Around 7 months a go i started this project and it took me around 2 months to get to the stage i am at. I'll post my progress and stages here whenever i remember to take a photo.
Planning
I'm a bass player myself so i knew that what i needed was a heavy hard wood two create a dark bassy sound. I decided to stick with mahogany. I then drew up some flu sized plans of the body size and decided not to use a custom neck but to buy a P-Bass neck because i love the P-Bass.
I needed to find some materials and a place to work so a started to ring up some friends and figure out where i was going to build this thing. After a couple weeks of researching an old friend of mine had a workshop in his garage so i asked him if i could use it for a couple of months and he obliged. For the material for the body i would take down a couple of shelves from my garage and cut them down and glue them together. The neck and electronics i would try and buy second hand from Ebay or a local music store.
After about 6 weeks i had taken the shelves down and started to build the Bass Guitar.
Building
1) Got some old long mahogany shelfs and cut them into 1/3's
2) Sanded the finish off them and stuck them together using a biscuit joint and PVA (tonnes of it)
3) The Other parts arrived off Ebay after costing just £100 for a 70's P-Bass Neck, American fender J-Bass Pickups and Electronics, Musicman Bridge and Fender Cali Neckplate. so i lined it all up and figured out how things we're going to go.
4) Left for a couple of days returned to it and then cut the shape out using the plans on the band saw.
5) Because of lacking a precise way of doing it, i ended up chiselling out the neck pocket myself and it turned out to bb a damd good fit but i would still need to dremel it later on in the process.
6) Next step was to mill the pickup slots and internal wiring. This was relatively simple and quick to do until i decided to change the way that i was going to install the electronics so i could avoid having a back plate covering the electronic compartment.
7) The bottom pickup slot was done and it fitted perfectly! I then attached the bridge and slotted the neck in to see how it looked.
More Coming Soon...
Planning
I'm a bass player myself so i knew that what i needed was a heavy hard wood two create a dark bassy sound. I decided to stick with mahogany. I then drew up some flu sized plans of the body size and decided not to use a custom neck but to buy a P-Bass neck because i love the P-Bass.
I needed to find some materials and a place to work so a started to ring up some friends and figure out where i was going to build this thing. After a couple weeks of researching an old friend of mine had a workshop in his garage so i asked him if i could use it for a couple of months and he obliged. For the material for the body i would take down a couple of shelves from my garage and cut them down and glue them together. The neck and electronics i would try and buy second hand from Ebay or a local music store.
After about 6 weeks i had taken the shelves down and started to build the Bass Guitar.
Building
1) Got some old long mahogany shelfs and cut them into 1/3's
2) Sanded the finish off them and stuck them together using a biscuit joint and PVA (tonnes of it)
3) The Other parts arrived off Ebay after costing just £100 for a 70's P-Bass Neck, American fender J-Bass Pickups and Electronics, Musicman Bridge and Fender Cali Neckplate. so i lined it all up and figured out how things we're going to go.
4) Left for a couple of days returned to it and then cut the shape out using the plans on the band saw.
5) Because of lacking a precise way of doing it, i ended up chiselling out the neck pocket myself and it turned out to bb a damd good fit but i would still need to dremel it later on in the process.
6) Next step was to mill the pickup slots and internal wiring. This was relatively simple and quick to do until i decided to change the way that i was going to install the electronics so i could avoid having a back plate covering the electronic compartment.
7) The bottom pickup slot was done and it fitted perfectly! I then attached the bridge and slotted the neck in to see how it looked.
More Coming Soon...
