Getting started on the electronics installation.
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(12/22/10) Left: As soon as the overspray is cleaned up one of the first tasks is to applu copper shielding tape to the walls of all the cavities in the instrument. Right: We are in the process of fitting the continuous wood pickup covers into the body and drilling for the adjustment screws. Care must be taken so that everything aligns properly. |
Pickups assembled and being mounted in their continuous grain wood covers.
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Just back from the finishing shop and it looks amazing.
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(12/20/10) The instrument has now been tinted and lacquered. As you can see - we put a pinkinsh tint on the back of the instrument and wrapped that color around to the front to create a subtle sunburst effect. This really brings out the strong colors of the Tulipwood. Looking forward to seeing this one completed! |
We put a pink tint on the mahogany back.
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Back view of the bass showing the tapered laminates and the cavity covers.
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(12/5/10) This photo shows the back of the instrument. The core section is one center strip of Padauk, Then two strips of Bloodwood with Maple on the outer edges. This makes for a very rigid neck and should yield a goos sound. You can also see the battery and control cavity covers. These will be attached with magnets for a nice smooth look with no screws! We may tint the mahogany a little but - not sure yet. Should look spectacular! |
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The bass is being finish sanded in preparation for the lacquer.
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(12/2/10) Left: The bass is now in the final sanding stage and almost ready for its polyester resin finish. You can see the continuous grain pickup covers in thes shot. Right: In order to save some time I used our vacuum press to glue two fingerboards onto their respective basses at the same time. I leave them overnight for the adhesive to cure. |
Fingerboards being glued onto bodies.
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Side dots and frets are now both installed.
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(11/30/10) The fingerboard has been sanded to a fine finish and we have also drilled and inset the side dots along the upper edge (in a red color to match the Tulipwood grain). The frets have also been installed and dressed at the ends so we are now able to get thihngs prepared to glue the fingerboard onto the body of the instrument. The Tulipwood inlay works very wekk with the birdseye maple and when we apply the Tulipwood headstock veneer everything will match! |
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The Tulipwood inlay has been installed and sanded flush.
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(11/26/10) The inlays on this fingerboard is the same Tulipwood that I am using for the top of the body and the headstock veneer. This will provide a very nice continuity along the length of the instrument. The Tulipwood inserts have been glued in and sanded flush with the top surface of the fingerboard. I'll do some final sanding and then move on to adding the side dots and the frets. This will be a very nice looking bass! |
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Pickup covers are almost complete.
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(11/9/10) The material we cut and saved from the top plate of the bass has now been glued up with some Bloodwood to provide the necessary thickness. The covers are then machined and sanded to the final outside dimensions. I then mount them in a CNC machine and cut the recess in the back so that our dual coil pickups will fit nicely into the covers. All we need to do now is add 3 adjustment screw holes and do some final sanding. |
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Cutting recesses for inlay into the fingerboard.
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(10/27/10) We decided that a birdseye maple fingerboard would look best on this instrument. having decided that - I thought that it would also be a nice idea to inset rectangular fret markers in tulipwood to match the body and headstock of the bass. The fingerboard has been cut to size, raduised and fret slots have been cut. Now that the recesses for the inlay have been machined all that's left is the nut slot and I can take this setup off the CNC. |
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Harvesting the pickup covers from the top plate.
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(9/17/10) We are using material from the top of the instrument to create the continuous grain pickup covers, a feature that is unique to our signature basses. I use a 1mm end mill to cut the correct sized pieces out of the calculated pickup locations. I will keep these aside and use them for the tops of the two pickups. I think this will look really nice on the finished instrument. I might even use Tulipwood as a neck inlay.... |
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This is the bookmatched Tulipwood top.
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(9/15/10) Our efforts to glue the two top pieces together were very successful. A nice clean joint that's very hard to see! One of the things that makes this bass unique is that it is very difficult to find Tulipwood wide enough to cover a bass body. I was lucky to find this piece which allowed me to create a very nice bookmatched top. I have enough material left over for the headstock veneer and a set of matching control knobs too! |
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Body is assembled and machined and ready for the top!.
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(9/9/10) While the top plate is being glued together the next operation on the body is to machine the top surface down to a specified thickness. During the same operation I employ the CNC to carefully machine around the perimeter of the end of the neck. This results in a nice flat surface and an accurate neck profile which will require careful fitting with the top plate further down the line. We have a gew machining operations to the top to do first. |
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Gluing the bookmatched halves of the top together.
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(9/5/10) We recently glued some maple veneer to the bottom surfaces of the two Tulipwood halves of the top plate. Having done that the jopint faces were machined straight and square and we glued the two halves together as seen in the photo to the left. This will allow us to move ahead with some further machining operations. We plan to have matching (continuous grain) pickup covers for this bass so we will need to cut p/u covers from the top material. |
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Gluing veneer onto the joint face of the upper bout.
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(8/15/10) Time to get things rolling on this bass again. I want to have it in our NAMM booth in January so we're picking up where we left off and getting it finished. I squared off the joint faces on the upper and lower mahogany bouts and in the photo to the left we are gluing decorative veneers onto the joint area. As soon as that is done to both sides we can glue the body halves onto the neck-through core and we'll have something that looks like areal bass! |
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These are the two mahogany pieces which will make up the back of the instrument.
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(2/11/10) We had to stop working on this bass due to the commitments we had for the 2010 NAMM show. Now that the show has passed and we are back in the shop we can re-start some of these projects for completion this spring/summer. On this bass, the material for the back of the body will be Mahogany. These are the two upper and lower bout pieces which will soon be attached to the center core of the bass. |
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Machining has started on the core of this bass. We're currently cutting the headstock angle.
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(6/9/09) The central core of our bass has been set up on our CNC machine and we have started by cleaning up the top joint surface of the neck. This becomes our datum for all the other machined surfaces. We then proceed to cut the headstock angle using a ball nosed end mill. We will do several other machining operations before we remove the neck from the two vises. This ensures that all the machined features are co-planar. |
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The piece of Tulipwood for the top of the bass is now up on the bandsaw. I have to split it down the middle to get two bookmatched pieces.
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(5/1/09) Today I stopped procrastinating and decided to resaw this piece of Tulipwood into its two bookmatched halves. It's a relatively hard wood and it took a while to cut all the way through. This will make a very attractive top for this bass. Next I will sand the two pieces flat and to a common thickness and we'll cut them closer to the actual shape of the body of the bass. I need to decide on a fingerboard for this instrument - maybe cocobolo... |
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These are the various laminates that will comine to make up the neck of this bass. Padauk in the center, then two strips of Bloodwood and the outer two pieces are Curly Maple.
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(4/26/09) The five piece neck is currently being machined. We just finished machining the various laminates to the correct taper for this neck and we have glued light and dark veneers onto the various woods. we are now ready to start gluing the laminates together to create the neck-through core of the instrument. This is our first 31" scale bass and the geometry between the neck and the body is slightly different. We'll proceed with care! |
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This is the material we will be using for the top of the bass. Tulipwood.
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(4/10/09) We are going to use Tulipwood - a member of the Rosewood family, for the top of this bass. It will result in a very nice honey and pink colored top with a nice grain. It's a relatively dense hardwood, so I will have to be careful not to add too much weight. We'll chamber the body to keep the overall weight to a minimum. We have not yet decided on a wood for the back, possibly ash, mahogany or alder, depending on what I see on my next trip to my wood supplier. |
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This bass is constructed as a neck-through instrument. It will be assembled as a center core of several laminates of Curly Maple and Bloodwood, with an African Padauk center laminate.
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(4/5/09) The core materials have been selected and we are now working on the recipe for the body. We have a beautiful piece of Tulipwood which we are planning to use as top and back material. We'll probably sandwich a tasty piece of curly maple in the center of the body as it allows us to do some custom tinting to make the whole instrument come together! With women bass players in mind we want this bass to deliver everything in a small package! |
