Andyjr1515

Wow. Magical.

With all three switched on, I reckon you will pretty much answer your original question with this

I've spent the last couple of days sorting out the oak, cutting the maple neck splices and getting all of the mating surfaces flat and straight: And on order from David Dyke are the two walnut splices, a purpleheart splice for the middle, some more purpleheart to use as the back/top demarcation and a 5-string AAA ebony fretboard blank

Remarkable!

It's beautiful, isn't it.

ACG's are the bass builders basses... Alan picks magnificent woods and transforms them into something that defies the 'form or function' clash to produce something that optimises both. It will be lovely.

Yup - count me in too

@Hellzero is quite right. As long as the neck heel is fitted to be properly against the back of the pocket it's the 'lift' you need to bolt against. Do you remember this one - I fitted a neck to one of @eude 's schooldays (?) projects. It was the shortest pocket I ever did (by necessity) - and it was a 6 string bass! The pocket was even shorter than @benh 's present one: For that, because I had no idea really what extra pull forces might be on a sixer, and the floor of the pocket itself wasn't all that thick, I went belt and braces and fitted an unglued dry biscuit joint into the front join area: It held fine and, to be honest, I think it would have been OK with just the bolts: So, @benh - best to extend the fretboard a touch in any case, as much for the 24th fret security as anything, and the resulting neck pocket should be perfectly adequate

Well...now there's a story... Not me for one I gave Matt the choice of the four configurations, and he chose one of the other ones. And I - ahhummm - had already cut it before I spotted Matt's question. Anyway, Matt has been extremely gracious and says he is equally happy with the way round I've done it. One for the 'ooops!' log I reckon. That said, it is going to look pretty splendid - this is one of the best figured walnut pieces I've come across in a long, long time. Here it is with a 5-string sized fretboard cutout: Once the proper finish is on, that figuring is going to positively come alive! Next step is to cut the oak blanks and order the neck laminates and bridge

I agree with @Jabba_the_gut. If the pickup was destined to be right up against your fretboard end, then I would have said that this is probably OK. But in that you have the room, I would - in any case - have more fretboard beyond the 24th fret and also to give you a bit more distance between the two fixing bolts on that side with the correspondingly longer pocket. The resulting 10-20mm extension look fine too. I like how the design is evolving and (on these things he always is) @TheGreek was spot on with that small tweak to the lower cutaway and horn.

Yes - walnut. It's beautiful in real life.

Small steps, but the first cut and glue of any project is an important one Straightened up the joint line of the top wood with a jack-plane and now it's gluing Going to look nice

It's a beautiful bass. Great mojo about it...

More of my builds have been done on a Workmate on the back patio than on my more recently acquired cellar workbench. You do tend to get quite skilled at following weather forecasts . And likewise, not a word to MrsAndyjr1515

Looks good from here

You know me. There's nothing I like better than boring a room full of folks to sleep. Hmmm....if I marketed myself as a 'snooze meditation healing' guru, I could make a fortune

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