building a bass

[clanner]

:confused: ummm, does anyone know where I ould get a book to help me build my own bass? it's for a school project but I want it to be a quality instrument that I can continue to use throughout my life, and maybe make some money repairing from what I learn, does anyone know of any books or websites or both that I could use to help me in my indever? I really want to build a solid body with a decent sound and a funky design, all I can find is stuff for building a guitar, sorry for speaking off topic, but could anyone suggest something?

[Sir Speedy]

Just look for a book on Amazon called 'Building your own Guitar "
and do it for Bass .

Carvin.com has Bass parts and necks , Mail order music has some , guitar electronics.com has schematics for wiring pickups

And a Lumber Yard that specializes in Mouldings will have "Crown Pieces" Planks of wood For fireplace mantels etc.

You basically want to get a 2"x 7" piece of Poplar ($30) ,( or Mahogany or cherry if you can afford it $75)

Plane the edges on a small planer . Plane the face and back on a table planer .
then cut the wood in half , get some clamps and glue the two halves together .

let it dry for a day or two , then re plane the face and back a hair to make it even .

Keep in mind the Bridge of a Bass is lower on the body than a guitar .

if you put the neck up to the body blank , at the depth the neck will seat in the heel of the body .... the bridge will be exactly 34" from the 12th fret of your Bass neck . Keep this in mind when you Draw your body out .

I get 4 pieces of graph paper , tape them together , then draw out my own body template , cut it out , trace it on to the wood , get someone to cut it out with a jig saw sand it on a cylindircal table sander , then route the edges so it looks real finished . You may want to just trace someone elses Bass at first .

Get the book seeing pictures of all this will help .

Good luck , tell us how it goes :cool:

[Sir Speedy]

Basically , you need a table planer to make o body blank . Or if you don't have access to a table Planer , you can buy a body blank ,for around $50 cut it out and sand it , then route the edges . Generally you want to buy a neck , making one is another research project , but the company LMI makes finger boards slotted and raidiused , for around $20 each . So you would have to cut out the neck .Put a Truss rod in ,then glue the finger board to the neck ,then fret it .


A lot of special Machines are used by guitar shops to make all this easier . For example the slot in the neck to put the Truss rod in , is cut with a Drill , that Drills Square Holes . So you would need a "Machinists' tools" to do this , proficiantly . Proficiantly , meaning , in a 1/2 an hour :cool:
You could use an old second hand neck from an old guitar and make the body , that's a good way also .:cool:

[MattW]

Me and my Dad have made quite a few guitars and bass' (he does all of it at the moment really, since I'm at uni). It is really expensive to get into due to all the tools that are required, there will be a lot of things that you will not realise that you have to consider until you have made a couple so generally your first one or two aren't going to be that great (but you never know, you might be genious luthier!).

There are a couple of trouble areas for all first time builders, namely, the neck and the finish. Making a decent neck is really hard, it would probably be a good idea to buy a neck if you want it to be good enough at first and in the mean time practice making your own and I suppose if you do make a good enough one you could swap it for the bought one later given that you work with the same scale lengths/neck widths/height etc...
Getting a good finish is also tricky. If you want a glassy finish you generally need some expensive equipment and somewhere appropriate to do it so that you dont kill yourself with the fumes. Though polished wood finishes look pretty good on basses.

Most of the information we used to came from a couple of books, neither of which I can remember the name of right now! I'll try and find out which they were, they pretty much covered the basics, but it is such a broad subject that you would learn something new from pretty much every book you read on the subject.