

Building an Electric Bass - sizzle
http://www.weescribble.com/building-an-electric-bass/

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daeken
For the last 6 months or so, my life has been dominated by musical
instruments, both playing them and modifying them. Ended up building a
workshop for guitars because of it. Lately, I've been doing research into
CNCing all the wooden parts of a guitar -- doing the whole body, the top, the
neck, and the fretboard. I'm hoping to do a trial run in the next few months,
if all goes to plan.

For those who aren't aware, renting time on a CNC is _cheap_. I found a nearby
Shopbot that was being rented for about $30/hour. Estimating a total milling
time of about 8 hours (to be very conservative), I'm looking at all of $240 to
do the majority of the construction; pretty cheap, when you consider that a
nice custom instrument can easily run $3k.

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badsock
Good plan!

I made an electric tenor violin once (twice as big as a regular violin). The
only difficult part of it was the fingerboard - very complex because it's
curved in all three dimensions. It can take a luthier who knows what they're
doing a couple of hours: certainly beyond my woodworking skills.

Ended up writing a python script that figured out the geometry and dumped out
STL, which I then sent to a small CNC shop. Turned out perfectly, and left me
with the impression that electric instruments are especially strong candidates
for this kind of manufacturing.

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robert_tweed
Building a bolt-neck solid body electric guitar/bass isn't all that difficult
unless you make the neck & fretboard, which is the most complicated bit (also
assuming you're not crazy enough to want to wind your own pickups).

Anyone interested in giving it a go would probably be best to start with
something based on the classic Fender Strat/Tele, because compatible necks and
other parts are available cheaply (search on eBay, esp. China). You can always
upgrade it in the future too, if you decide you want a real US Fender birds-
eye maple neck or something; start with something cheap in case it doesn't
work out. You can of course, go wild with the body design, as that's the only
part you really need to make yourself.

This is a good book that covers all the basic techniques:

[http://www.melvynhiscock.com/MYOEG.html](http://www.melvynhiscock.com/MYOEG.html)

It's also pretty good to read if you are just interested in knowing more about
how a guitar _works_ and how to set it up correctly.

Just be aware that the main requirement other than patience is space, as you
will get wood dust everywhere. You will also need somewhere dust-free to hang
the guitar if you intend to paint/lacquer it. A shed would be ideal, although
some people apparently just hang the guitar outside to paint - this won't work
anywhere that it might rain, as it needs to hang for at least a couple of days
per coat.

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danbmil99
My friend and I built a couple fretted basses and guitars many years ago. We
built the necks ourselves.

Fretting is not as hard as you might imagine. The basic math for the fret
positions is straightforward: each semitone lower in pitch is 1.059463

    
    
      2**(1.0/12)
    

farther from the bridge than the last. The fret wire is readily available. The
nut may need to be a bit closer to the first fret than the math dictates, to
account for its being a bit higher than the frets.

Building instruments by hand is very rewarding.

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coldcode
As a bass player I find it fascinating but beyond my ability. In any case my
Peavy is so heavy I can use it as a bullet shield which he can't :-)

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gooseyard
here's an extremely engrossing thread on building a clone of the coveted
Gibson '59 Les Paul (strangely enough, on a forum about Fender Telecasters).

[http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home-
depot/194271-1959-les-p...](http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-home-
depot/194271-1959-les-paul-build.html)

the mixture of meticulous attention to detail (he rolled his own bumblebee
caps) and sometimes simple yet clever methods was a joy to read.

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okonomiyaki3000
I didn't read the article but I thought the electric bass was perfected years
ago:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mouth_Billy_Bass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mouth_Billy_Bass)

