We have a nice piece of spalted maple for the top plate.
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(5/23/10) The machining of the neck core has been completed and we can now start working on parts for the body of the bass. I had a nice piece of spalted maple in the shop which will work very well for this project so I cut the rough body shape on the scroll saw and we'll split this piece down the center to bookmatch it. This will give us a very nice figured top which will work well with the green tint planned for the finished instrument. |
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The laminated core section is now being modified on one of our CNC machines.
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(5/15/10) The core of this bass has now been completely glued up and we now have a very strong and rigid laminated center section for the instrument. Next step is to set the core up on our CNC machine and run several consecutive machining operations to bring it to the next level. We machine the joint face for the fingerboard, the profile of the neck, the head and body angles and the Carbon Fiber and truss rod slots before it comes off the machine. |
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Laminates for the neck are ready for gluing.
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(4/9/10) All the individual neck laminates have been veneered and we are now ready to start gluing them all together. We'll be doing this one layer at a time to make sure we get the best alignment and joint integrity possible. This should end up being a nice rigid but lightweight neck with nice tonal qualities for a fretless bass. Once they are all glued together we'll get the core onto the CNC and things should move ahead pretty quickly from there! |
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Some of the neck laminates being veneered in the vacuum press.
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(4/5/10) We have cut and sanded all our neck laminate pieces and now have to apply veneers which will apperar on the finished instrument as decorative pinstriping. Once all the pieces have been prepared we'll be able to start gluing the neck/body core together. We are hoping to start gluing that later this week. This bass should come together quite quickly once we have the core glued up. We expect a fairly lightweight bass. |
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We now have upper and lower body parts for this bass.
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(4/3/10) We now have the upper and lower body halves prepared for this bass. They are only rough cut at this point but we're not far away from seeing this bass as one complete unit. I have some more sawing to do in order to add som ethickness to the neck, but we will be starting to glue the laminates for the core together over the next couple of days. Tomorrow I hope to be able to glue some veneer onto thes various laminates. |
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All three neck laminates have been cut and sanded, ready for veneer.
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(3/24/10) Here are the three components of the center core of the bass. The two outer strips are figured sycamore, and the strip running down the middle of the instrument is curly maple. This combination should yield a nice balanced sound to the finihsed instrument. We are now considering what type of decorative veneer to use for pinstriping between these laminates. We'll glue the veneer in our vacuum press in the next couple of days. |
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Neck woods will be curly maple and sycamore.
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(3/12/10) I know it doesn't look like much yet but I did pull wood for this project today and prepare the templates so that I can get started on this bass within the next day or two. I had a nice piece of spare flamed maple for the center section and the outer edges of the neck/body core will be cut from a beautiful piece of sycamore. These should combine to give us good results on this instrument. |
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This is one of the options we have for a top wood - Spalted Maple.
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(2/11/10) On our Classic basses we try to use the best possible materials we can within the framework of the lower price structure. Wherever possible we try to find woods that has some kind of eyecatching figure so that the top of the instrument will still have some character. Our customer requested a green finish, and in order to yield a nice strong translucent color we need to start with a light colored wood. This spalted maple would look nice on the finished bass. |
