Rexel Matador

Hi all, I'm sure there are many conflicting opinions on this, but I'm curious what people have to say. I've decided I want to learn fretless so I'm going to build myself one. I'm going unlined as I think it'll a) look cooler and b) better encourage me to learn to use my ears to intonate. The two options I'm considering are either: Only side dots in the usual places - 3, 5, 7, 9, 12, etc - but on the fret position, like Tony Franklin OR Thin side markers for every fret position plus the dots in between them, like this: I'm leaning towards the first option. The second is a bit ugly and potentially confusing? Am I making things unnecessarily difficult for myself or setting myself up to learn properly?

If this is with regard to my comment about not being able to turn down our drummer, to be fair to him, I think he plays perfectly appropriately for the music we do. Drums are loud and for some reason live music venues continue to be surprised by that fact!

He's exactly that type of drummer who would never in a million years entertain such a notion! The scaffolding gives it away, I think.

Played last night at a pub in Liverpool that we haven't played before. It was nice to be on a raised stage for once. Not so nice to be told while soundchecking that "everything will have to come down because there's a quiz in the room next door". Sigh. Why did you book a rock band then? To be fair we often get told we're very loud. Maybe our ears are so shot we don't notice. Additionally, there's no way to "turn down" our drummer, so we just set up accordingly. Wasn't the best we've ever played, but it was a good turnout and a nice responsive crowd. And we've been invited back. It was also the first outing for my new homemade bass, which you can check out over in the Build Diaries form if you're into that kind of thing! It sounds great (though that's mostly down to the good people at EMG, in my opinion) and doesn't crush my spine over the course of a gig, which is a massive relief. I was getting weird bassy feedback coming from my side at certain points though. The others thought it was coming from my amp, which did seem to be the case, but it doesn't really make sense to me. It's never happened before and feedback wouldn't swell consistently while you were actually playing would it? I'm hoping it's not the new bass, but the exact same pickup and electronics are in the bass I've been using for gigs up to now. Plus it was fine in the rehearsal room From the sound of it, it seemed much more like feedback you might get from a PA, but again, it did seem to be coming from the vicinity of my amp. Maybe it was the room. I really hope it's a one-off. No-one outside of the band seemed bothered anyway!

I'm happy more than happy to have some extra walnut knocking around.

I want to make another one of these (fretless this time) using walnut for the wings, but any actual "body blanks" I can find are crazy expensive. Where could I get a piece that I could use for this purpose. Can you go to a timber merchant and just buy one or two metres of wood, or is that just a waste of time for them?

If Rory Gallagher, Jimi Hendrix, John Bonham, Jack Bruce, Duane Allman, John Lennon etc etc all fancy coming back from the dead and playing two 45s at Fogherty's this Friday night for their share of £200, I'll gladly step aside. Otherwise, the punters will just have to make do.

Beautiful. Definitely need to get me some purpleheart!

The model or the guy who played bass for Marilyn Manson?

Mission accomplished! Only played through a practice amp so far but it sounds great. Can't wait to get to band practice!

That's why I went to 3+1. I couldn't settle on a design I liked that was four in line. 5 in line will certainly make a statement, I can't wait to see it!

Regarding your other questions, it looks to me like that pickup is a standard guitar humbucker size, so you would need a router, a bearing cutter and a humbucker cavity template. If memory serves I bought a perfectly good template for the exact job on ebay because I couldn't be bothered to make one. Did you need to square off the neck heel to fit the pocket in the body?

It's a bit too big and heavy for a headstock, and actually winding the strings onto the tuners in the first place is way too fiddly. The angle of the tuners doesn't actually seem to be an issue. I've done a couple like this and will do another one one day, I'm sure, perhaps refining the design to make it easier to string up. Sorry @mrbacco, I didn't mean to hijack your thread. I was mainly just suggesting the sideways tuners thing if you wanted something weird for your headstock. Though you may need to add some thickness to it to do that.

It's so the strings are pulled down over the nut. I don't think anyone questioned it until Fender figured out they could be flat if you included a string tree to replicate the effect. Here's an unusual but wildly impractical one I made a while back.

I routed out the area with the mangled screw holes, cut/sanded a scrap of the body wood to size, shoved it in with some glue, chiselled it flush, re-drilled the holes, and forgot to take a picture. But here it is, taped up for the fret job. After that, I just need to finish off the nut, set it up and we're done. Next gig is on 29th September, so that will hopefully be its debut! I'm excited to hear how it sounds. I've never played a 32" scale bass before and I've also never tried reverse P pickup placement. The body is very small, as you can probably tell by how massive the bridge and pickup look in the picture. Maybe a bit too small, but it's nice and light and I think will serve me well for the ridiculously long gigs I do these days.

I have an Instagram that suggests I do nothing but build basses, so not a remotely accurate reflection of my life. Wishful thinking, perhaps.

I had no idea. Always learning!

I used a hand drill for the original holes. It's always worked in the past. Pillar drill when I was hogging out wood to remove the screws/make the router's job easier. I don't think a forstner is necessary at this point. I'm just going to use the router to cleanly cut out the offending area and fill it with a new piece of wood. It'll be fine 🤣

Disaster! I worked out the position of the bridge and drilled the two outer screw holes. They land right on the join between the poplar and the wenge, but thankfully my glue joints were up to it. So far so good. Time to drill the other three holes. Wait, did that drill bit just snap? Wow. Ok, I'll drill it out, make a bigger hole and fill it with a dowel. It'll all be hidden anyway. Now the screw has snapped. Ok, four will be plenty. Not ideal, but whatever. In screws four and five go. Both snap. This is a new one for me. Is there some metal in there that I've forgotten about? Either that or this wood must be harder than diamonds. So... I drilled a few more holes so I could yank out the offending bits of screw/drill. Next job will be to rout out the area and stick in a new bit of wood which can take the remaining bridge holes. Again, it will thankfully all be hidden in the end. This bass building lark really is a roller coaster. It was all going so well!

They could just use a truss rod that doesn't require a hole big enough to accommodate a massive spanner. Or a scarf joint. But no doubt the purists would complain and a neck that cracks when breathed on will remain a prestige feature for the foreseeable future.

I thought they only put it on higher end ones. If they're doing it across the board I applaud them.

I would like Gibson to invest in some sandpaper. I don't own any of their instruments and never will, but it really annoys me that people just accept sloppiness at those prices. And the whole thing of the headstocks breaking off being almost part of their brand. Insane. I also think Fender and anyone making similar designs should have a string tree that includes the A string (or one of those A-string retainer things) as standard.

I could probably do with a more reliable amp, but buying an amp is like buying a fridge for me - they don't really excite me and are just necessary.

I was desperate to "make it" from around mid teens to mid 20s. I assumed I'd get a record deal and make a living. I assumed that any touring band, however obscure was paid a living wage for their troubles! I eventually got involved in the DIY punk scene in Birmingham and the penny dropped - all of these bands are scraping by and fitting this labour of love around their shitty jobs, just like me. I've been thinking about this a lot lately as my wife is pregnant with our first child. At my school, it was a case of get good A-Levels and go to university, or nothing. It would have been nice if, rather than telling me that only a miniscule fraction of bands ever get anywhere so it's better not to bother, someone had helped me seriously look into all the more realistic ways I might have been able to combine my passions with earning a living. Not that I have anything to complain about. If I had "made it", I would have succumbed to the cliches of rock 'n roll excess pretty much immediately and probably wouldn't be telling you all this today! I'm arguably more into building basses than playing them these days - so now the dream if for someone else to "make it" on one of my creations!

Started on the nut - I need to keep busy while coats are drying! Brass is so easy to work with, I love it. I filed the big slot just to see how hard it would be. The slotting proper can wait until the frets are levelled etc. Control cavity cover from a scrap of the wenge from the neck: And this... I drilled one of the tuner holes a bit too close to the edge. I was going to leave it but decided it would annoy me, especially if the other strings run perpendicular to the nut, which was my intention. I plugged the hole and redrilled it. It's a bit ugly but will be totally covered buy the tuner 🙂