Building a bass from the ground up

J

jakobdoesathing

Aug 28, 2024
11
15
449
#1
Heya, someone told me to start a post here for the bass I'm building, so here we are.

For context, at school I'm in a manufacturing class, and I have the opportunity to build stuff in my free time. Last year I built a whamola, so this year I figured I might as well go all out.

Going for a jazz precision jazz setup, individual stacked tone/volume pots for each pup, and a 3 way switch for jazz, all, and pj.

Current body I'm running with is a piece of oak I found in the woodworking room, but might get switched to a piece of black walnut my dad made when he used to play. I'm planning on milling down a piece of aluminum for the neck, because im scared of making a wood one.

A friend of mine convinced the admins to let him build a guitar for a credit, and got them to give him pickup kits to build some for the both of us.

Planning on using a p pickguard to keep everything in. I'm indecisive on if I want frets or not, and if I should mill a bridge and tuning pegs or if I should buy them.

Feel free to share thoughts on what I should change, or just general advice going into this. Thanks!
 
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#3
Looks like a very nice project………

For the turn pegs, I’m not sure if it’s worth making them but I’m not a machinist so my comment can surely be ignored !

For the bridge though, I see a nice opportunity to do a kind of a hi mass bridge made out of an aluminum bar with a look similar to a Gotoh 404 with "Jako" engraved on the lower right end of the bridge………….
 
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#5
Just an FYI, for a first build I think aluminum would be a bad move.
Unless you have the proper tools and ability to deal with large pieces of metal.
Personally I'd be more afraid of aluminum than a wood neck.

Good luck,
Dirk
 
#6
The classical issue (IIRC) with an aluminum neck is temperature sensitivity, aggravated by warm hands when playing and/or a hot stage. I think some have been "wood wrapped" to give them some insulation and reduce that. OTOH, wood really isn't that scary, you just have to adapt to working with a non-isotropic material with individual variation. There's a lot of help on that already written down here, and more if you read some and find questions to ask.

Milled in aluminum frets sound like an idea that will ensure short life for the neck unless you only play nylon tapewound strings. You might not have meant that, though. Fretless or Fretted is more of a "what you want to play" choice unless it's skipping the frets to make it easier to build, and potentially not actually playing it if you don't play fretless or learn how, to a useful level.

Making tuners is good for the learning and whatever credit they'll give you for the work, definitely a lot more fiddly work than buying them, but if the point is class project in manufacturing, you might want to do it. Then there's what sort of tuners you want to build, possibly impacted by what tooling you have available to make them (is there a gear hobbing setup gathering dust in the corner of the shop space, or did someone junk that 30 years ago?) - several options for building using normal screw-threaded items are documented mostly in headless builds - since almost nobody has a gear hob handy, almost nobody builds their own gearhead tuners. I guess if you have fancy-enough CNC mills they can probably be made to hob gears, if not as efficiently as a dedicated hob. Gear teeth have all sorts of complexity that are not obvious at first glance, but Machinery's Handbook will tell you all about them. Or perhaps you'll have a whole new idea of a tuning mechanism you can build that nobody else has built yet.

With milling machines available bridges are quite accessible to make your own.
 
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#7
T_Bone_TL said:
The classical issue (IIRC) with an aluminum neck is temperature sensitivity, aggravated by warm hands when playing and/or a hot stage. I think some have been "wood wrapped" to give them some insulation and reduce that. OTOH, wood really isn't that scary, you just have to adapt to working with a non-isotropic material with individual variation. There's a lot of help on that already written down here, and more if you read some and find questions to ask.

Milled in aluminum frets sound like an idea that will ensure short life for the neck unless you only play nylon tapewound strings. You might not have meant that, though. Fretless or Fretted is more of a "what you want to play" choice unless it's skipping the frets to make it easier to build, and potentially not actually playing it if you don't play fretless or learn how, to a useful level.

Making tuners is good for the learning and whatever credit they'll give you for the work, definitely a lot more fiddly work than buying them, but if the point is class project in manufacturing, you might want to do it. Then there's what sort of tuners you want to build, possibly impacted by what tooling you have available to make them (is there a gear hobbing setup gathering dust in the corner of the shop space, or did someone junk that 30 years ago?) - several options for building using normal screw-threaded items are documented mostly in headless builds - since almost nobody has a gear hob handy, almost nobody builds their own gearhead tuners. I guess if you have fancy-enough CNC mills they can probably be made to hob gears, if not as efficiently as a dedicated hob. Gear teeth have all sorts of complexity that are not obvious at first glance, but Machinery's Handbook will tell you all about them. Or perhaps you'll have a whole new idea of a tuning mechanism you can build that nobody else has built yet.

With milling machines available bridges are quite accessible to make your own.
Click to expand...
The problem with making a wood neck is that there wasn't any really good material to use. Everything was either too short or too thin to use. Also, just going through the process of installing a truss rod, and finding suitable enough fretboard wood is really hard when material options are kinda scarce.

For frets on the aluminum neck, if I'm gonna add them, I'm going to use proper fret wire and do it properly, because if they're milled into the neck, I agree, it seems like a bad idea in the long run. What I'm questioning is do I want to go through the effort to. I play a wide range of genres, but not really enough to warrant running a fretless board.

For tuners, I want a headstock with tuners. Still not fully on board with the headless look. They have some pretty high end cnc's in the shop, so if I make some, ill probably end up copying a fender style tuner, just seems like the simplest one to do.

Bridge wise, it seems easy enough, its just the saddles that are my main concern. Looking around though, it doesn't seem too too bad to make them.

Also, note on the build I forgot to mention, aiming for 34" scale with 24 frets. I dont think it affects anything other than bridge position, but figured I'd mention it.
 
#8
jakobdoesathing said:
The problem with making a wood neck is that there wasn't any really good material to use. Everything was either too short or too thin to use. Also, just going through the process of installing a truss rod, and finding suitable enough fretboard wood is really hard when material options are kinda scarce.

For frets on the aluminum neck, if I'm gonna add them, I'm going to use proper fret wire and do it properly, because if they're milled into the neck, I agree, it seems like a bad idea in the long run. What I'm questioning is do I want to go through the effort to. I play a wide range of genres, but not really enough to warrant running a fretless board.

For tuners, I want a headstock with tuners. Still not fully on board with the headless look. They have some pretty high end cnc's in the shop, so if I make some, ill probably end up copying a fender style tuner, just seems like the simplest one to do.

Bridge wise, it seems easy enough, its just the saddles that are my main concern. Looking around though, it doesn't seem too too bad to make them.

Also, note on the build I forgot to mention, aiming for 34" scale with 24 frets. I dont think it affects anything other than bridge position, but figured I'd mention it.
Click to expand...
Looks like you have a plan, great !
 
#9
Not to start you down a road to ruin, but there are... y'know... Dealers in wood. If you don't go looking for the ones that mention that the wood is specifically for Luthiers the prices are often far more reasonable without any huge difference in the wood, though sometimes there are advantages to coughing up that cash for some specific hunk of wood. Plenty of successful builds here have started with noticing a nicer than average board at a big-box home improvement store in the "hardwood" bin. Better dealers without the L word may cater to "cabinetmakers" etc.
 
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#10
Dirk Diggler said:
Just an FYI, for a first build I think aluminum would be a bad move.
Unless you have the proper tools and ability to deal with large pieces of metal.
Personally I'd be more afraid of aluminum than a wood neck.

Good luck,
Dirk
Click to expand...
Yeah, in the shop they have a huge vf2 cnc that can easily fit what I'm trying to mill, that's mainly why I'm doing aluminum.
 
#11
I’m not trying to discourage you from aluminum but if you’re in the US you can get a neck blank for under $50 from places like exoticwoodzone.com. Potentially much less then $50 if you buy during one of their continual “sales.” That could be less than the cost of the aluminum you need. Unless you’re in the UK in which case you aluminium which is much more expensive. Gotta pay for those extra letters! :smug:
 
#12
Matt Liebenau said:
I’m not trying to discourage you from aluminum but if you’re in the US you can get a neck blank for under $50 from places like exoticwoodzone.com. Potentially much less then $50 if you buy during one of their continual “sales.” That could be less than the cost of the aluminum you need. Unless you’re in the UK in which case you aluminium which is much more expensive. Gotta pay for those extra letters! :smug:
Click to expand...
I'm trying to buy as little as possible. For building materials, I have everything I need in the shop or woodworking room, because I get free reign over whats on hand. I still have to buy some stuff like pots and switches, but everything I can make with stuff on hand, I will :)
 
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#13
Have you weighed these materials and compared them to existing bass weights? I once bought a walnut body for a telecaster and it was very heavy. That was my only experience with walnut. Another concern using unusual materials is weight balance. There are some aluminum neck basses so take cues from their designs because they have dealt with weight and balance issues already. Crunch some numbers to get an idea of where the center of gravity will be and keep it behind the forward strap button.
 
#16
Kashofa said:
Have you weighed these materials and compared them to existing bass weights? I once bought a walnut body for a telecaster and it was very heavy. That was my only experience with walnut. Another concern using unusual materials is weight balance. There are some aluminum neck basses so take cues from their designs because they have dealt with weight and balance issues already. Crunch some numbers to get an idea of where the center of gravity will be and keep it behind the forward strap button.
Click to expand...
Third times the charm. Keep getting blocked in what I'm trying to say I'm response.

Your point about weight has been noted. I dont have the walnut on hand right now, I'm waiting for my dad to dig it out of a basement in his uncles place, so for now I'm using a slab of oak. I'll know how everything's going to start to feel once I have everything milled down into a finer shape.
 
#17
If there's concern about weight from heavy woods, you can save a lot by using a smaller and thinner body. My summer build is under 8 lbs despite using woods heavier than oak or walnut because the body is smaller and only 1.25" thick. Since you're planning on using stacked pots, that may limit how thin you can go, but you can probably still make it thinner than the standard Fender to save a few pounds.
 
#18
jakobdoesathing said:
Heya, someone told me to start a post here for the bass I'm building, so here we are.

For context, at school I'm in a manufacturing class, and I have the opportunity to build stuff in my free time. Last year I built a whamola, so this year I figured I might as well go all out.

Going for a jazz precision jazz setup, individual stacked tone/volume pots for each pup, and a 3 way switch for jazz, all, and pj.

Current body I'm running with is a piece of oak I found in the woodworking room, but might get switched to a piece of black walnut my dad made when he used to play. I'm planning on milling down a piece of aluminum for the neck, because im scared of making a wood one.

A friend of mine convinced the admins to let him build a guitar for a credit, and got them to give him pickup kits to build some for the both of us.

Planning on using a p pickguard to keep everything in. I'm indecisive on if I want frets or not, and if I should mill a bridge and tuning pegs or if I should buy them.

Feel free to share thoughts on what I should change, or just general advice going into this. Thanks!
Click to expand...
If you mill the bridge and tuners, I'm 100% sure your teachers will give u extra credit or something. That stuff aint easy
 
#19
Hey everybody, sorry for the long bit of silence. Had actual schoolwork to do. :p
Finished my first test for the neck, getting the taper down. It worked! ...but not the final product.
I ran the test on a piece of wood, and the top of the fretboard where it meets the nut and headstock is a tad small. Not too big of a problem though, just some minor code tweaking. :) I'll post pics when I get home and can send them through my phone.
 
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