Can you produce a high quality electric bass guitar using the Fablab methodology?
Yes, you can. Like on fab foos, I like doing as much as I can from scratch, meaning winding my own pickups, milling the body on the Shopbot with a flip part set up, building the entire neck with a trussrod and a fingerboard with fret marks on the side at least.
My choices for wood were: Mahagony body, maple neck, palisander fingerboard.
You can buy special "tone wood" in Amsterdam at Fijnhout Houthandel.
Still a view components I decidet to buy:
The bridge, the tuners, the preamp, the nut, the trussrod
During my research I noticed a lot has happened in the guitar world in the past 20 years. You can now buy Xtenders, which is a tuner with a handle so you can drop the E to C if you want. There are Bass tremolos available and very terrific preamps that lift your output to about 12 DB. But the big mystery is, can I get that growl like a proper Fender Jazz bass, which I love so much.
Well, I will only know this when I have finished the project and plug it in.
Resources:
- Melvin Hiscock: Make your own guitar
- Paul Balmer: The Fender Bass Handbook
My fretless Bass will be based on the Fender Jazz Bass.
Here is the original 1951 Fender Precision Bass, The first solid body electric Bass that changed modern music:
here is a deluxe version model of it from 2006, which has 24 frets, not 20 as the original version
And here is the "Shark Bass"
This is a very special Bass, featuring a tremolo, Xtenders of the E & G string and a kill switch. I am sure I can play pretty unusual cool stuff with it. I was inspired by Michael Manrings Hyperbass, a really crazy Bass. Listen to his tune Selene to get an idea.
Another inspiration I got was from a student who recently visited us to mill 3D textures: http://amsterdam.fablab.nl/node/3775
So I asked him if he wants to share it, he agreed and so my Bass guitar will have a fantastic 3D texture on the body.
I am now in the process to prepare the cut files, and yes I will post the files so you can make your own...
