Dr Frankensteins Westone

[alittlebitrobot]

Hello.
I'm not sure if this is actually of interest here, but it might be amusing for people who actually know what they're doing.
It's all totally finished now so it's not exactly a "build diary" but I'm going to post the photos I took along the way.
Here's a (hopefully) brief summary of the whys and whats:
I want to make a bass from scratch eventually but I thought a heavy renovation project would be a good learning experience. That turned out to be very true but being a renovation rather than a total build, it had a much higher chance of actually going the distance. To wit, the brief was as follows:
1. Finish it.
Although I usually go by "if you're going to do it, do it right", I knew if I thought like that this time, I'd never let myself get past the first step, but:
2. If there's an opportunity to do something unnecessary that'll be educational, do it.
3. Use only what guitar parts I already own.

Unfortunately, I was well on before I thought to document the process (as an educational tool for my next build) so I don't have a photo of the victim. It was a Westone Spectrum GT that my brother used to own for a few years. Then, he bought a Warwick and I had my Peavey so we decided to defret it for a laugh. We also turned the 4-in-a-row headstock into a 3+1. Then we moved away and got on with our lives and this poor Westone sat in our parents garage for a good ten years.
I don't have a photo of our one, so thanks to Google & Sons for this helpful photo of a Spectrum GT in its prime
[attachment=172617:01.jpg]

[alittlebitrobot]

Here's where my photos start. At this point, I'd already melted and scraped off the poly finish with a heat gun and a paint scraper. I filled the control cavity holes with paintbrush wood, and chiseled the edges off the inside of the pickup cavities so that I could slot in some wood. I decided I was going to make it a 30" scale fretless with a P pickup. The Westone pickups and electronics are way too good to waste on this shambles. I'm saving them for my next one.
[attachment=172618:02.jpg] [attachment=172619:03.jpg]

Chiseled and sanded the paintbrushes flush
[attachment=172620:04.jpg]

and glued in the wood blocks.
[attachment=172621:05.jpg]

I mentioned that we'd previously hacked the 4 in-line headstock into a 3+1, but it was a bit wonky so I squared the edges and shoved on a bit of extra wood (see part 2 of the brief)
[attachment=172622:06.jpg]

I have no pictures of this bit, but I steamed off the defretted fingerboard, planed off the radius and flipped it over so I could have an unblemished rosewood fingerboard. Then I glued it on
[attachment=172623:07.jpg]

but, as you can see, the usable portion of the fingerboard didn't cover the full neck so I took some scraps off another bit of a neck that I had and stuck them together, then onto this fingerboard
I thought choosing a bit with an inlay would be a nice visual touch. I put some drops of superglue onto some rosewood dust to act as a gap filler. I wasn't expecting this to turn into a mini smoking volcano. Very odd. But it sanded down flat in the end.
[attachment=172624:08.jpg]

Edited October 1, 2014 by alittlebitrobot

[ahpook]

Looking forward to seeing the photos

[alittlebitrobot]

The neck in it's original position (34" scale) and placed on top at it's new position (30" scale). You can see the new body shape I drew on, and the pickups are from the same collection of bits of a P bass that I salvaged some rosewood from earlier.
[attachment=172625:09.jpg]

I wanted a side-mount jack. For this, I broke the rules and bought a telecaster style jack from eBay.
[attachment=172626:10.jpg]

and my system for making wood knobs. I had some old plastic ones that I epoxied into some oak. Then I ripped the shaft out of an old potentiometer so that I could mount the knob on a drill and use it as a lathe. The last photo is not-quite-done-yet photo, hence the inconsistent thickness.
[attachment=172627:11.jpg]

Then this arrived from China! Couldn't have done this without it. With it, I was able to use my Dremel as a router for the neck and pickup cavity. The Dremel really isn't meant for this kind of work so I did it in very, very shallow passes to rout the edges (having removed most of the internal stock with chisels and the drill) and then cleaned it all up at the end with the Dremel again.
[attachment=172628:12.jpg] [attachment=172629:13.jpg]

Neck pocket fit. Not bad..
[attachment=172630:14.jpg]

Just checking the alignment of the new neck pocket with some gardening twine and the bridge in its original position.
[attachment=172631:15.jpg]

[alittlebitrobot]

Time to rough out the new body shape using saws, rasps, sanding discs, whatever I had
[attachment=172632:16.jpg]

Now that I could see it with the neck in its new position, there was obviously a gap formed by the old neck pocket. I wanted to see if I could add some wood there to bring the body closer to the neck and giving the impression that it was a 'real' singlecut. (I know it IS a singlecut, but I mean the ones you see where the body contacts the neck much further along)
[attachment=172633:17.jpg]

and then shaped it back flush with the body. You can also see further progression of the body shaping here
[attachment=172634:18.jpg]

[alittlebitrobot]

The story so far:
[attachment=172635:19.jpg]

rear body-shaping
[attachment=172636:20.jpg]

Then I slightly meandered from the principle of the thing and decided to make a cosmetic change. The blocks that I filled the original cavities with were a different wood with grain going a different direction, so I routed a couple of millimeters down and then filled the gaps with wood I sawed off the original body.
[attachment=172637:21.jpg]

Sanded flush and re-routed. Much better.
[attachment=172638:22.jpg]

Oil time! Tung.
[attachment=172639:23.jpg]

Left out in the garden in my 'drying tunnel'. A Draper folding workbench with a binliner stretched over. Keeps the rain off, let's the wind through the tunnel.
[attachment=172640:24.jpg]

Meanwhile, over at the neck: mirror finish on the rosewood, after a LOT of sanding through the grits up to 1500. Very pleasing.
[attachment=172641:25.jpg]

I thought about making a pickguard from wood but when I cut the shape out of paper and laid it on, I forgot all about wood and just knew it had to be a white p/g.
[attachment=172642:26.jpg]

So I cheated (again) and bought some material. A sheet of acrylic. I cut out the cavity of the other mystery P bass I've mentioned (weird to imagine cutting out a hole) and stuck it to the acrylic. Then I drilled through and used this cavity shape to guide me.
[attachment=172643:27.jpg]

I had to do that cut first because the alignment was critical. After that, I just cut out the neck and bridge bits to fit
[attachment=172644:28.jpg]

[alittlebitrobot]

I don't have photos of what happened next. I got thinking about refinishing and, being a painter, I had a bunch of oil paints in the house. I decided that oil paint is basically wood stain so I sanded the bass that I'd begun calling Westy back to the bare wood and rubbed in a sort of tomato soup colour I made with vermillion and burnt sienna. I also wanted to try this Tru-Oil that everybody goes on about, so I bought some..... and it is actually brilliant stuff. Certainly brilliant for beginners. Maybe the more experienced woodworkers think differently.
Finally, I put on all the hardware and strung it up..... and the strings didn't actually sit in the nut. They just went from the string posts over the nut and on down to the bridge Ah well. I fixed it by screwing in a couple of string trees. One from the Westone and another from the pile of P bass bits I had, which ended up contributing much more to this project than I'd anticipated.
Anyway, here it is. Small, ugly and weird, like its owner, but it was well worth doing. I learned so much and I can't wait to get started on my next one.

[attachment=172662:derp1.jpg] [attachment=172663:derp2.jpg]

beside my 34" scale SR506
[attachment=172645:29.jpg]

I had some tapewound strings that I had had on my acoustic bass for a few years. Since I already have a 34" PJ fretless strung with roundwounds, I thought the nylons would just be another kind of sound to set this apart. Tuned up to pitch, they were a bit too tight for my liking so I have the whole thing tuned down two steps. Then the hard bit... playing something, anything, on an unlined 30" fretless neck when I've never even played a short scale bass before. OH boy. You should've been there. You'd have smashed it to bits.
After a couple of days of noodling, I recorded this. I didn't have enough shielding (It was all second-hand shielding and some of it got unusably torn) so it hums a bit and my intonation is only just about acceptable if you're in a good mood. The short scale, flatwound, low-tension sound and feel reminded me of the videos of Bakithi playing the Kala Ubass so I sort of went that direction as I'm a fan of his and mad about mbaqanga groups like the Mahotella Queens. I thought something slidey might help give a better idea of the sound of it.
Here you go. (sorry)
[media]http://youtu.be/00wF5oEyckk[/media]

AND I'M DONE!
Thanks for reading if you made it this far

Edited September 27, 2014 by alittlebitrobot

[Andyjr1515]

Love it ! I just LOVE it!!!

[alittlebitrobot]

Thank you! I've just been looking through your website. Great stuff!

[hamfist]

Seriously good fun. Nice job !

[alittlebitrobot]

Thanks very much! It was loads of fun.