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Hi All,
You may have recently seen other posts by me in the main forum about a ultra short bass I am in the process of building.

I figured I would start this post on my build and show you what I am working on.

This is a bit of an experiment on my part in that I have drawn my own plans up in Qcad and will build it directly from the plans. This is how I work building furniture and other projects but have never done a guitar this way, I followed other plans to build the other guitars I have build so it will be fun to see how this turns out.

I use to play bass in a rock band in the 70's but now I mainly play 6 string. I just recently I had friend who plays bass in a local band ask me to work on his 3 basses, They just needed a fret dressing and setup but it gave me the chance to play around with one again. That got me the bug to build one. I decided on a 28.6 scale after seeing and playing the Squire Mini P. I am not a big guy and it seemed to fit well. I knew I could build one much better so...

Here is what I am building with


Spec's

28.6 Bass
Design is based around the Fender Tornado 6 string released in 1989
Body - American Walnut (but will be painted)
Neck - Maple
Fretboard - Maple
Pickups Fender Yosemiti PJ
Bridge Babics FCH4-AM Bridge (String Though Body)
Machine Heads Hipshot Ultra Lites



So here are all the parts and my drawing for this project.

The neck blank is 3 piece maple glued up in a \\\|||/// It is from my stash of maple I got back in early 2000s

The Walnut is a piece of cut-off I had from a table I did many moons ago. (Flat Sawn) My plans are to paint this guitar so the wood is mainly a choice of tone. I am not sure if you can actually hear the difference in woods but it is a piece I have had laying around so...

I'm probably not going to post a step by step but will update it along the way.

This Is the first electric guitar I have made from scratch and from my own drawing so it sould be interesting.


Cheers,
Bob

If you read my other post in the main forum you know I was having an issue with the truss rod not working as well as I wanted, I had not carved the back of the neck at that point and most opinions were that I needed to carve the back of the neck to get it to move. I carved it to my original spec's to what a P Bass neck is, but that didn't give me the movement i thought it should have so I carved it smaller to half way between a P and a J bass but it sill was pretty stiff. I finally carved it down to .0820 on the 1st fret and 0.870 at the 12th Fret and it is still stiff but I am getting movement. Ill wait and see how it works once stringed up.

One thing you may find interesting is that I use Cabinet Scrapers for a lot of things, Rather than sanding or filing the shape I pretty much always us my scrapers. If a scraper is prepped correctly it will take off as much as a hand plane but you have much more control. If you notice I am actually using a concave scraper to scrape the facets into the neck prior to rounding it off. You can see that I am able to get right up to my guide lines with crisp edges.

Ill post more as I progress

Cheers,
Bob

Radius the Fret board and Carving the neck...

Sorry the Pictures are out of sequence.. but you get the idea...

Cheers,
Bob

With the neck done the next thing to do is focus on the body.

I chose the Babicz String through Bridge because from what I have read, there are only a couple of short scale bass strings that will fit without winding the string wrapping around the post which leads to broken strings.

With the String through I can get 33.15" of string length before the post on the low E string. I would like to get a full 34" but could only do that if I angle the path through the body. I would have to modify the string holes through the bridge so the strings wouldn't bind. Not sure it is worth the extra effort to do that...

Anyone run into this issue before?

Ideas?

Cheers,
Bob

Cool Bob. I like build threads. I have NO IDEA at all about electrics. Do ALL bass pickups have dual posts for each string? Is it to get the vibration vibe? Like doppler or something?

While everything that I make is all acoustic, I DID hear a demo of a 6 string bass by a guy who makes kits out of reclaimed wood; that sounded very cool. Now that would be something I could do electric.
Like you said. "I knew I could build one so much better so."

You know. Multi-scale. Cool wood.

Regarding your question. Could you angle the strings through the body, on the same angle as from the bridge? But that massive bridge has me totally confused. The little tun o matic I got for the little arch top is easy to see.

Keep them coming.

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Why be normal?

Hi Ken,
Thanks for looking



I am by no means an expert with electronics, but I can follow schematics and know the basics so... Both of these pickups are single coil, double coil pickups are "humbuckers" (Its the way the 2 coils are positioned cancels out the hum. You may be confused by the split coil pickup, there are 2 pickups I show, one is a Fender P Bass split coil that looks like 2 pickups, and the other is a Fender Jazz bass the long skinny one.

Hope I made that clear...



The Bridge, It is a roller cam string height adjuster. What that does is allows much more string contact to the bridge. Never heard of them or used one so its all new to me..




Funny you mention that, that is exactly what I did last night, I was able to get just over 34" of string path, which means I could put most strings on it. Im not sure I want to modify the bridge so I am giving that some thought. (I would have to change the angles on the string holes)



Cheers,
Bob

This will explain the Babicz bridge much better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PF3nRVyv7Q

OK, Was going to post some more progress on my bass but it seems as though no one is here. Since I was hoping to get some answers to a few questions I have there isn't much of a point to continue posting here.



Cheers,
Bob

I like to look at the build threads but don’t have answers for you as I’ve never built a bass! Nevertheless I do like seeing how others do things. Good luck with yours.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"