JBoman

It was a good thing to continuously check with a radius gauge. Here I'm intentionally scratching the surface to reveal high/low spots. It's very easy to sand a "roll-off" on the edges, be mindful of that. I imagine it could cause problems when installing frets. I'll do a couple of passes with some kind of sanding beam, then it's ready for some frets! PS: sanding Ebony is hard work. And wear a respirator. The dust is like coal dust, you don't want to breathe that in. 💀

I checked my MM P-bass neck. It has this "effect". So it's normal. I ended up slanting the fingerboard slightly towards the nut. This will also make the neck very slightly skinnier towards the nut. Can't be a bad thing And it will be countered with string tension and relief.

I think the most interesting thing is: what is correct? in terms of geometry, neck relief... and setup, etc... Or there is no right answer?

Got a radius block and sanded the fingerboard to 9,5" And made the nut slot. But then I discovered an interesting .....issue? Let's see if I can describe it. I noticed that the fingerboard edge appeared thicker towards the nut area. "That can't be" I thought... I measured like a zillion times that the overall thickness from the bottom of the maple to the top/centerline of the fingerboard is the same from heel to nut. Then it hit me. The radius and the fact that a neck widens towards the heel makes this effect. Here are two cross sections. I overlayed the nut area to the left, do you get the reason why this edge effect happens? Now what to do about it? Nothing? Slanting the fingerboard surface towards the nut would make the edge equal to the heel area, but I don't know what this would mean for relief and string alignment and stuff.... Weird!

About paint/finishing/etc... a couple of other ideas. So, in addition to the black satin, I've been thinking about a kind of "Cherry burst" and this fade from natural to black. What do you think?

Cover done. Actually re-done, since I managed to crack the first piece. It's still too thick but it was getting late in the evening... Also shaved the extra stuff off the headstock and made that slope towards the nut area. Test fitting tuners, which are Gotoh GB11W.

Sometimes it's like launching a space rocket. You have done all your preparations but after T=0 all you can do is just watch it go. Oh, I also gave the electronics cavity the final touches. Next up is the cover.

You know, scratch that. My paranoia just acting up. I think its fine. Just this section here showed no squeeze out. Added some water thin CA glue that "drained" in there.

Awwww...crap... I was not paying enough attention when gluing the fingerboard and now I noticed later that there are a couple of places where there is no squeeze out. Meaning a dry joint. Just 1-2cm areas. But for peace of mind, I'm prepared to separate the glue joint. Titebond, so it should give loose with heat. What do you think? Worth the hassle? Or just try to seep in some CA glue..?

Fretboard came in the post. I got this with pre-cut fret slots. I do have access to a japanise razor saw, but better have these made by someone with actual tools for it. Also, this is the first time that the main pieces of wood are in the same room together

Power button jammed down with a zip tie. Ok, I had an extension cord on the floor with a switch

Edge roundover done. There was only one feasible rounding bit here, did not want to buy an extra just for this project. So I went YOLO and used the one that happened to be available. It's apparently close to a vintage stingray roundover, about 9-10mm radius. Also made this "table router" contraption. If you look closer your will see some ahem questionable setup, don't try this at home kids...

Body cut to template. Started the electronics cavity. And rounded the edges a bit.

I'm starting to lean towards a paint job... specifically this color/texture combo: Maple neck, backside clear satin finish Ebony fingerboard Body matte/satin black, matching headstock Chrome hardware Dot markers white or... I'm also tempted to go fluorescent 🤩 (Image from the web as an reference)

So, while I sort out some things about ordering the fretboard I turn my focus to the body. Finding hardwoods, or "noble woods" as they are called over here is really hard. Finland is such a small market that availability is always an issue. Especially when you want to physically inspect the wood before buying. There is just one place in Helsinki that keeps these kinds of wood in stock ( @itu knows...) so I went there. I knew it was not going to be cheap, but eh.. at least I save in shipping. And I get to pick and choose. Initially I had some kind of a light colored wood in mind, but I'm not picky. In the basement of this special place there were interesting planks from all around the world, even zebrano. Man that's a wild looking wood. But heavy. So as previously posted, I really wanted to nail down an optimal weight for this instrument. Not too heavy, but still "substantial", you know what I mean In my cad model, I could calculate a rough volume for the body, therefore I was able to aim for a certain density for the wood. Which turned out to be around 580kg/m3 for a ~2kg body when cut and contoured. That together with the neck and all the hardware should land me on around 3,5-4kg for the finished instrument. So I rummaged through in the basemend and tried to get a feel of the weight of various planks. I finally ended up with 2 pieces of something called "Bibolo". It has many names: Dibetou (France, Belgium) African walnut (UK) Lovoa wood (USA) Noce africano (Italy) The shop did not have a scale for me to weigh the wood, but having felt so many instruments and pieces of wood I was confident that we might have a potential winner. So I left with a lighter wallet and some wood wrapped in plastic, trying to manage a rainy day in Helsinki... This wood does not have a strong grain pattern, so it's kind of boring looking. But let's see what we come up with.... I measured one of the pieces and put it on a kitchen scale and got 583kg/m3 0,0037821185107499m3 583kg/m3 2,2kg I'm happy.

Trying to center something vertically in a drill press, not easy But I got it, one hole in the heel. Scribbled the final dimension, so I don't forget to pick the correct drill bit. The routed cavity was also not enough, I only had one router bit for this job and the rod has extra width and depth at the heel --> dremel time. The rod also had a slight upwards lip towards the heel, digging deeper to the wood did not help. So I just hacked off some metal with a belt sander to make it level with the maple. Ugly, but functional. And after the fingerboard, only we will know it's there.

Truss rod cavity routed. Still needs a bit chisel work. And a hole through the heel, this will be a MM style "spinwheel" rod (or whatsitcalled....) Also it seems that I get to keep those indexing holes. They are precisely in the centerline, below the nut and the last fret. So I can use those to position the fretboard. Nice.

So, here we are. One fine piece of maple shaped and dimensioned. As you probably are aware, there are many steps involved here. But I personally think the most involved and meticulous was to come up a way to plane the surfaces to be as parallel as possible. For this, I came up with this kind of an routing "swimlane". If you get some dimensionally accurate plywood, etc this is is doable. How did I hold down the wood on the surface? Masking tape on both surfaces and superglue in between Also, I was working on top of a table saw surface, to keep everything as flat and straight as possible. Tuner holes are not in final size, I'll wait for the tuners to arrive before drilling the final holes. Good to be a bit paranoid. Oh, and the templates... laser cut Found a local business that takes AI files and can cut 6mm plywood. @itu protip: https://www.lasercutstudio.com/

No. P-bass influence is more in the body and neck shape. From MM, we get the pickup and 21 frets.

So this happened.

Well, I actually entertained myself to the point of traiding that body and also getting rid of the Status. There we're small things that I found irritating about the neck profile. So, I went back to the drawing board. Like, literally. I opened a CAD program and started thinking: what do I really WANT? Hmmm.... If only I could take a P-bass and a Stingray and make some kind of chimera of these... hmmmm....

I prefer simplicity, so probably not.

No logo. It seems they have changed the design.

Body is already contoured, but thanks for the tip. I did the belly cut and the arm contour using a belt sander, finished off with scrapers. Fine tuning the neck angle. Finding the bridge position. This pic also reveals the "special feature": 2 pickup locations. I plan to make a second pickguard later for the second position. Most of the parts I had already waiting there, so it was just a matter of getting the neck and "integrating" everything. At this point, I could finally get some idea of the sound, acoustically at least. It's LOUD, like a proper P bass-kind of loud. So output will not be a problem The sound is also very piercing and seems to have all kinds of frequencies represented. So, it will be just a matter of EQ-ing to get what you want. Oh, about the finishing. At this stage, it already has 2 layers of wax on it. I went for wax since I really liked the look & feel of it on some test pieces. It's also a super easy way to finish. I still plan to take it apart once more, lightly sand and rub one final coat to get rid of some marks. Maybe one testament for the finish: everybody who comes to the shop wants to touch and feel the wood going like "ooh! aah" The only issue really is the weight. This is not your bass to haul around in a gigbag. It's not been on the scale yet, and I'm afraid to put in on our small kitchen scale I have been entertaining the idea of finding a lighter block of wood, tweak a few things and make an even better body with all the experience I got from this one. Let's see....