Custom bass guitar

[piranhaking]

I finally remembered to take some pics of the bass I built.





The body shape is based off of a Cort bass that i have, but instead of having the extremely round edged look of the Cort, it is routered with a short roundover more like a Fender. The truss rod cover plate I make my self out of a piece of Formica we had sittin around the shop. The neck is laminated out of 4 peices of maple and runs the entire length of the instrument. It has EMG select pickups and gotoh tuning keys. If anyone has any other questions about it feel free to ask.

[recycling goddess]

wow, you made that?

[piranhaking]

yep, and by made i dont mean i put together a pre-fab kit like most people who "build" their guitars do. Our family owns a cabinet shop, and one time we did a set of maple cabinets. We had a bunch of extra wood stacked up for a while. One night i was looking some some tab sheet music and kept finding links about building a bass, so i decided to give it a shot. I looked up all the hardware I needed and kinda used the bass i already had as a model to go by. I did a little research into what some of the distances should be and how the wiring works. I started out by making a copy of the body out of 2X4's all laminated together, so i could figure out how to make all the cuts needed, and how to cut out the holes for the knobs and wiring cavity (that ends up being like a 13 step process of drilling and routing different holes in from both sides and if one hole is done out of order the whole thing is shot). After i figured it all out on the pine one, i started gluing up the maple. The neck is four boards wide, the body is three boards thick and then glued onto the sides of the neck piece. There is what's called a scarf joint at the top of the neck where the headstock is. That is where you cut it on a sharp angle, then flip a piece over and glue it back down. That is how you get the angle for the headstock. Most of the neck was shaped with a pocket knife (i ordered spoke shaves, but they kept being backordered so i gave up) and a big hand held belt sander. There are three groves in the neck under the finger board. One is for the truss rod (a threaded rod that lets you put pressure back on the neck to counter the pulling forward from the strings) and two carbon fiber rods for strength. The only wood part i ordered was the finger board, because i would have had to buy like a $40-50 dollar saw, then a gauge to give the distances between the frets that cost like $20 i think, and then a radiused sanding block that would cost about $40, and the wood itself (i dont have any other source for that type of wood) and it would have cost like $15. I got the premade one with the fret slots already cut, and the radius already sanded in it for around $25. I decided i didnt wanna spend all the extra cash just to make that one part. Anyway...enough rambling about names of parts most of you have never heard of , but like i said...if anyone has any questions about how any particular aspects of it were done just ask.

[Ginevive]

Wow; I just saw this thread; NICE work there I guess you could feasably have any shaped guitar you'd want, you could just make it yourself.. awesome.

[Vomitore]

Should toss some real EMG's in their and a bad-ass bridge and you're ready to go! Nice work though.

[Sausage]

Nice bass! It's crying out "put EMGs on me!!"
I play guitar and don't know much about basses...
I like the strat-like body.

[Styx]

That's pretty cool.