A 5-String Multiscale ‘Headless’ DIY Bass

[Dave Higham]

You're making some good progress!

I wish I really could work at this speed.
I obviously didn't make myself clear at the beginning of this thread. The bass is actually finished and was the subject of a marathon blow-by-blow thread on another forum.
As I know that not everyone visits every forum (impossible, although some do seem to pop up everywhere) I thought it might interest some of the folks here in a slightly abridged version. I also feel a sort of loyalty to the MIMF as it was the first forum I discovered and the only one I looked at for a long time. I put up photos of my first bass just after the 'Proud of my Work' section ground to a halt.

[Hans Bezemer]

Ahh, I thought you just started building.
But now I want to know even more what the final result is

[Dave Higham]

But now I want to know even more what the final result is

"Patience grasshopper" (that's showing my age).

[Paul Rhoney]

Really, really fantastic work here. I'm jealous of your milling skills. Keep it coming!

[Dave Higham]

Thanks Paul, here's a little more.

I took one of the off-cuts from the top and sliced it up. Here’s a book-matched pair after jointing, gluing up, sanding and wiping with alcohol to show up the figure.

Now I went back and finished the tuner block cover.

Although I don’t have any photos of the process, I milled out a shallow recess in the cover about 1.5mm (1/16”) deep and glued in a piece of the book-matched maple body wood. The final operation was to plane and sand a 3mm radius round the top edge of the cover.

[Chuck Tweedy]

Your work is amazing Dave. I'm really glad I've not seen all this elsewhere - I'm having too much fun following it here!

[Dave Higham]

Thanks Chuck. Hope all's well with you and yours.

I now moved on to the pickup covers.

The first step was to cut another piece off that lump of ebony and transform this into 4 strips each with a small rebate along one edge.

Each strip was cut into over-size lengths and the ends bevelled one corner at a time to create a mitre joint.

To make sure my mitred corners were accurate I checked them on a print of the drawing. I designed the pickups to follow the progression of the fanned frets and the ends are parallel to the outer strings; so, not only are the pickups different lengths, none of the corners have the same angle. As the French say: ‘why make it easy when you can make it complicated?’ Once the first corner was done, I started on the next corner but leaving the length over-size. Once I got the angle right I could then reduce the length of the piece between first and second corners to its correct length and start on the third corner, etc., etc.

I then simply super-glued the pieces together. If you have perfectly mating surfaces it makes a surprisingly strong joint. I know this because of the effort it took to get one apart when I got the angle wrong.

Here are the two frames glued up.

[Dave Higham]

Although the shape of the covers follows the progression of the ‘fan’ and the spread of the strings, the pickups themselves only need a rectangular space which allows me to glue in reinforcement at each end. I made these from an off-cut of alder from the body. After sanding the block until it just slid into one of the pickup covers, and the end until it matched the angle, the shape of the block was drawn onto it leaving some spare at the end. Then a hole for a brass threaded insert was drilled all the way through.

These inserts don’t screw in. They’re actually made for soft plastics and are just pressed in. The easiest way is to use one of the screws with the head cut off.
Screw the insert onto the screw thread and fix the thread in the drill chuck and press. The surplus was left on the end to prevent the wood from breaking out at this point (which it did on the first trial piece!). I also wicked a drop of thin CA around each insert.

The surplus is then cut off and the end sanded and the piece cut off.

At this point I cut and fit another piece of the book-matched top wood into the rebate in the top of the covers, but I forgot to take any photos. The blocks were then glued in place, again using CA.

After that I sanded a 3mm radius around all the corners and put several coats of Liberon finishing oil on them. When that had had time to harden I sent them off to Aaron Armstrong to have pickups made and fitted, and this is what they looked like when they came back.

[Hans Bezemer]

... (is there more to say?)
Great!

[Michael Polutta]

On so many levels, wow!

[Chuck Tweedy]

Is there more to SEE?
I hope so!

[Art Davila]

But now I want to know even more what the final result is

"Patience grasshopper" (that's showing my age).

Hey I am not that old , and I know where that came from.

Ok co worker reading over my shoulder informs me yes you are that old, creepy kid.

I love the work you shared here, what was the forum that was the original tread?

[Dave Higham]

Erm... don't know if I'm allowed to point people to other forums for the same thread.

[David King]

You're running circles around me David and I have a full shop and 7 days a week to work on basses. Your routing looks very clean. The photos are great by the way.

[Dave Higham]

Thanks David. Compliments from a real professional are always particularly appreciated.
But I must reiterate, this is a sort of time-lapse thread. If I'd posted as I was making the bass, the posts would be much less frequent. It took me about a year in all.

[Dave Higham]

As I wanted to keep the instrument as light as possible I decided to make the neck from mahogany with a couple of walnut laminations and carbon fibre stiffening bars. I bought two mahogany billets 4” x 4” x 39” a few years ago and one of them was a lot lighter in weight (and colour) than the other, so I used some of the lighter one. The walnut was reclaimed and must be about 70 to 80 years old.
I do a sort of scarf joint but not in the usual way. Instead of cutting the piece off for the head and reversing it, I cut it off and then glue it on again at the back, but still facing the same way. So the gluing surfaces are already planed flat.
It’s the equivalent of a neck and headstock cut out of one piece of wood, but without wasting a lot of precious wood. A lot of people don’t like one piece neck/heads on electrics, especially when the truss-rod adjustment is at the head, and quote the number of Gibsons that have been broken. Should you build an instrument to withstand being dropped on its head? (They didn’t break on their own).
Anyway, this one will have a volute, which should strengthen it a bit, and the carbon fibre reinforcement bars in the neck run up through the neck/head junction so I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
By the way, I just discovered that a volute is a spiral and the word exists in English and French. We call the curly bit on the end of a violin the scroll and in French it’s a ‘volute’ so what we refer to as a volute isn’t one. How did that come about?
The holes, by the way, are for brass dowel rods to keep it aligned when gluing and are outside the finished headstock area.

Once glued up, I trimmed the surplus off the front of the headstock the old-fashioned way. (A lot of people who make electrics make jigs to do this sort of thing with a router.)

All cleaned up.

Back soon...

[Jason Rodgers]

I like your pseudo-scarf headstock buildup method. The alignment pin holes are clever. What's the angle?

[Chad McCormack]

Dave. I have seen a TON of incredible stuff on this forum over the years, but I can't remember a time when I've been more impressed than I am with this bass build of yours. I'll be eagerly watching this thread to see how it all comes together in the end. Stunning work, through and through!

Chad

[Dave Higham]

Thanks Jason and Chad. The headstock angle is 10°.

Next job was to cut the slot for the truss rod. I actually have a cheap router table which would have done the job except that the guides on the table don’t move far enough away from the cutter at the limit of their adjustment (grr). Serves me right for buying cheap Chinese rubbish. So this is a lash-up ‘router table’ which does the job just as well. There’s a hole drilled through the other end of the ‘guide’ and the ‘table’ with a dowel pin in it so the guide can swivel. Fine adjustment is made at this end of the guide by hitting it with a hammer!
You can see a couple of pencil marks on the guide to show me where the cutter is. You can’t see them but there are others on the neck to show me where to start and stop the slot.

Slot cut. I forgot to take a photo, but there was some surplus length at the other end of the neck blank so when setting up I did short trial cuts at that end.
005

I then moved the blank onto the milling machine to widen out the end of the slot for the adjustment nut. I could have fiddled about and done it with the router but it was easier on the milling m/c.

I cut the slot 2mm deeper than the depth of the truss rod to allow for a filet to be glued in on top of it. Here’s the rod snugly sitting in its slot. I should mention that at this point I decided that the truss-rod wasn’t in the right position so I modified the slots to bring the adjustment nut further up into the headstock. I thought I’d better own up before some sharp-eyed person pointed out the difference between this photo and the next one.

Next I made a strip of mahogany to glue in on top of the truss-rod. See the difference in the position of the rod?

[Dave Higham]

I’ve left out the ‘forest of clamps’ photo so here, after gluing, I’m trimming the filet down flush with the surface of the neck blank.