Australian luthier supply plans

[Huw Phillips]

Has anyone built from these guys plans, I am interested in building a bongo copy and this is the only plans I have found so far.
For wood I am looking at basswood or poplar for light weight and hopefully ease of working, is this a wise choice of wood ?
Many thanks in advance h

 

[Huw Phillips]

Music Man Bongo Bass Plan

 

[Gilmourisgod]

They used to sell Ric bass plans, when they got a Cease and Desist from Ric, they dropped them, so I ended up drawing my own in CAD. They look very complete and with enough detail. If you buy a set, take them to a large format copy place and have a copy made, you'll probably destroy one set making templates. Basswood is a good instrument wood for its lightness, but it dents very easily. Personally I like alder. It's a little bit lighter than ash, and the grain is more closed. Ash is real open grained, so you have to pore fill the hell out of it prior to paint or stain.

 

[MPU]

Just looked at their site and they have Tokai Rebelrocker plans that look damn close to Ric.

 

[Huw Phillips]

Thanks for the information, I saw the ric and am thinking to get 3 sets of plans the ric, the bongo and either a hollow body or the smaller P shape, the last two body’s I have done were in ash and yes it sounds great but it’s a bit heavy, I will check out alder there is a v good lumber yard near me, I played a bongo a few weeks ago and the shape just felt right, like a glove, thanks for the input guys h

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Ha! They re branded the Ric plans! They used to call it "4001" plans or something, it disappeared off their site for a while, but you could get them from some third party company in Argentina. Ric let it's copyright lapse in Australia, so they can't squash this, I guess. Those are straight up Ric 4001/4003 plans, and pretty good quality.

 

[Gilmourisgod]

Ok, re-read the description, these are Chinabacker plans, not Ric plans. Close but not identical. The big difference is scale length, the Rebel Rocker is standard 34" scale, not Ric 33.25" . No big whup, but the bridge position will be different on that.