Finished! Tom's African Build 2

[SpondonBassed]

2 hours ago, Andyjr1515 said:

Firm squeeze and your tang is well and truly nibbled (now then, John!  Keep it clean!

I can't think what you're referring to.

I'm young and no-one has ever nibbled my tang for me.  'Til now that is.  Will you bring flowers next time please?

Now that you've given me the idea I might take some time while I lock myself in the shed and invent The De-nibber™.  Someone's sure to want to sell fountain pens to hipsters and start a revival in sales of blotting paper and Quink.

Joking aside; Although I've only ever built from a kit so far - I've come around to thinking that if I did, I'd start off making necks with as standard a heel as is possible so that I can try them with different bodies.

For me, the neck is the bit that's crucial to the character of an instrument.  The tactile aspect of it interests me particularly.  If it feels right, it usually plays right too.

Frets are the tricky bit though.  I hate the thought of hand finishing 48 fret ends for a double octave fretboard but it's gotta be done.  I quite like the idea of a bound neck too.  That means doing all of the frets to size before pressing them home.  Nerve racking if you get one wrong.

Great build my friend.  Have some Afro-Celt sound system:

 

 

Edited February 28, 2020 by SpondonBassed

[Andyjr1515]

My wife always has to repeat what she says to me too

 

[Andyjr1515]

OK - I'll admit that this is a generous number of clamps just for the truss rod capping strip    :

 

They're only lightly tightened while the glue sets.  I was going to use a wooden beam and a single clamp but then I thought about it properly 

[SpondonBassed]

11 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

My wife always has to repeat what she says to me too

 

Thanks.  Fixed now.

[SpondonBassed]

9 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

this is a generous number of clamps

It still looks like you're a couple short - no offence like.

Because... (All together now!)

[RichardH]

30 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

It still looks like you're a couple short - no offence like.

Because... (All together now!)

Spondon's borrowed two for his nipples?

[Andyjr1515]

But yes, @SpondonBassed - you can certainly never have too many clamps when it comes to fixing the fretboard

My normal method - I use a series of radius blocks as clamping cauls and a hardwood caul at the back to be able to apply significant pressure

[Stub Mandrel]

1 hour ago, RichardH said:

Spondon's borrowed two for his nipples?

That would explain the 'Gibson' style spacing...

[SpondonBassed]

4 hours ago, RichardH said:

Spondon's borrowed two for his nipples?

 

2 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

That would explain the 'Gibson' style spacing...

 

Yeah yeah... but I'm still two short.

Edited February 28, 2020 by SpondonBassed

[Andyjr1515]

OK...this has gone a bit weird 

[SpondonBassed]

Sorry Andy.

I apologise for a bleed-through from the Gibson weird behaviour thread.

Sorry.  Ignore my teats.

Edited February 29, 2020 by SpondonBassed

[Andyjr1515]

Following morning and it's starting to look more like a bass:



The carve of the body - almost certainly hand carved from a solid block of wood - is thinner at the top horn than the main body.  As such, this looks skewwhiff, but is actually in line with the bridge plane:

What I might do is split the difference - angle the neck heel a touch to maybe halve this effect and sink in the bridge elements on the same side to keep the geometry right.


The body carve is also slightly wavy - which I want to retain - but at the plate here, it will need to be flattened so I don't have any crack-inducing high spots:



Nowadays, I would normally chisel round and underneath something like this to inset the plate flush with the top - it is a small job but makes it look super classy - but in this case I daren't.  That pocket base is simply too thin and too unknown strengthwise to risk it.


I think next job is probably back to the body and starting to sort the pickup chambers.  Got a busy day or two coming up but I'll let you all know how I get on when I get back to it

[Pea Turgh]

It looks like a square neck plate would fit there.  But then again, the new screw location would be  in a less structurally desirable place looking at the grain pattern.

[Andyjr1515]

2 minutes ago, Pea Turgh said:

It looks like a square neck plate would fit there.  But then again, the new screw location would be  in a less structurally desirable place looking at the grain pattern.

Square would have fit fine - and I'm sure would have been structurally fine too -  but once I have reshaped the curve of the pocket, I'm hoping this will add just a soupcon of je ne sais quoi. 

 

[Stub Mandrel]

Thin polyuerethane rubber gasket, some basses come fitted with one.

[SpondonBassed]

3 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Thin polyuerethane rubber gasket, some basses come fitted with one.

That or permanently bond the plate to the body with a flexible epoxy filler.  I mentioned a bonded shim earlier.  Using the two ideas in combination would reinforce the pocket fairly well, I think.

I'm keen to see what you said you had in mind Andy.

[Andyjr1515]

22 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

That or permanently bond the plate to the body with a flexible epoxy filler.  I mentioned a bonded shim earlier.  Using the two ideas in combination would reinforce the pocket fairly well, I think.

I'm keen to see what you said you had in mind Andy.

To be honest, just taking the highspots off with a cabinet scraper or the lightest skim with my trusty block plane.  It's just to make sure that the plate is sitting on a flat piece of wood in that area to maximise the compression from the machine screws without overstressing small areas because of any unevenness.

 

[SpondonBassed]

I get that but you said you had something in mind re: the neck pocket.

[Andyjr1515]

2 minutes ago, SpondonBassed said:

I get that but you said you had something in mind re: the neck pocket.

Ah - sorry, misunderstood.  No - I'll do that with a wood plane.  I'll take the inserts out so I don't knacker the blade and just pop a teeny angle on the heel of the neck.  Don't have a photo of it, but it's the other side of this:

 

[mixingwithtom]

Ooooooooooooooooooooohhhh!

Looking great

[Andyjr1515]

Next couple of challenges - pickups.  And more importantly, cable access for the pickups.

We're going for an Artec Ric-ish set of Humbucker and mini humbucker that I bought for another project and never got round to using, so I can gift these to Tom's project.  I also rate Artec products.  And for anyone fitting an acoustic under-saddle piezo, particularly their piezos.  Fraction of the cost of many other piezos and, in my view, just as good.

Tom prefers the 'full fat' sound of series humbuckers, and also pickups wired in series (I've fitted series/parallel switching in the past for him, but he generally sticks with the series setting).  So these two will be hardwired in series, straight to the jack.

And positioning.   The whole point of multi-scale is to balance the tone of each string.  Putting in pickups at right angles to the strings would completely negate that, by effectively putting the treble strings much closer to the bridge saddles.  So the pickups need to be also angled.  

You can see I've tried a few options, but I reckon this is a pretty good final configuration:

 

I will be making some wenge pickup rings from some last bits of constructional wenge veneer (2mm) that will also be used for the headstock plate.  This will mean that adjustment of the pickup heights to get the balance just-so should be straightforward.

Now - the big challenge.  getting control wire passages in without having to resort to covered channels at the back.

I have some super-long bradpoint drills that would actually be long enough to drill through the back of the neck pocket to both chambers, and also from the back to the rear chamber:

- but, this is exceptionally hard wood and the drills are not the best quality.

I will cut the chambers first and then experiment.

It is also not certain yet actually where the rear one would be drilled, as it isn't fixed yet how the jack will be secured and accessed.  Tom and I are thinking rear-edge access and angled - a bit Stratocaster/Ibanez style.  I need to do some careful thinking where the jack needs to be, where the access and fixing needs to be and where the bridge element fixings are going to be - trying to screw a bridge through a wire-filled passage wouldn't be a great idea 

Anyway - a bit more measuring, pondering and experimenting before the first step of cutting the chambers

 

[Si600]

I'm going to seem foolish now (more so than normal), and ask what the point of multiscale is. I've read the Wiki page, and you said "The whole point of multi-scale is to balance the tone of each string." 

But I'm still non the wiser. Sorry.

It makes the fretboard look pretty though.

[Andyjr1515]

58 minutes ago, Si600 said:

I'm going to seem foolish now (more so than normal), and ask what the point of multiscale is. I've read the Wiki page, and you said "The whole point of multi-scale is to balance the tone of each string." 

But I'm still non the wiser. Sorry.

It makes the fretboard look pretty though.

It's a very reasonable question, Si. For many years I was, too, a bit mystified - and put it down to eye-catching claptrap to be honest - until I had the task of building Pete's Piccolo bass:

Because that was going to be guitar scale and guitar pitch, how was I going to make it NOT sound like the bottom 4 strings of a guitar.  And the problem is usually the G - on a guitar it is often the string where 'smooth bassy' suddenly becomes 'jarry tinny'.

And - and yes, I know you can dial a lot of it out at the amp - but I have always thought the same about basses.  Might be just me, but through a completely clean and neutral EQ amp, I find that very often the G sounds 'different' to the other three strings.  To my ears, it often doesn't have the tone by brain is expecting from a bass.

So the simple theory of multiscale - and you have to always remember that the pitch you tune to is unchanged to standard - is as follows:

  Let's assume that it is like Tom's - 33" for the bottom E and 31" for the G and therefore to compare it with a fixed scale length bass of 32" :

- The longer scale length of 33" of the bottom E string means that, to reach standard pitch, you have to tighten the string more than the 32" fixed scale bass.  It's the same pitch, but the note will be a little more 'strident' than on the 32" bass, because the string is tighter.

- The shorter scale of 31" on the G means that, to reach standard pitch, the string will need to be loosened more than the 32" fixed scale bass.  Again, it's the same pitch, but that lower tension will give a warmer sound than the 32" bass next to it.

So instead of having a slightly boomy E and slightly jangly G, you have a touch more clarity on the E and a slightly softer G.

You can, of course, achieve similar effects by changing string gauges across the range, but that brings its own challenges.  And you lose out on the eye-catching claptrap too  

 

It worked a treat on Pete's Piccolo - which sounds NOTHING like a guitar and where the G is very much in the same tonal character as the E.  And I could do a direct comparison because I had an electric guitar with the same rails pickup at the same average scale length.  But it could have been better.  The bit I never thought through at the time was the need to also angle the pickup.  

But I'm not telling Pete, that

 

[Frank Blank]

27 minutes ago, Andyjr1515 said:

I've just spent an inordinate amount of time looking at this ...

[Daz39]

2 hours ago, Si600 said:

I'm going to seem foolish now (more so than normal), and ask what the point of multiscale is. I've read the Wiki page, and you said "The whole point of multi-scale is to balance the tone of each string." 

But I'm still non the wiser. Sorry.

It makes the fretboard look pretty though.

Think piano as opposed to guitar for string length.