Homebuilt Electric Upright BASS
No.3

This time, it was not for me but an gorderh from a friend of mine.

His order was 5 strings, and the scale was same to his electric bassc

It was a kind of pressure for me, on the other hand, it was a challenge also.

 

 

‚s‚‚


 

Jan.2019, Start of the design using Solid Edge®

I decided to design without 2-D Cad.

It was little difficult to measure the dimension of the part.

 

 

 

Materials are purchased at Nishimura Joy as usual.

The neck is American pine and the finger board is Japanese cypress.

The body material has not been decided yet.

 

 

 

Drawing by pencil.

It seems that the neck material is not so hard.

 

 

 

Start cutting.

This work bench is getting old.B

 

 

 

Finished the shape of finger board.

 

 

 

Next is the neck.

It will be more slim than previous model.

 


 

I tried to put the finger board on the neck material.

 

 

 

Check the angle of the head.

 

 

 

Now, it is the time for neck of the neck.

It is difficult to put the blade of the saw.

 

 

 

Fitting the fingerboard.

Small errors are not big problem due to adjustment after finishing.

 

 

 

 

The surface of the fingerboard is rounded with a shaving tool (Kanna).

The last is sandpaper finish.

 

 

 

Before the rounding of side of the neck.

 

 

 

Hard work with Kanna, file, sandpaper.
A mask is a necessity for this work.

 

 

 

How thick is the neck?

About 10 mm thinner than the second one.

 

 

 

Drawing a groove for inserting a truss rod.

The texture of the wood surface was as expected.

 

 

 

The groove is started with 6mm-wide chisel,

I care about the noise.

After this, I changed it to plastic hammer.

 

 

 

 

Finishing by a file.

Both ends are 10 mm depth, center is 20 mm.

 

 

 

Plate to hold the truss rod (6mm thickness)

This is also cypress.

I moved to another room because the living room was getting too dirty.

 

 

 

I put a brass rod (5mm diameter) which will be a truss rod.

 

 

 

Making a dent in the head part.

It is a hard work by a chisel.

 

 

 

Is it all right at this depth?

Or should I carve a little more?

 

 

 

Processing of the joint surface to the body.

This part is especially important.

 

 

 

As usual, I cut it leaving about 1mm remainder.

 

 

 

After that is the job of a file and sandpaper.

 

 

 

Upper view and side view.

 

@@

 

 

Truss rod
I decided to stop using the brass rod and made it by a stainless-steel threaded rod.

 

 

 

Use a cap nut on the head side.

 

 

 

Body side is high nut.

The square washer is arranged as usual.

All stainless steel.

 

 

 

Truss rod plate.

Roundness is appropriate.

 

 

 

It is set to bending and holding down the screw rod.

 

 

 

Bonding starts.

I use ordinally bond for wood job.

I also opened the peg positioning holes.

As I did not have big vise at the time of the first work, I used to bondage by a rubber bands for bicycles.

 

 

 

I need some small pieces of wood to avoid damaging the surface of the wood.

 

 

 

After drying for 2 days,

I tried to put the material of the body (also cypress).

The body was also Hinoki (the material is 120x45x1800).

Good atmosphere is caming out.

 

 

 

Making of head side nut.

This material is very hard Wenge wood.

It is the wisdom of life to keep the trash bin in the position where the chips fall.

 

 

 

I attached the nut.

Finishing is OK later.

 

 

 

I dyed the fingerboard black with an aqueous colorant.

 

 

 

I also dyed the neck at that time.

It is slightly different from the image of the expectation ...

 

 

 

The head may be good such a color??

 

 

 

I polished and polished the neck and dropped the color a little.

Is it something all right?

 

 

 

Finally, the body,

After adding a rough radius, start processing the neck fitting part.

 

 

 

The flatness of this part is very important.

Carefully with sandpaper.

 

 

 

I started to make tail pieces in the middle of body processing.

The material is the rest of the body.

I made a cutting the wood expecting the coming out pattern.

 

 

 

Rounding by Kanna.

 

 

 

Drawing of the side view.

 

 

 

In fact, processing of this part is the most troublesome.

It should be easy if you have a contour machine ...

 

 

 

I put it for a while.

The fingerboard had five coats of varnish.

 

 

 

View from the head side.

 

 

 

View from the upper side.

This view is closest to the real shape.

 

 

 

I bought a string set at online shop.

It is around 5,000 yen if it is an ordinary long scale,

however, it was over 8,000 yen when it comes to super long scale.

Not proportional to the length ...

 

 

 

The height adjustable bridge is my first attempt.

I thought that the design was relatively going well.

 

 

 

And, in the bridge making.

This material was also Wenge.

 

 

 

I tried to put it on the body.

Isn't it pretty cool?

 

 

 

View from tail side.

 

 

 

I did metalworking because I got a little tired of woodworking.

Bar that supports the root of the string, made of brass 5 mm in diameter.

It was to be used for the truss rod in the first plan.

 

 

 

 

Drill 5 holes for the strings and cut a groove for fitting the bar.

 

 

 

Jack ordered on the net.

One gold and one silver.

 

 

 

The tailpiece is colored with oil stain (teak color).

The pattern on the surface remains as it is.

 

 

 

I painted varnish and polish with lemon oil.

 

 

 

Now, full-fledged body processing.

 

 

 

Add spacers to the drill to keep the hole depth constant,

And drill drill drill...

 

 

 

Finishing with chisels and files.

 

 

 

The pod attachment hole on the back side is the same.

A neck attachment hole was also added.

 

 

 

 I received knurled nuts (M6) ordered from the net.

 

 

 

I assembled the bridge.

The shape has changed slightly from the original design.

 

 

 

Temporary assembly.

It feels pretty good.

I forgot to take pictures though I had a lot of hard work for the peg.

As pickup is not decided yet, pickup stand is not produced, either.

 

 

After checking the angle, the neck was glued and fixed with 4 screws.

 

Dowel pin for fixing the tailpiece.

The first bass's tailpiece didn't have this structure, so it was shifted little by little.

 

 

 

The same drilling is done on the tail piece side.

 

 

 

The tail pin is a double structure of stainless-steel pipes.

And burling nut (M6).

 

 

 

 

Jack attachment hole drilling.

This time, it has separate outputs for magnetic and piezo.

Mounting plate for burring nut.

 

 

 

Glue the tailpiece and screw it on.

 

 

 

For neck angle and bridge height reconfirmation

I tried to put only one string.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Drill a hole in the guide pipec

 

 

 

Fix with knob screw.

 

 

 

 

As the size of the pickup was decided,

the pickup base was last.

This material is also cypress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the middle was omitted (forget shooting)

Pickup base is complete.

Pickup cover also tinted cypress with a light color.

 

 

 

Internal wiring after installing the volume.

Then set the knob.

The back cover is 3 mm thick Agati. I colored them black.

I also installed the hole cover of the neck fixing screw.

 

 

 

 

Adjust the height after setting all the strings.

 

 

 

The piezo pickup is set at this position.

Wiring goes inside through the hole in the body.

 

 

 

Position marks are glass diamonds of Swarovski.

When I went to the craft store to buy it,

the clerk must have considered me a strange person....E

 

 

 

Jack part, piezo output is gold, magnetic is silver.

There is no particular meaning to the color.

 

 

 

Full view 1

 

 

 

Full view 2

 

 

 

Full view 3

 

 

 

Photograph with previous work.

The difference between 1050 mm scale and 890 mm is large

 


 

 

Finally, the completion was March 23, 2019.

She had gone to the employer.

I felt the same loneliness as my daughter got married.

 

 

 

‚s‚‚‚Φ