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Post by thetragichero on Oct 16, 2019 15:54:41 GMT -5
wherein i document my progress building a 5 string bass. i have had everything (including strings!) but the body for about six months. i speced out getting a custom warmoth body but since the neck i purchased has a squared heel instead of the 'deluxe' rounded heel i would've spent 300 bucks plus for a body that would still need quite a bit of woodwork saw an ad on Craigslist for this squier jaguar bass body and figured for 70 bucks (minus what i can recoup from selling the pickguard, control plate, and bridge for) it's worth the effort so the plan is: strip the body, fill in routs for control plate and p pickup (dimarzio area j 5 fits perfectly in current bridge slot), rout out neck pocket to fit wider 5 string neck, rout out back of the body for control cavity and front for j neck pickup, drill for string through bridge installation, finish, and jam on! i am thinking i may put a veneer on the front so that i can have a translucent/burst finish. body appears to be constructed of several pieces
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Post by thetragichero on Oct 16, 2019 19:40:53 GMT -5
this is all I'm doing tonight but i found my heat gun and stripped a bit of paint, sanded a bit with 120 grit we have real wood construction! it looks like 5 pieces, 3 one inch sections on the interior and two wings not that i am averse to plywood.... I've got a couple of plywood guitars that sound great
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Post by cynical1 on Dec 4, 2019 0:18:06 GMT -5
Funny, along with all of the other projects I never had time for is an Ibanez Mikro bass that is destined to become a 5 string piccolo bass.
I realized quickly string spacing was going to be tight, so I picked up some individual string saddles and ground them to get the spacing to work on the existing neck.
I don't know if you have your pickups yet, but none of the standard pole pickups would work, so I haunted eBay forever to score two cheap Bartolini's. I wanted the Yamaha bar pickups, but no one appears to be gutting them out of existing basses...
I didn't want to screw with a new neck since the Mikros all have the short 28.6" scale length. I compromised by picking up a banjo tuner to squeeze into the headstock.
It's going to be interesting once I get it done...after I start on it...
HTC1
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Post by thetragichero on Dec 16, 2019 20:33:17 GMT -5
haven't touched this in awhile. got the neck pocket rough cut to fit the bigger 5 string neck. need to take some off the back as the neck is carved to allow access to the higher frets. definitely going to look for *some* sort of veneer after i fill in the p pickup and wiring routs. don't care about overly figured, just consistent so i can try to do a blue burst
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Post by frets on Dec 16, 2019 22:53:27 GMT -5
Trag, great find. Have you given any thought to how you want to wire it with that back cavity?
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Post by thetragichero on Dec 17, 2019 0:10:53 GMT -5
pickups are dimarzio area j so noiseless pickup selection via a 500k mn taper bourns blend pot have a schematic (and the uber-low current draw lm4250 op amp it uses) for the original leo fender-designed preamp from the music man sabre bass (similar to the music man sting ray but should work better with these pickups) so pickups will go to the blend pot and then the two band preamp and active volume control haven't decided if I'll make a passive option in the event of a dead battery... my #1 bass has a 3pdt inside to handle such things
i originally thought this would be a string-through body but apparently the bridge is a standard top load
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Post by frets on Dec 17, 2019 2:41:31 GMT -5
Norstrand here Trag comes...
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Post by thetragichero on Mar 24, 2020 18:58:13 GMT -5
routs i will not need filled in with wood, glue, and any additional space with wood filler. neck fits in pocket now. old man is gonna send me some veneers for the front and back. I'm thinking of angling the neck pickup a bit towards the bridge on the bass side to tighten up the b string a bit. plus it'll look cool
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Post by thetragichero on Apr 21, 2020 12:29:47 GMT -5
as pointed out by one of our staff members in another thread, the neck pocket now has a rhinoceros horn. it's to better follow the here on the neck and give better upper fret access it ain't perfect but i didn't want to mess with the upper body horn to get it perfect. epoxy is blue because i used the same empty yogurt cup i mixed dye in to mix it. never notice a thing got the neck pickup 'routed' and drilled for my control pots and started routing for the control cavity. found the temporary bridge ground wire. will leave it until I'm ready to wire it up. still gotta do some cleaning up in there still thinking i want the output jack on the side under the strap button but haven't been inspired enough to start. will need to figure out how to cover control cavity. old man has been living at the cabin in the middle of nowhere in the Catskills for a couple months now, staying away from the insanity in Jersey. until he can get back down there to send me some veneers work on this has slowed to a crawl
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Post by thetragichero on Sept 23, 2020 13:03:23 GMT -5
brought this with me when we went to visit my folks in the Catskills. got a top on it and then mocking up the neck and body realized my 24 fret neck would need to be 2 inches or so further into the body so i attacked it with the band saw and routed out a new pocket with my dad's NICE set of forstner bits. still need to do finer body shaping and put new veneer on the back (both ran out of adhesive and used a very brittle mahogany veneer... very unhappy with it) no pictures for now but big progress
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