Finished - First ever build - Ampeg inspired fretless bass

idiotwind

This is still a little way off (won't start building until at least June) but I'm hitting the point where I'm going to need to start finalising ideas and sanity checking some things.

To cut a long story short, I'm planning on building a fretless bass as my 40th birthday present.  It's going to be inspired by an Ampeg AMUB-1, as played by Rick Danko of The Band, but with quite a bit of P Bass blended in as well.  The aim is to keep some of the bits I like and drop some of the bits I don't.  So, it's going to have the general body shape, through-body F holes and a "scroll-inspired" headstock, but not the massive scratchplate and full, ornate scroll.  It'll also just have a standard P Bass pickup, which is a change Rick made to his anyway.   34" scale, 41.5mm nut width, 12" radius board. 

The current plan is a one piece black walnut body, maple/walnut/maple neck and ziricote board.  For the neck I had initially thought of using a 50mm thick neck blank, but now might go thinner and glue it to double thickness at the headstock end.  The laminate idea might go as well, not sure if that's too ambitious.  I'm planning on mini-lines on the fretboard using 0.5mm maple veneer - lines that just go round from the side to about the E string.  Tru-oil finish for neck and body.  Looking at a UK made pickup, current frontrunner is a Creamery 58 P Bass.  Gotoh 707 tuners and 404SJ bridge.

I don't have a bandsaw, so the plan is to make templates, use a jigsaw/handsaw for rough shaping and a router to get to the final shape.  Headstock will be done with a variety of implements eg forstner bits, files, rasps.  I might experiment to see if the router can help with the side profile, but I'd have to tackle it from both sides and get everything lined up.

I've been planning this one out for about 2 years now and have been through quite a few versions with regards to the body size and the headstock shape, but I'm fairly happy with it.  Hopefully there are no showstopper problems anyone can see.  The headstock will add some mass, but the upper horn is shorter than a P Bass, plus I have some extra space behind the bridge so that should counter-balance it.  I've also checked the likely break angle at the nut and that should be enough.  The string pull isn't straight but looks about normal for a 2-per-side arrangement.

Anyway, here are some images.  I know the renders seem a bit over-the-top, I taught myself Blender to try and better visualise the headstock in 3D and it's fairly good fun once you get into it.  The wood texture does go a bit screwy on the sides, but hey.  There's no control cavity on there, but the plan is rear-routed with a magnetic wooden cover.  There's also no truss rod access on there, I'm undecided on which end to have that.  Headstock end would have a channel going into the open section, body end would have a small notch in the body for access.   I also didn't add the fret markings, but there would be the mini-lines and white side dots.

 

 
  
 

Andyjr1515

Looks good to me. 

The position of the front strap button is around the 13th fret which is well in the 'goldilocks zone' so it should balance well on the strap.

Good choice of timbers, too.  

WezV

I love the Ampeg's.  Look forward to seeing what you do with it

I did do a short scale electric inspired by it many moons ago... didn't quite go as far as cutting the f-holes through though, but they were painted on

idiotwind

A small but significant move forwards with this - I have the first piece of wood.





This is the ziricote fingerboard blank which I got from luthierwood.com

I think the hardest part of this might be choosing which area to actually use as the fingerboard.  I should be able to get a rear cavity cover out of it as well hopefully - I'm planning on it being pretty much a Telecaster control cover size but shortened as there's no switch.

DartmoorHedgehog

I like the look of that - I hadn't seen one of the originals before.  The double-bass style headstock is really cool.  Nice 3D modelling as well.

PeteC

Great - definitely following this build.   Good luck with it 

idiotwind

Been having a play around with a template of the fretboard, trying to find the "best" bit to use as the fingerboard

DartmoorHedgehog

Nice looking bit of wood that 

idiotwind

Inching forwards with this, I now have the body blank.  One-piece American black walnut from Guitars & Woods, who very kindly provided a slightly bigger than normal blank free of charge.

Andyjr1515

Black walnut is a great wood for a guitar or bass body.  Nice to work with too

paulnb57

Looking forward to seeing progress, nice project

idiotwind

Time for another thrilling instalment of "wood on a rug". This time it's the maple neck blank from Reid Timbers.  I also took the chance to get a practice fretboard - the cheapest they sell which is chamfuta. I can use this to have a trial run at cutting slots and then use it as a template/sacrificial guide for cutting the sidelines on the real board

 
So that's all the timber now. I've given up on the walnut strip in the neck. Currently waiting for the Creamery to reopen for orders, currently wavering between the 58 and 65 P Bass pickups. Then start getting the other hardware.  I've started shaping my templates, but as mentioned before I won't start this properly until mid June.

 

idiotwind

Been gathering parts and tools in preparation for this, but just wanted to give a particular mention to TLC Guitars in The Netherlands.  I placed my order late on Monday evening for a custom neckplate (plus some other bits and bobs).  They had it made by Wednesday morning, shipped that afternoon and it arrived with me this morning - really impressed.

One of my three "extravagant" purchases for this build, a custom laser engraved stainless steel neckplate.

mrkb

Only just seen this thread - looks great Jon.
is your bank account number on the neck plate so we can make donations

idiotwind

mrkb said:

Only just seen this thread - looks great Jon.
is your bank account number on the neck plate so we can make donations

It was supposed to be my DOB as a Unix timestamp, but I've just spotted I managed to lose a zero off the end, so now it's sometime in 1971 instead.  Oh well.  If that's the only cock up I make during this build I'll be happy.

Andyjr1515

Looks very interesting

idiotwind

I've now acquired the vast majority of what I need for this, just missing some of the later stage things like finishing oil etc.  Got all the hardware but still waiting for my pickups to arrive (or even start being built it seems).

I've spent a lot of time making MDF templates and they're just about there now.  The fretboard/neck template has been causing the most issues as it has to be spot on in terms of symmetry and accuracy.

But the most significant step was yesterday when I actually put tool to wood in a meaningful way and cut out the section of ziricote I'm going to use for the fretboard



Next I need to even out the thickness.  I think I'm going to try and rig up something with my belt sander to make a simple thickness sander.  The other option is a router sled, which is what I'll be using for the body blank, but it's already pretty close and I don't want to risk it.

idiotwind

Decided it was too hot to carry on doing stuff on the neck and fretboard - too much precision and thinking required.  So instead I did some work on the body and went from this:



to this:



I can't justify the space of a bandsaw (though I came close to picking up a £150 Aldi one), so this was done with a jigsaw.  I put in some cash and got some great blades - if me from a month or so ago is reading this, they are Bosch T 308 BFP blades.  They seem to be designed for kitchen countertops, so they are "2 side clean" (teeth go down for the top half and up for the lower half) and are really thick so they deflect less.  This is straight off the saw:



I've kept my distance from the line for now as I haven't thicknessed or fully flattened the blank yet.  It's at 45mm now with about 1mm of cupping.  I'm taking it down to something like 1.625" which is a number I found cropping up for vintage P Basses.  That will be done with a router sled.  Once that's done I'll use the jigsaw to get a bit closer to the line and then use template bits to finish it off. 

Also, my pickups have finally arrived, '65 Precision from the Creamery.  Annoyingly the only template I bought rather than made was for the pickup and it's far too big, so I'll have to make a template for that.

idiotwind

Oh look, my router thicknessing sled did that thing that router thicknessing sleds do...



Should be recoverable, it looks like it only goes about half a mm or so deeper than my target thickness and I just plucked that out of the air anyway

idiotwind

I kept going with the thicknessing and the mistake disappeared with a final thickness of just under 41mm.  After that I took it a bit closer to the outline with the jigsaw and a bit of rasping.

So next I did a first pass with the template bit, using the router table.  In general it worked

Except for the bits where it didn't

I was being careful, but each time it just stuck slightly whilst sliding it and bumped against the bit.

I'm thinking that the one down near the jack socket is small enough to fill with sawdust and wood glue.

The one on the upper horn is pretty big though.  Part of it is a loose chip which I'll glue, but I couldn't find the main bit that flew off.  I'm guessing I'll need to clean it up and glue in a small piece of offcut to fill it (called a "Dutchman" repair I found out).

idiotwind

Back from holiday and ready to tackle this patch.

First, clean the area up a bit



Then glue in a block taken from on offcut from right next to the area - I couldn't go from inline with the required area because this was the top of the blank, but just to the side was still fairly similar grain



And a bit of a cleanup with the chisel, ready for re-routing



It's ok.  A 6/10 I think.  The grain is similar but not spot on, and looks like it's a couple of degrees off.  The line going cross-grain might need a bit more filling, but I am planning on a 6mm roundover, so I might wait until I've done that to see what I'm left with.

This was the first bit where I felt like all the reading and tutorial videos weren't quite enough.  I knew exactly what I needed to do, but actually doing it was a different matter.