstner to give me the rebate and then use the centre hole from the forstner to drill the pilot hole for the screw. And yes - this IS in the centre of the horn Then a drop of stain soaked in to the cut edges and they can be fitted: Final assembly to do - and then just the finished photos

You know what they say about "The further they rise, the faster they will drop"... Well, hot on the heels of @Matt P 's build is another project that may well have to be called "Andyjr1515's Nemesis"! Good job that Matt's will be done before Andyjr1515 is a broken man (well, more broken than he already is).

Well, one has to fill the remaining lockdown with something Besides, MrsAndyjr1515 is always so much happier when I'm out of the way down the cellar.

No - definitely going to have a head

I'm still on with the final settling down and tweaking of the fretless and the Wal save but I have another live project on the drawing board - a single cut shortscale (30") for our very own @Matt P I get the impression that this has been gestating in Matt's mind for some time and, to be honest, Matt has done a lot of the hard work - which is great - that is, designing the concept and broad shape in the first place. This is my rough cobble together of Matt's sketches ( there should be round bits where my rubbish Inkscape attempt has given me sharp corners) with a broadly scale neck (albeit this shows a 4 string width rather than the correct 5 string width). This will have a headstock - this is just a quick full-scale view mainly of the body length and positioning for me to check out one of the critical design criteria...that is must fit into this: ..which is a 6-string electric Fender Jaguar guitar case. It will be a - through necked - single 5-string SimS Super-Quaded - Hipshot bridge and tunered - Ebony fretboarded - Mahogany backed - Laminated necked - top to back demarcated - sucked lozenged carved - 7lbs beauty - with this top: And I'm VERY excited

Final set up and tweaking always takes longer than you think but my target is that by the end of this weekend, this can go safely in the 'finished instruments' cupboard waiting for when Covid allows @Fishman and I to do the hand over. Most of the past few days has been related to one of @Fishman 's ideal that we can achieve a very low action. First step was to sort the shim to be able to keep the saddles nice and low. I got some 1/64" ply and sanded the required angle by attaching it to a piece of thicker, flat ply and sanding it over a piece of glass (old glass shelves and similar are great things to have around for using as the base for sharpening plane blades, etc and for this kind of job. You can see how the sanding has gone through a number of layers of the ply: This got me to the point that the saddles flat at the bottom put the strings onto the frets and the maximum I should have to lift the saddles will be c. 3mm And that has got me close. I have a very playable action at 1.7mm to 1.5mm (I would normally set for starters with a bass at around 2.6mm to 2.2mm) but if I dig in hard, do get a bit of buzz at the lower strings. So I have set my challenge to try to get to 1.5mm to 1.3mm (we are talking gap of the bottom E & the top G measured from the bottom of the string to the top of the 12th fret - with the string fretted at the 1st to eliminate nut effect) with no buzz. Which is lower than I would even set a 6-string electric... I checked the relief. The neck is actually dead flat - so, while there is no back bow, there is also no measurable relief. And this is a single-action rod so I can't introduce relief by screwing it anticlockwise. And the neck is as stiff as a board. But I could do with a gnat's whisker of relief (although we are talking 'just perceptible' )... So the answer is to take the neck off, tighten the truss rod a teeny bit and then level off the hump in the middle of the fretboard. It looks more than it is - we are generally talking tenths of a mm: So the theory is that when I take the tension back off the truss rod, I have a neck that now has a smidgen of relief in it. I will know when I reassemble, but while it's off I'll take the opportunity to finish off all of the other stuff on the 'still to do' list.

It's all absolutely beautiful. Excellent build