Making Square Holes

To make the pickup holes the same size a template was created using MDF. The pickups are Bartolini M34 Soapbars - a matched bridge / neck pair. They measure 89mm by 39mm, with a radiussed corner. Ideally this needs to be replicated on the template.

The template was made on the small milling machine at work, using the XY table to give a shape with decent right angles. It was then fastened onto the guitar with double sided tape and the router fitted with a straight 'follower' bit to follow the outline without destroying the template.







Masking tape was used to mark the positions of the pickups. As the position affects the sound it seemed a good idea to place them as far apart as possible. Practical reasons prevent this distance from becoming too great. The bridge pickup could be mounted straight alongside the bridge, but the string movement at this point is quite small resulting in a weedy output. The front pickup could butt upto the end of the fboard, but my occasional ventures into slapping & popping use that area to get under the D & G strings. I would keep bashing my fingers on a pickup if it was sited there, so again it has to be moved back by a couple of inches to give me finger room.



The template was restuck to the other position and the second pickup hole was routed. It finished up a shade too tight to get the pickups in and had to be whittled with sandpaper and hand chisels to give a good fit.






A small oversight has caused the bridge pickup hole to enter both the rear control cavities. Apart from having to move the batteries elsewhere, the main problem is that the pickup fixing screws will have nothing to fasten to. Not that I could find woodscrews that long and thin anyway...



Before the pickups were routed, the guitar was strung to check that the truss rod worked, check the balance, but mostly because I just wanted to play it albeit acoustically. Fortunately the rod worked fine after a three-quarter turn to give just the right amount of neck relief, but I couldn't get the action down as low as I would like. I just ran out of bridge adjustment.



There is some neck angle (angle between the neck and body) but this was something that I found difficult to accurately calculate beforehand (I didn't know how thick the fboard was going to end up after all the shaping). The only thing for it at this stage was to recess the body by around 3mm so that when the bridge is fully wound down the strings will be practically bottomed out on the frets.






It is a scary proposition to get the router back out all over the front of MoonBassAlpha especially near the fboard and all those nice curves stand a chance of getting gouged by a power tool gone crazy, but it needed to be done. Spacer blocks were taped to the top of the body as the router needs a flat surface to work from.




3mm was removed from the wenge / padauk and part of the ash. It was then blended back to keep the general shape. The top curve was able to be extended into the body more as it joins the top of the fboard. On the whole it looks remarkably similar to how it was beforehand (which is good) but now I will have the adjustment needed to set it up properly later on.



I just need to work out how to fix the bridge pickup without preventing one of the volume pots from being fitted or changed...

Moon Bass Alpha - Planning The Mission

Moon Bass Alpha - I know its a silly name, and I'm unlikely to play bass on the moon, but I could have spent months thinking of something else instead of actually getting down to the, er, wood and two nails. Some people have heard my playing and think that the moon is probably not such a bad idea.

Sticking My Neck Out

I believe that the neck wood must contribute more to the overall sound than the body wood, as the neck is flimsy and will vibrate and bend when a note is played, whereas the body will barely move at all. The neck also covers more than half the scale length so I think that choosing the wood for the neck will dictate how the 'wood' part of it sounds.

Most guitars I have seen seem to have maple necks. My own guitars have maple necks, or at least maple and something. Having said that, I am pretty sure my Peavey Cirrus BXP is made from Obeche. It is as light as a feather (in comparison to the Vigier). But anyway, I wanted something to sound different so I have made my first bad decision and ruled that maple is not going to be used on Moon Bass Alpha.

Great! Out goes maple, in comes, um, balsa?

Paper. Books and libraries and t'internet. I have invested in "Make Your Own Electric Guitar" by Melvyn Hiscock and it seems very helpful. Other books on 'What has wood ever done for me' etc have been dribbled on in the pusuit of knowledge. I noticed that some guitars (particularly Warwick) have used Wenge necks in the past. The local timber merchant seemed to think it was the sort of wood you would use in a dockyard, but it appealed for a number of reasons: 1 - it isn't maple; 2 - it is a very dark brown colour unlike maple; and 3 - it has a coarse grain structure which ought to help create a fuller, more mellow tone and growl.

Unfortunately I like laminated necks. The stripey-through-the-body look does it for me. I need another wood type for the neck. After contacting craft-supplies.co.uk (who do wenge laminates) the choice narrowed down to Bubinga and Padauk. I have gone for the Padauk because: 1 - Padauk is a really nice red colour; 2 - It is reasonably good to work with; and 3 - I am not quite sure how to say Bubinga without it sounding stupid.

A few layers of contrasting white oak veneer from valeveneers.co.uk (keeping to the no maple rule) and the neck layer build up is as follows:

WOPWOPOWPOW

It reminds me of watching Batman on a Saturday morning, but what it meant was W = Wenge (1/2"), O = Oak (0.6mm) and P = Padauk (1/4", except centre which is 1")

Here's the wood as it turned up. W x4, P x3 and an ebony fingerboard. Ebony is about as non-maple as you can get! Don't get me wrong about maple - I like the syrup, but I just want something a bit different in the neck department.