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5 string bass guitar

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spuddevans:
I was looking through some old photos when I came across some pictures of the 5 string Bass guitar I built a few years ago and I thought I'd share them with the group.

This was actually the 2nd guitar I built, the 1st being a standard electric "Strat" copy, but I bought a pre-made neck that was complete with frets and markers. This build was completely scratch built ( apart from the pickups and tuners and bridge, if I had my lathe and mill back then I would've made these too )

I have a couple of in-construction pictures, 1st up is a shot of the neck. I should explain that this is a "Thru-neck" design, that is, instead of the neck bolting on to the body like a lot of guitars, the neck extends all the way thru the body. I decided to make it up like a sophisticated sarnie consisting of ( takes deep breath ) Purpleheart-Maple-Purpleheart(thin strip)-Maple-Purpleheart-Maple-Purpleheart(thin strip)-Maple-Purpleheart (Phew!!) a total of 9 laminations.

Gluing all of this up was quite a challenge as the glue had a working time of only 30 mins and had to be applied evenly, and thinly, to each mating side, then align and then clamp up while keeping alignment.

Anyway, here's the pic


You might note that it seems from that photo that there is a section of the centre "Purpleheart" lamination that is missing. It is there, but it has been routed out to make space for a "Truss-rod", a device for counteracting the tension of the strings and stopping the neck bending into a banana.


This is a closer view of the body-section of the neck. To make for more comfortable playing, the neck can be angled backwards slightly, but with a Thru-Neck design it is easier to angle the body, hence the angled cut.




This is a closer view of the headstock end, it's made by a long scarf joint, but made by attaching the scarfed bit on the wrong side. Fortunately all the laminations lined up ok.




This is what the body was made out of, they started out as 2 7"x24" pieces of 2" thick Zebrano, or Zebrawood. Each piece was then cut ( very carefully ) into 3 slices of 1/4", 1" and 3/8" thick 7"x24" slices.




Anyway skip ahead a few months and this is the result ( sorry, I couldnt find any other in-between photos )









The voluum knobs were turned from Ebony


The cover for the electronics took me quite a long time to figure out how to accomplish


This close-up shows how I tried to get the grain matched up between the 3 "slices" of each body piece talked about earlier.



That's just a brief review of the build based on the pics I was able to dig up, if anyone wants any more info on this please just ask, I dont want to bore you all any more than I absolutely have to  :D


Tim

tinkerer:
Really nice job Tim. :thumbup: I am assuming you play. Got any youtube videos?

chuck foster:
very nice job tim.  :clap:

i made a double neck bass (four and eight string) and a double neck guitar (six and twelve string) when i was in high school. they both were neck through body. allot of work but when you have very limited funds and your dad is a cabinet maker you just do what you can with what you have. i even made the bridges for both guitars.
i have no pictures and both guitars no longer exist.............they ended up in a campfire...............don't ask  :bang: :bang:

chuck  :wave:

Bernd:
Very nice wood working there Tim.

Bernd

sbwhart:
Very Nice work there Tim

Cheers

Stew

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