mhoss32 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 So every year or so, I seem to get the itch to build another bass (much to the dismay of my girlfriend) and this time around i decided that i wanted to be a bit more ambitious than i had been preivously, and build myself a hollowbody. id been kind of looking around for some bits of wood for this for a while and couldnt quite decide what i fancied, but i knew i wanted to do some abalone/mop inalys in the neck, as id done a few on the last bass id built and really enjoyed it. with this in mind i decided a darker fretboard would help them stand out, so i decided on ziricote. david dyke (who has supplied the fretboards for the last 2 projects ive done) had some in stock, and as i dont live too far from him I went to pick it up in person. to cut a long story short i ended up coming home with 2 bookmatch sets of cocobolo, a huge slab of wenge, a bunch of padauk binding and some veneers as well (hes a good salesman). truth be told i was over the moon to find the cocobolo, and although its not cheap its getting harder and harder to find these days, so i decided to bite the bullet while i still had the chance. the other thing i really wanted to try on this build was a bigsby tailpiece. not exactly the most orthodox setup, i know, but having both seen and heard them on a couple of stanley clarke's alembics, im desperate to give it a go (and ive got a fairly good idea about how im gonna tackle the challenges the bigsby will throw up on a project like this) as if all of that wasnt over the top/ambitious enough... a friend of mine whos an electrical engineer has agreed to help me put together a preamp for this project, so hopefully that'll be another fun little challenge to take on as well. wish me luck.... pretty sure im gonna need it! specs are as follows: Body: cocobolo/wenge/padauk/cocobolo neck - i had an old schecter stilletto maple neck which i liked, and so im going to reuse this (waste not want not!) - 34 inch scale 24 frets fretboard - Ziricote with abalone/mop storm design/ maybe bound with padauk? bridge - schaller 462 bridge tuners - schaller m4s tailpiece - bigsby b50/500 - (re drilled for bass spacing) pickups - MEC humbuckers preamp - custom built preamp (hopefully) thats the first rough our of the body design, although i've since made it slightly wider at the narrowest point... im also not sure about the pickguard, so that may be subject to change and this is the wood haul, i'll take some proper pictures of the cocobolo and put them up shortly, along with the inlay designs 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Looks a great design! And some nice woods Just a detail to watch out for - cocobolo is a stunningly beautiful wood but is VERY oily. Even with acetone wiping before gluing, I couldn't get titebond to hold it tight and ended up using Z-poxy to glue the structural pieces. Also, when filing or sanding, you need to steel brush the file or sanding block frequently as it gums up very quickly! But, the result will be worth it. Look forward very much to seeing this one progress Andy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 21, 2018 Author Share Posted October 21, 2018 Haha i know, every person ive spoken to so far has given me the cocobolo warnings between that and the wenge making every tool it touches as dull as a spoon this is going to be an interesting one. and i know what you mean about glueing it with titebond, the last time i tried it (even with acetone) it turned to powder. ive had some good results with epoxy before, as you say, and with the Gel CA glue that gorilla do also, so one of those will probably be the solution also, here are the designs for the neck inlays, i actually did these a while ago... quite ambitious i know, but i think they'll be effective. theyre off with Bruce wei in vietnam for laser cutting as we speak, so should be arriving soon! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 6 minutes ago, mhoss32 said: Haha i know, every person ive spoken to so far has given me the cocobolo warnings between that and the wenge making every tool it touches as dull as a spoon this is going to be an interesting one. and i know what you mean about glueing it with titebond, the last time i tried it (even with acetone) it turned to powder. ive had some good results with epoxy before, as you say, and with the Gel CA glue that gorilla do also, so one of those will probably be the solution also, here are the designs for the neck inlays, i actually did these a while ago... quite ambitious i know, but i think they'll be effective. theyre off with Bruce wei in vietnam for laser cutting as we speak, so should be arriving soon! Can't wait! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreek Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Interesting what you're doing with the fretboard... I saw an episode of American Chopper where they had some laser etching done on some mahogany - is this what you're having done? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BreadBin Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 Laser etching is simply burning a very thin surface layer. We have some customers who require it to be done on the stainless steel couplings we supply. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 21, 2018 Author Share Posted October 21, 2018 nope its just the cutting thats being done by a machine, just to make sure all the individual pieces fit together perfectly. it'll actually be inlaid into the fretboard by hand, then the gaps filled as you normally would with a dark sawdust/superglue mix, then the fretboard will have a couple of coast of thinned tru-oil to darken it down a bit if needed Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreek Posted October 21, 2018 Share Posted October 21, 2018 I'll be interested to see the result... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 22, 2018 Author Share Posted October 22, 2018 Ok, got some good pics of the cocobolo pieces: Its hard to see from the picture, but the piece on the left has a gorgeous dark streak running down the centre, so thats what i'm going to use for the top i think. these pieces are about 9mm thick, so along with the wenge centre and the heavy hardware this bass is going to have some serious heft to it. im pretty used to a heavy bass, and i tend to use very wide (4 inch) straps, so i think ill probably be ok if i can keep it somewhere around 10 - 10.5 lbs final weight. the two basses i play at the moment are these two: The Brown Buzzard weighs 10.4 lbs i think, and the purple one weighs 9.5 so theyre both pretty heavy, and my shoulder hasn't given way yet. pickups (the same as the purple buzzard) should be arriving in the next two days as well, so i can sketch out the cavities that will be cut in the wenge centre. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 24, 2018 Author Share Posted October 24, 2018 well the inlays arrived, and wow they look stunning, the pictures don't really bring out the colours but they really loads on the pressure a bit to get it right... but a bit of pressure is probably good. in other news - i managed to get the fretboard off the old neck with no major hiccups, as well as doing some research about the preamp that is going to hopefully go into this bass steamy steamy... as for the preamp, the idea at the moment is to go with a setup along the lines of the "anderton super tone control" from craig anderton's book "electronics projects for musicians", albeit with a couple of modifications. (anyone bored by electronics can switch off for this part) its an SVF based preamp, wired up with 6 controls: High pass, low pass, band pass filters, frequency control, resonance control (basically Q control) and a high/low resonance switch. in the config above it also has a volume control wired in, but this is either going to be omitted completely or replaced with a trim pot that is just set and then left alone. there will have to be a couple of changes to make this work well as an onboard preamp though. the circuit in the original book was rated at 7ma power draw, which is a little more than i would like. so "IC1" which is the quad op-amp is the low noise version, but there is also the TL064 available, not as low noise but much lower power draw. i guess we'll see, im going to build one of these things outside the bass and test it first, then make any of the necessary changes after that. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BreadBin Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Inlays look great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilmourisgod Posted October 24, 2018 Share Posted October 24, 2018 Wow! Those inlays are gorgeous. Ambitious build you have here, that’s going to be fun. I always wanted to try a Bigsby or Kahler tremolo on a bass, but figured I wouldn’t use it much. I saw Stanley a few times over the years, never saw him play the Bigsby bass, he just bent harmonics on the open string length at the headstock. I’ll be watching this one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teebs Posted October 25, 2018 Share Posted October 25, 2018 Beautiful inlays! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 26, 2018 Author Share Posted October 26, 2018 Thanks guys for all the nice comments... if i ruin this now i fell like ill have let you all down! So the fretboard and body panels are now all glued up! yippee so ive been getting on with starting to get the inlays into the neck. scrapey scrapey.... The first wave took me about half an hour to get in, and based on the fiddly nature of some of the other bits... im guessing itll be a 6 - 8ish hour job alltogether. im really enjoying doing it though, so im going to spread it out over a few evenings and take my time. my missus is overjoyed and really likes sharing the kitchen counter with all the wood shavings. meanwhile, i managed to get the first cuts done on the body panels after they were glued up. (only the cocobolo is glued/bookmatched, the wenge is one massive slab!) not weighed them yet, but just carrying those pieces around made my arm ache... so theres a hell of a lot of material to still be removed before this thing is at a reasonable weight. also big thanks to andyjr for the tips on gluing up the cocobolo, ended up doing it with some ultra strong araldite, and it seems like that worked pretty well... again my missus was overjoyed at the smell of me mixing up epoxy in the kitchen. she is a very patient woman. also meanwhile, my electrical maestro has been hard at work with the CNC, and got a first test board for the preamp milled out: this just being the first mockup, its just done on a spare piece of the board. the final one will likely be long and thin, and use 2 dual op-amps instead of the one quad op amp for the benefits of packaging. also worth bearing in mind the idea is to get the circuit board printed by a company on the final one, its likely we can make the whole thing a little more compact with some clever design. im really looking forward to finding out how this sounds. once we've got the test board put together, the plan is to remove the ACG eq-02 preamp from the purple buzzard, and hook this up to test as the new bass will have the same MEC humbuckers. this will let us make the adjustments so it matches up well with the actual pickups that will go into the bass. speaking of which... they arrived yesterday! very exciting. (the missues is even more even more pleased that she keeps having to get up and sign for packages while im out of the house) the plan is to use the spare pieces of cocobolo from the top piece and make up some book matched cocobolo pickup covers for these, with that nice dark bit of wood grain running down the centre. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 Looking great Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gilmourisgod Posted October 26, 2018 Share Posted October 26, 2018 Dang, that fretboard is gorgeous! Can you afford to take any more width of the center cocobolo “beam” along the string path? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted October 29, 2018 Author Share Posted October 29, 2018 On 26/10/2018 at 16:51, Gilmourisgod said: Dang, that fretboard is gorgeous! Can you afford to take any more width of the center cocobolo “beam” along the string path? I assume you mean the wenge? and yeah i think im going to have to, and take some off the edges, and drill out some weight elsewhere too... in case you can't read that... thats 4lbs 7oz just for the wenge. by my best guess, if this all got stuck together and the hardware added on as it is now, this thing would come in around 15lbs, and thats too heavy even for a beast of a man like me. im just realizing now that ive basically got a collection of the heaviest wood i can find and then built a huge body shape with it. worst comes to the worst i'll rout some of the thickness off the wenge, but if i can help it id rather not. in other news, the inlays are coming along well. i had a pretty successful weekend: getting the lightning and those tiny fiddle ends of the clouds in SUUUUUUUCKED. but im pleased with it so far. i like the way the ziricote looks in the background as well, i'd been tempted to just go with a flat black ebony to help the inlays stand out, but the ziricote gives it a bit of depth. what do you guys think? also ive now got a headstock design im pretty happy with: I had originally planned to go with a fairly classic symmetrical headstock... sort of alembic esque. but i always loved the look of le fay bass headstocks: its obviously very similar, although widened out a bit to accommodate a long truss rod cover and some big schaller tuners, and reversed. for some reason i always thought the le fay ones looked like they were the wrong way round. 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andyjr1515 Posted October 30, 2018 Share Posted October 30, 2018 On 29/10/2018 at 10:02, mhoss32 said: I assume you mean the wenge? and yeah i think im going to have to, and take some off the edges, and drill out some weight elsewhere too... in case you can't read that... thats 4lbs 7oz just for the wenge. by my best guess, if this all got stuck together and the hardware added on as it is now, this thing would come in around 15lbs, and thats too heavy even for a beast of a man like me. im just realizing now that ive basically got a collection of the heaviest wood i can find and then built a huge body shape with it. worst comes to the worst i'll rout some of the thickness off the wenge, but if i can help it id rather not. in other news, the inlays are coming along well. i had a pretty successful weekend: getting the lightning and those tiny fiddle ends of the clouds in SUUUUUUUCKED. but im pleased with it so far. i like the way the ziricote looks in the background as well, i'd been tempted to just go with a flat black ebony to help the inlays stand out, but the ziricote gives it a bit of depth. what do you guys think? also ive now got a headstock design im pretty happy with: I had originally planned to go with a fairly classic symmetrical headstock... sort of alembic esque. but i always loved the look of le fay bass headstocks: its obviously very similar, although widened out a bit to accommodate a long truss rod cover and some big schaller tuners, and reversed. for some reason i always thought the le fay ones looked like they were the wrong way round. Yes - i think the ziricote is the icing on the cake. That fretboard looks utterly splendid! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jimothey Posted October 30, 2018 Share Posted October 30, 2018 I agree that fretboard is stunning it almost seems a shame to cover it!! 😀 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted November 1, 2018 Author Share Posted November 1, 2018 On 30/10/2018 at 18:47, Jimothey said: I agree that fretboard is stunning it almost seems a shame to cover it!! 😀 I know, i was lucky to get a piece that nice! although hopefully enough of that lovely figure will show through the inlays. the thinking is that the dark "cloud" pieces are supposed to look like the breaks in the clouds during a thunderstorm, so the ziricote is as much a part of the overall scene as the pearly bits. sort of like how lightning illuminates the clouds as it passes through: whether or not it works out that way remains to be seen... okay so exciting times are coming... THE INLAYS ARE CARVED OUT!..... but not in yet. most of the rest went fairly smoothly... again apart from those bits of lightning. next time i do an inlay... no lightning. annoyingly, by the time id finished doing all the waves, i'd got fairly good at it. no doubt by the time i come to do the next bass i will have forgotten all of this. for any of you interested what a fretboard looks like before the inlays actually get glued in, and what inalys look like not in the fretboard: you can probably see to the far left of the first picture a little black square in the first wave, turns out i went a tiny bit too deep there, so thats a little square of ebony veneer that covers up my mistake. in the end, i separated the large cloud pieces either side of the lightning and did them separately, it was just easier that way to get it to all line up nicely. you can probably also see on that picture the two bottles of CA glue poised and ready... well that picture was taken pretty late, and the missus told me to tidy the kitchen and go to bed. so you'll have to wait for the big reveal once theyre all glued in. you can also see on the second picture the headstock with the tuner holes plugged and the sides cut off. im going to glue some new maple wings on tomorrow to accomodate the new headstock design. for now... heres the fretboard with the inalys just laid in place: they all lie within a couple of tenths from flush, so they should all look very nice glued in and sanded back. the only real concern is the black MOP clouds... black mother of pearl isn't the most consistent, and so sanding back even a few tenths of a mm can really change the shades that show through. im hoping this won't be a big issue, but i really like the clouds nice and dark so hopefully they don't lighten up too much once sanded and polished. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Teebs Posted November 1, 2018 Share Posted November 1, 2018 Looking great! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheGreek Posted November 1, 2018 Share Posted November 1, 2018 Slow and steady....take lots of care..I really like the idea...hope it pans out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zvirus Posted November 3, 2018 Share Posted November 3, 2018 Wow... what a Skill! Amazing Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mhoss32 Posted November 7, 2018 Author Share Posted November 7, 2018 Da daaaa! the inlays are only bloody in!! little bit of super glue and wenge dust to start with... ] followed by a fairly intense sanding session... and heres the reults! theyre not perfect i know, but in the end im sure they'll be a nice flourish. im happy so thats the main thing! im not totally sure whether or not to darken the ziricote with some oil to help them stand out... what do you guys think? in the meantime... the headstock has had the wings glued and cut, and i got a nice cocobolo headstock piece cut as well: And, i also managed to get the tops off the pickups, and cut out some nice bookmatch pieces of cocobolo for the covers to match the top! its all coming along fairly nicely at this point next step will be to trim those down and sand them, then later in the week ill be working on the body again... hopefully removing some of the weight. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BreadBin Posted November 7, 2018 Share Posted November 7, 2018 Those inlays look fantastic! Do you think they will have much effect on the sound? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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