Andyjr1515

Hi, @Raslee PM'd

Actually - if you are lucky, you may not need to replace the fretboard (although there's always a risk). Not a DIY job, though I'll send you a PM

Lovely job

LOVE this!!! And don't worry about the lack of workshop - 50% of my builds to date were done on a workmate on the back patio (including @TheGreek 's above ). Takes a bit longer but where there's a will there's a way Love the design thoughts. Can't wait!!

Yes. There's a bit of final tweaking still to do at the final sanding stage which will widen it a touch (a la 'you can take more stuff away but you can't easily put it back' ), but it is quite a tight and deep scoop: The V in the grain pattern makes it look a little tighter than it actually is. If it ends up too deep, I'll be encouraging @Fishman to drink a few more pints of beer

Todays tasks are about doing the final main features on the body blank before doing the final tidy up of the edges and then the round-overs (always last otherwise you lose the edges that you might want to use with a bottom bearing flush router bit). First was a repeat of my preferred 'chamber method' to fit the pickup: Next were the two cutaways. For the forearm relief I used a hand-plane: For the back waist scoop, I hogged out with my trusty Veritas Pull-shave and then finished off with a microplane, minus the handle and just held between two gloved hands and finally tidied up with some emery wrapped round the micro-plane. The whole job could have been done just with the micro-plane blade and emery, just with a bit more effort:

No rush, A. Got lots to still do elsewhere on it that I can still carry on with In the meantime, pleased to say that the joint looks good: No one panic about that dark line in the mahogany - it's a grain line, not a crack.

There are many tasks in guitar and bass building where I still haven't found the 'perfect' way to get things right or accurate. One of those is the short area of body wood that the fretboard sits on in the way that I do through-necks. If you remember, I cut a notch in the neck blank that the top slots into. The top face of this area is at an angle to the top face of the main length of the neck - and that's what will give me my neck angle to the body: But, because the fretboard extends over the body for a short distance - and is an an angle to the body - I have to take steps to make sure that the end of the fretboard doesn't end up with a gap. And so I set the body a couple of mm proud of the neck top face. And so I then need to cut an angle in the body wood to make sure that the fretboard is flat against wood all the way from neck to heel to fretboard end. And the challenge is cutting that angle. In the earlier days, I used to think just a levelling beam would do it. But two things tend to happen - the beam does quickly remove the edge of the body wood - but then tends to ride high over the body and leave a lump but also starts to sand the neck (which I don't want - as that is already flat). My present method is to take the bulk off masking the neck and pulling a fine microplane blade down gently across the body wood parallel to the neck top face, and then use the longest, sharpest chisel I have to go the other way - using the neck upper face as the datum for the chisel and slice away the excess, lumps and bumps in a sweeping movement up the body wood: It seemed to work. And why do I outline this in so much detail? Well, how else am I going to remember next time that this is how I did it this time??? The full length was checked with a straight edge, truss rod put in, back stop glued and it was ready to have the fretboard glued on: And it's clamped up and glue drying as I type: And that means that I can start carving the neck over the weekend. And all guitar and bass builders will tell you that neck carving is the most satisfying part of the whole process. Happy days

Still time...still time.

And the next challenge - getting the chamber cut for the electronics when the screwholes are going to be so close to the edge. The process was basically to cut it undersize, and then fit it bit by bit a bit like when you are making a tight-fitting control chamber cover. The tools were the same as the neck pocket - hog out with forstner, bring to line with a chisel and to depth with a router. Here it is hogged out and edges being tidied up with a chisel proir to the trial-and-error fitting: And here with the battery box also cut, the chambers deepened on the router and the cutaway for the truss rod access next: And fitted, ready for a repeat of the process to fit the mighty Wal pickup :

Of course you can Thnx

Mad doesn't even begin to describe it

On Pete's EB-3 Tribute, I used a DiMarzio Model One and an Artec mini: Now, whilst I love the DiMarzio - it has that real mudbucker ooomph but without the mud - and the above combination works really well (it is still his go-to bass), the Artec Mudbucker wasn't on the market at the time I built it. And I have yet to come across an Artec product that hasn't blown the socks off everything in terms of bang for the buck. So yes - I would try the Artec and if it's not great then consider the DiMarzio.

That looks a really nicely made body...

This is what the back looks like @Maude You can clearly see the four coils. The switching isn't overly rocket science other than getting the magnet orientation and phasing correct to get the 3 way switch to get those combinations. However, there is a touch of great cleverness in the shape of some tiny resistors on the switch PCB because the one thing these pickups do that most split-coil arrangements (much more common on guitars than basses) can't do, is achieve pretty much equal volume between the 4-coil humbucking option and the 'single coil' (actually two coils) options. In a guitar you generally get a major volume drop when you switch to single coil on a single pickup. These don't - you can play on one pickup and switch between the three options and the volumes are unaffected. Very clever - and exceptionally useful in a live setting. There's discussion on, and a demo of, that at the back end of the Bassbash video on P1 of this thread.

Absolutely splendid!

I'll show you the back of one of them in the morning. Yes - it's four coils, two rows of two.

@Jus Lukin 's preference is to use on/off switches. That said, if I was doing one for myself, to be honest, I would do the same. For me, it would be too darn difficult to replicate sounds of the 120 or so combinations of switch positions if I had three fully variable controls on top of the toggles

I suspect most folks (who would generally have just two pickups) would wire the pickups up to a blend or a three-way switch. That only starts getting really complicated when you add the third pickup (and remember - we think this is the first 3 Superquad bass in the world ), where toggle on-off switches are actually much easier to not get confused...but there aren't really many other situations where a toggle arrangement is tangibly better than the more conventional blend/3-way options.

Thanks for the kind comments, folks. I still hate routers, but, as I've said before, there are times when only a router will do! And here we go again! The pickup chambers. I use the same method - which is basically mark out, hog out, chisel out and then use a captive bearing router bit to tidy it up and reach the final depth. With pickup chambers, the first thing I do is check the radius of the corners and use a bradpoint 1mm larger (to allow for the 0.5mm clearance all round) and drill the corners: Then I hog out as close to the marked line as I can with as large a Forstner as I can: Then chisel 10mm or so down, right up to the outline: Then use a flush bearing router bit, that will be fully captive to deepen the chamber to final depth: Finally, I chisel out the room for the pickup bottom connector block that will join up with the connector cable slots I created before gluing the back on. Those original slots weren't in quite the right places but they are only there to get the cables through so will still work fine: And once the connector blocks now have their chambers, the pickups will freely drop - if needs be - to the lowest practical position: And, with that done, I can start thinking about gluing on the fretboard.

Final two steps before tomorrow's 'Chambers for the Superquads' (just you watch - Marvel will nobble that title . Expect a film on Disney+ before spring) marathon, a couple of jobs while the router table was out: Control chamber to final depth and initial back rounding: Initial top rounding: So tomorrow's job will be: - decide on the final positioning of the bridge elements, the fretboard and the pickups - create the three chambers for the Superquads. For this, I will be using the same method outlined for the neck pocket in the Wal save thread half way down Page 7 here: A Very Special Save - Page 7 - Build Diaries - Basschat Thanks for looking

Yes - there is a potential issue depending on at which stage Wal fitted the inserts - before or after adding the neck angle shim they glue to the heel. But actually, if they didn't fit the shim first and then drill with absolutely vertical drills (vertical to the body top and neck heel but, therefore, at an angle to the fretboard), they would have the same problem as well. So as long as my holes are 90 degrees to the body top, then they will align to the inserts. If I get time, for them's that have no idea what we're talking about, I'll draw a diagram Anyway - the next scary bit is done. The neck pocket. As all of the chambering, both on this build (for the scratchplate componentry and pickup) and the pickup chambers on @Jus Lukin 's headless, will be using this same method, I'll go into it in a bit more detail. Over the years, I personally have found this absolutely the most accurate and safest way of cutting chambers. Most of my fellow builders use templates and to great effect - but to me, templates usually spell problems. If I was doing repeat builds, then templates would clearly be the way to go, but for 'one-off chambers' - which most of mine are, this is the way I do it: Having marked out the line accurately, I use a forstner bit in my little drill press to hog out around 2/3rds of the depth, with the forstner just short of the chamber outline: I then sharpen my chisels because I need to chisel some seriously accurate edges!: So here, I'm chiselling away the forstner wave residue and then taking the cut, ensuring it is vertical and as accurately as possible, along the inside edge of my outline to a minimum of 10mm depth: I double check with the neck that the fit is spot-on. I also check that the bolts (which are, of course, now too long) still fit in the inserts! If it is and they do, I have an accurate 10mm vertical band that will guide the router bearing to tidy up the chamber sides and deepen it as necessary. I am using a router table here but a hand router (preferably with a decently large base for stability) would work just as well. The bottom-bearing'd router bit simply cannot now dig in anywhere it shouldn't: So the bit tidies up the sides and makes them exactly the same as my chiselled band and I increase the depth a couple of mm at a time to the final depth: Then final checks - first that the neck fits snugly and fully bottoms in the chamber: And a final check that it still all lines up: Which - to everyone's surprise and especially my own - it does So I won't go through the blow by blow, but this is how I will also rout the chambers for the truss rod access, the pickup and the electronic circuitry under the pickguard...and @Jus Lukin 's pickup chambers that will be next

So clamps off and all looks OK: The chamber will be deepened, cutting through the maple veneer you see here. And some time on the router gets the sides ready for final clean up with cabinet scrapers before I round-over the edges:

The back is glued: Now it's REALLY starting to look like a bass I've now been able to take the clamps off and had a look at the joints. They look good I'll be trimming the sides flush with the top in the morning - I'll take a photo in the daylight when that's done. And then...it's pickup chambers....

It's the main reason you do the 'drill halfway from one side, then drill halfway from the other side'. Also, my comment about having a drill press with minimum run-out (wander) is essential - and you couldn't do this sort of stuff without a drill press or similar. The final thing that helps is that the blank at the moment is straight sided - and bandsaw cut to a true right angle. As such, the datum is reliable either way up. If the blank had, say, already had the sides rounded, or if I'd used a jig saw to cut it out with a potentially wandering blade, it would have been a lot more difficult.