HazBeen

It also helps against dead spots and ensures a quick attack ... blah blah

I will sandwich it between sandpaper and parchment, for that textured effect

Lovely!

This looks really really good, a thing of beauty and something to be very happy and proud of,

What do you get if you create heaps of sawdust? ......... a thinner, lighter body. The bass will be 36mm thick. The thinnest I have ever made, but I reckon 6 bolts and the way I designed the body means 18mm for the neck to bolt on to should work well enough. As I will be adding a lot of hardware, I need to keep the weight down. As is we are at 2.3 kg, which means when all is said and done, so final shaping, all cavities routed, arm/belly contour, rounding we should end up around 1.7kg. In the end I think we will pretty much bang on 4kg. Hopefully 3.9, but I’d even take 4.1kg. Still waiting on neck wood, so will likely focus on getting the body all done, ready for routing the neck cavity.

Indeed, I use Slinky and Cobalt Flats pretty much exclusively, never an issue,

Glued the 2 bits together. Will work well.

You think this or know this?

Sounds great!

Cheers mate, appreciated! The volute on the bouzouki Is a thing of beauty.

So the barrel is if memory serves me correctly 12 mm, the end of the new 9 pole socket is 1/4” plus a few mm max, certainly under 12mm. So if you saw off the end of the old barrel jack and either thread it to the size of the new jack output and use it to screw on instead of using the supplied nut OR just use it as a washer (and use the nut supplied with the new jack) that you could even decide to fix to the body with 2 screws. Is it a little clearer for you?

You must nut be serious.

Looking great! Where did you get the Luminlay?

Good call indeed.

I have settled on an ambrosia maple top. It will look better than the walnut I feel.

Basically you need to carve out the cavity. I would use my Dremel with 45 degree angle attachment and a fine router bit. https://www.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/tools/575-right-angle-attachment I have used it in very tight spaces effectively. What you cannot get around though is the fact that the original barrel jack hole is larger than the 1/4” jack threaded bit and will leave a gap if you do not use a jack plate. I would probably sacrifice the barrel jack, in essence using the external flange of the barrel jack as my new jack plate. If you make the cavity just right (As I believe the 9 pole one is squarish) you should be able to pull the jack plate tight to the wood with the screw on the new jack, and not worry about it turning. And you can also drill 2 small holes for screwing it to the body. Then should you sell it, you can just but a barrel jack back in place and the outside will look as before/original. I hope I am making sense.

This is why I have started building basses again, I can’t have buyer’s remorse, nor is it likely I’d be able to sell anyway (come to think of it maybe I could as I would only charge a fraction of a luthier brand) and I can make it exactly how I want it.

A chicken eating peas....

Can someone please tell me why I have a partially lined, epoxied wenge fretboard in mind all of a sudden? Must be all the Intronaut I’ve been listening to. Time will tell if it is a phase......

25% is relatively hard still, so you will get years of use before a refret is needed.

For instance

The thinner and lower the fret, the better your technique needs to be. Medium/Jumbo is a solid middle of the road option. A fretpress is easier, but you can certainly hammer frets in as well especially if you have a relatively flat fretboard it is quite easy as long as you think twice/take care. I would advise against Stainless Steel/Titanium and such. Reason being it is harder on your tools (you may even need harder = more expensive tools), detanging/rounding/finishing a stainless fret is significantly more work too. So for that reason alone I would advise to go for normal Nickel Silver alloy, not more than 25% alloy. You can buy fretwire in lots of price brackets. Sintoms is a make I see more and more of that is not very expensive, but gets good reviews.