Andyjr1515

Yes - definitely my eyes ...agreed you could drive a proverbial bus through that gap

OK. My eyes then

Excellent! Just looking at the outline drawings, @spacecowboy , do the string runs from the nut to the appropriate sides of the tuner posts work? Might be my eyes, but the strings look like they will clash in places...

Well, if you consider that most electric 6 strings (eg Les Paul, Stratocaster, Telecaster) with standard guitar strings are 42 or 43mm, I think yes...certainly for my fingers. The only difference is that presumably bottom end chords aren't a big need on a bass?

From a build point of view, then yes, you are right @donslow. But from a playing point of view, the Bronco has a slim neck - I think it is 38mm at the nut, and the Bass VI is more like 42mm. Bit of a squeeze!

OK. It was worth a try

In my experience, the 'sand, stain, sand, stain, sand' approach is useful on highly figured woods to get more stain in the end grain and lighter in the cross-grain - but for this kind of wood, to be honest it's 'the more coats the better'. Ref your photo, the brown area is likely to always be a little brown with water-based stains, but the light patches are usually signs of: - contamination of the wood...a problem sometimes with ready carved bodies but not the case here because you have thicknessed the timber and sanded it so all the surface wood has been removed - just not enough stain (or stain that is too weak) The first thing I would try is more coats of the navy - normally I would apply at least 4 coats of the base stain and sometimes more. If that is still patchy, then you could try a decent spirit stain (Chestnut are good - they do a great multi-colour sample pack for not a lot of money ... and each little bottle will stain at least one bass! The poster colour sample pack includes a strong blue and a strong purple amongst other very usable colours). And don't worry about more coats going deeper and deeper into the wood...they don't for the cross grain. They just give a more saturated coverage to pretty much the same depth of penetration - which is surprisingly small on all except end grain.

Yes! And I might have got my basses back from Matt by then even!

We have a winner Gold Star, smiley face and dancing emojis 'The Frieze Britches', from Planxty

Ah...not Fairport. I'll reveal what and who did the original in the morning

Good heavens. Well, assuming that's right, then there's a man who knows his music! (In all probablility) Gold Star & smiley face

Hi @GarethFlatlands Hmmm...that is indeed quite a thick fretboard. Does that mean that your trussrod slot at the nut is quite close to the bottom of the neck or is it a deep-ish neck? Anyway, that aside, I wouldn't head down the L-shape tenon route - it worked great but I'm sure that was more by luck than judgement Easiest and safest is to deepen the neck pocket of the body - there's plenty of meat at the bottom of the pocket and so you really won't have any issues strength-wise.

And so, as a post-script. P and his delightful wife arrived last weekend to pick up the Guitar Bouzouki. And I think he would be happy in me saying he loves it For me, that is a great pleasure and relief in equal measure! P was able to bring his standard Irish Bouzouki for me to have a look at and listen to and that was fascinating. We both agreed that the Guitar Bouzouki has a much richer sound (which would be hoped and expected) and a strummed chord just goes on, beating sub-harmonics all the way, for a long, long time. The neck between the two instruments was quite different, part designed and fully expected and part more of a surprise. P had requested it to be wider and shallower than his original which will always change the curves and feel, but the thing I noticed straightaway was that the 'V' on the original felt distinctly V shaped to the hand further up the fretboard than my build. It doesn't really show on the profile drawings but it does give it a different feel further up the board. Not necessarily a bad feel, but certainly a different feel. Changing that, if P's conclusion was that he wanted that tweaking, is actually a very easy fix and the sort of thing that can be done on a 'while you wait' basis. And there's a crazy coincidence (that I won't go into detail on) that might mean that finding a convenient time to do that would not be too much of problem. But, that said, even at first play, this is P showing how a Guitar Bouzouki should be played. Glorious! And particularly glorious through headphones

That is simply superb. Top drawer Wow!

Looks good!

I might even have mine back from Matt Mariott by then!! Hmmm...pro-musician...hard times.... No, that's alright - I was forgetting, they're both my own designs. Happily, they will be worthless to the discerning buyer

Well. there's a rumour that there might be an interesting bass project on the horizon

Well....there's nothing quite like a transparent red stain....

Looks absolutely first class. Great looking bass on any terms...but as a first build it's astounding!

Anyway, you know the answer when the conversation starts wandering off into technical areas I don't fully understand - just throw in a few gratuitous arty-f**ty photos : P picks it up at the weekend

Easiest to consider a violin where the bridge is so much higher. The string wants to be straight between the tuners and the tailpiece. Then you stick a 2" high bridge in the middle. The downward force on that bridge is enormous. The question is probably more whether my statement that an acoustic bridge is being pulled upwards is correct. Theoretically, it is being pulled sideways. But in actual measurable practical terms, the top is lifting under tension. And an old acoustic will sometimes lose the stiffness and lift more, resulting in the need of a neck reset. Where's a Finite Element Analysis when you need one

Me too...Earl Grey in my case

I used to have those problems all the time, especially with routing pickup chambers. In the end, I realised that you can get really short top bearing cutters. Axminster used to do a diddy one but Wealden certainly do: https://www.wealdentool.com/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Template_Trim_279.html

Thanks - you are very kind Yes - that was in P's original spec. As far as I can gather, the majority (though not all) of guitar bouzouki's have this arrangement, probably from the initial concept of 'I wonder if you could fit a bouzouki neck to an acoustic guitar?' It is interesting, though. With a tailstock and bridge, like a mandolin, the pressure is downwards on the bridge and the top. I'd never thought about it before, but on an acoustic - and likewise on this - the string tensioning is lifting the top. If it didn't mean taking another three months to build one, it would be interesting to build an identical one with a tailstock/bridge combination and see what the tone difference would be.

And...pretty much finished I say pretty much because I still have to replace the test saddle with the final one, replace the 'working strings' with some new ones and polish it, but none of that will change the basic look. I'll do some arty-farty photos when the light is right, but here it is: To my ear, it sounds lovely and it is very easy on the playing hand...even with my progressing arthritis (which has pretty much stopped my 6-string playing) I am SO tempted to build myself one. And through the Pure Mini played through my little Vox valve amp set clean with neutral EQ, it is exactly the same sound as played acoustically but simply louder And P picks it up next weekend!