JBoman

Man, making screw holes to carbon is SLOOOOooooW But take your time and size the hole carefully, otherwise you end up with cracked laquer. 1. Make a pilot hole. 2. Remember to countersunk. I did these all the way through the finish, so that I got some black dust. 3. Size up, if you don't have all possible drill sizes, use a round file. Rinse, repeat. DO. NOT. RUSH.

It was highly recommend. Measurements are spot on. Now, you would think that positioning is a bit further back than it should be. And you would be right. I moved the whole neck pocket a bit to compensate for the inaccuracies in the body template. Doing the neck pocket routing with the template as-is would have caused some problems with the positioning of the bridge and the pickup. Speaking of measurements... I was hoping that the neck could be also used on my SUB, as a spare or just for the hell of it. Turns out that it does not fit. Neck pocket on the SUB is around 62-63mm, Status neck is just a hair above 64mm.

Nice work from the people at Status. Looking closer though reveals some roughness on the frets. Probably fine as they are, but I think I will give these a nice polish eventually. Also, the fingerboard material gives off some black dust or something, so a bit of cleaning is needed.

FedEx came today, wo-hoo!

Order placed. YOLO.

Found these also in ebay (Tone5) but:

It seems we have the same guy to blame Some parts arrive. String tree, pickguard blank and strap buttons from a local shop. Neck plate courtesy of our litigating friends in China X) Some more measurement considerations: neck plate holes do not line up. Not really a suprise at this point I would say. It's not an real issue if I do not want the neck to be interchangeable with my SUB (which I might find interesting at some point...). So, either I drill with these holes or mabey use those that have the individual bushings... (example image attached)

Nah, the top looks way too nice to cover it. Maybe something to the backside... hmmm

Should have known it..... well, I always have the option to trace out my SUB and make a second one if this starts to irritate me Only cost so far has been my precious time And this project actually has a couple of routing mishaps that I tried to cover up with various degree of success. Also I bet a 2nd attempt with a new block of wood would go much much faster with all the experience and "gotchas" I gained from this one.

@Grangur, thanks for the info. One thing I that might have gone wrong with this project is the templates that I ordered. They appeared to be very good so I just went with them without any worry in mind. Then just recently, I took the time to compare the templates more closely with my US made S.U.B. The body size does not match, the overall length is about 1cm more on the template. Also, pickguard size is not the same, the template is slightly larger than the pickguard on my S.U.B. It's like the whole template is slighty "scaled up" or something. Of course, since this is a custom project I can probably deal with this. I was going to make a pickguard from a blank anyway, but it's a bummer that stock pickguards are not going to be compatible... Or, could it be that Stingray body dimensions have changed over the years and the template and my S.U.B are based on a slighty different design? Vintage versus modern, for example?

Agree. My SUB feels super comfy when playing standing up, no neck dive, nice balance between body/neck weight/feeling. Sitting down, that slab is not nice for the arm. Would not use it for long recording sessions... unless you do it Dimebag way, record standing up, because "no one would go to war sitting down"

Actually looks can be deceiving (feeling in this case). Out of curiosity put these on a scale SUB 4,1kg American Standard P (with MIM maple neck) 4,0kg

Tortoise pickguard yes please I have a black SUB from 2003, love it! Don't really chime in on the weight tho, it's much lighter than my P

Finally some updates. I decided to put this on the scale and landed on a whopping 3,5kg. Yikes. I then decided to put this on a diet. I also noticed that thikness was also a bit too much, about 42mm. So with that I mind, I made this kind of a routing jig / contraption for shaving off layers from top and bottom (well, front and back actually...). I know that Stingrays are officially about 40mm thick, but for the sake of weight control and also curiosity, I went down to 39mm. I like routing, it's meditative like painting. Preparations just take 80% of the time Of course after this I also had to make that electronics cover thinner but good thing it was thick to begin with. Also, edges had to be re-done, no biggie. I'm hoping that the neck route will get rid of some extra weight and I also have a special feature in mind, more about that later

Ash, or someone suspected also oak. Anyway, it's like a brick. I expect the bass to sound... big.

Neck pocket is not yet even routed and will stay that way until I have a neck that I can compare to my template

Thanks for the advice. Some inspirational picks from the web... Turns out that finding some hardware parts has proved to be difficult. I would like to have properly chromed machine heads, not that nickel plated crap. Also, a 6-bolt neck plate with proper dimensions (and again, properly chromed) is nowhere to be found...

Offtopic: new here and I just noticed that I made a typo in my profile name, is it possible to change it? Cannot find the option....

We have in our neighbourhood these shared spaces for hobbies, a gym, garage, etc things that typically you do not have in multi-family housing. For a small fee, you get access. One of these spaces is for handcrafts, mainly to do with wood. I had no specific idea what I'm going to do there, just enrolled out of curiosity. I've been somewhat good with my hands all my life, so I thought I'll eventually come up with interesting projects. Some weeks go by and I start to notice these piles of misc wood pieces. Mostly scrap wood, knotty pine, the usual stuff. Then I notice this interesting piece of some hardwood with the words "free to use" written on it. I ask around and seems like no one is missing it so I just take it and immediatelty notice some potential for a bass guitar body. I measure, look at the grains and start to feel all warm and giddly inside. Yes yes yessssss.. It barely has enough dimensions for a body blank, but it's doable. I cut it in two pieces and found this nice alignment with the grains to get a kind of bookmatched vibe going on. At that time (it was like one year ago) I was super psyched about MM basses, so I then order a Stingray template set. While I wait for the templates to arrive, I use my SUB to get some rough idea of the body area and start to work on the glue joint. I clean the glue joint with some sanding blocks and razor blades, to get it to fit and not to have any gaps. Time for some Tite-Bond. The templates arrive, I make "backups" since the template material is kinda weak feeling. I use the "backups" to start the quality time with a router. After some passes with the straight router bit and a curved bit for the edges. Quite some time passes between the fotos, wasn't really thinking about documentation. This block is HEAVY, therefore I decided to make it ligher by making a generous space for all kinds of potential electronics setups. Also decided to go without the plate in the front and do everything from behind. The straight line was done using a guide, the rest is basically freehand. I also made a test cover from some other wood that was similar, but it actually came out so nice that I'll actually use it. I'm thinking of doing the attachment with some magnets, so that I can replace for example a battery without screws. Oh, also worked on the belly cut and the cutaway in the front. So here we are now, from this point forwards it gets expensive. I have always wanted to have one bass with a Status graphite neck, this most probably will be that one. Also, I'm really going back & forth with finishing, hardware color, etc overall look & feel. Suggestions welcome This list looks most probable at the moment: - Status neck - Chrome machine heads - Black bridge - Black pickguard or see-through or wood with hard finish - Electronics cover black with grains a bit visible - Soapbar style pickup (no magnets visible) - The body will definetly be done so that grains are clearly visible, looks really nice