BlownCorona

they can be had for low cost, just missing the centre detents. its only because i was chasing authenticity on that front that i went to great lengths. any normal person would simply fit a knob with a marker and a corresponding centre position on the base.

is that an smd variant or just a stock image?

i completely forgot to get those preamp bits out for @Metalhead96 will do that asap. OG opamp was an which is NLA though can be had from ebay, there are probably suitable cheap alternatives additional bits required would be the 100k log pot for bass, 1M reverse log pot for treble and 25k log pot for volume. I went to great lengths to get these pots with center detents just like original which are NLA and required me to buy about 9 pots and disassemble and built up with various parts. however im pretty sure you can buy the required values if you arnt fussy. https://www.digikey.co.nz/en/products/detail/texas-instruments/LM4250CN/3695231

In a stroke of luck (good or bad who knows) i came across some pictures of timber called Macassar ebony and fell in love. the timber matches my cats markings almost exactly. I knew what was going to happen, i was going to put this nearly complete fretboard aside and start again, again (again, again) I didnt actually know how i was going to get some, its a rare species and i was starting to research various import laws ect. Then out of the blue, someone listed a bunch of fretboard blanks on trademe IN NEW ZEALAND already! BUT they were sized for guitar and completly unsuitable. i took a shot and contacted the guy to see if he had any more and he very graciously cut up some more of his stock into 5 different boards that would fit my requirements so i could choose a board thats markings took my fancy the most. Only after he cut them did he ask what the hell instrument i was building that needed a fretboard so long, and i showed him the thumb rest detail and 35" scale bass info ect. As it turns out, he was a somewhat famous banjo luthier who emigrated from the UK to NZ and was happy to be helping people build instruments and offered some good advice. i also now want a little banjo scaled electric bass. i mean i got fretboards coming out the ears so maybe itll happen. You might see the essence of the logo in the above face. I also needed to cover a small error so i made this serial number plate which im very happy with. managed to engrave the stainless on my router which probably contributed to next episodes saga. i spun it up to mach 3 in my drill press and pressed it into some scotch pad which gave it the cool sunburst effect as well as got enough (alot) heat into it to colour it a straw colour that more closly matched the nickel plating found everywhere else. So long story short, ive been hard at work and made zero progress.

Fretboard 3 i laminated up a bunch of thin sections of beech, purple heart and ironbark, similar looking to cedar stripped canoes and began cutting out a new board. The idea was cool but it was actually very ugly. i dont even have any pictures. Fretboard 4 Eventually i wrangled a small amount of the ironbark and some more purple heart together, but the ratios were off. i then thought that i might inlay some resin, mixed with some europium i had imported which glows in the dark, between the two woods. this looked really cool and i was pretty happy. i even got to the point of sinking aluminum and europium resin fret dots, making a bunch of aluminium dust to fill in the 12th fret markers which were the eyes portion of my logo and begining to apply a CA glue finish. i then machined out the fret slots. The glow isnt quite this intense to the eye, the camera really loves it though. however with a good amount of UV exposure it is actually quite bright. and i really liked it. I then went to dig out the pre cut stainless steel frets i had bought a while ago and.... what the fuck, they are too short. I also wasnt sure if i liked the fretboard when placed on the bass, at the time i really couldnt tell if i was unhappy, or if i was just sick of making fucking fretboards. I forgot to mention that my router was slow, these things took like a week of evenings to make, at this point im over a month deep. I do actually like it on the bass, but i would need new frets. but shockingly this still isn't the end of the fretboard saga.

Well it was time to make the fretboard. A simple job which turned into an on going saga. The first fretboard was excellent but i cant find the photos i took of it, It was made from a nice piece of aussie ironbark and i machined it on my little CNC router at home, however when i went to offer it up and check fret placements for intonation ect the numbers just wernt adding up. the 12th fret should be halfway between the nut and the bridge saddles but this just wasnt happening and i couldnt quite figure out why. it turns out an early error on the 3d model which was based on a fairly low resolution magazine image saw me place the nut position about 10mm too far up the neck and for some reason i never checked this dimension. No big deal though, i could move the nut back down the neck to where it should be and feather in the remaining material to the headstock. That was untill i stumbled on the information for a 35" scale bass when checking and rechecking 34" scale fret positions. The nut position on my bass measured up exactly right for a 35" scale, and i then started to think about what this meant. I never considered scale length because i was basing it off a vintage stingray 4 string, but given this is not a replica i got curious. 35" scale bases are very common for 5 string bases including the stringray 5s, the 5th string is usualy tuned to D and the extra scale length helps add string tension, now you may recall that ive fitted a fair expensive hipshot detuner which lets me drop my E string to D on the fly with the flick of a lever. it just makes alot of sense that i should run the longer scale, a tough decision to package up the finished fretboard for a potential later project was made and to start again. Fretboard 2 made from another slice of the nice piece of ironbark and edged with some thin purple heart and beech, i also had seen another boutique instrument that featured an extended fretboard on the upper edge serving as a finger rest which i loved, so this was included. I then promptly fucked it up. due to the small size of my router i have to machine this in 3 parts, indexing it along. but for some reason the second programs origin was reverse and i cut the features in the middle of the board 180 degrees out. this was devastating as i really really liked this fretboard and i didn't have enough iron bark left to make one the same. i agonized over how i might repair it, but it was toast. I had to move on.

that thing is more capable offroad and has already done more work than any ranger you'll see on the road epic job

sorry im not aware of any other parts that will work (not saying there arnt any) I used the pedal assembly from a manual 13x series crown wagon. early on i had a celica xx / aa60 pedal assembly that i thought i might use but i never even offered it up as i found the genuine unit ex japan.

great job, awesome engineering yadaa yadda ect ect im disappointed that milk bottle didn't get ejected out the side of your shed at mach 1 but seriously, great job

A while back i commissioned a strap to be made for this after a late night browsing, it was advertised as a guitar strap so i got in touch with the maker to see if she could make a 3" wide one suitable for bass, she was only too happy to. She was in the process of moving and said it would take a while but i was happy to wait and im glad i did. its currently fitted to my Samick bass which i picked up for cheap to learn on, its a good instrument but its quite generic. the strap came from https://rockitmusicgear.shop/ which is run by a lady in California and has plenty of awesome designs, also a pretty accomplished musician herself and i was glad to be buying from a person and not another massive faceless company. as a pretty awesome bonus she had also included these little 3d printed cats and amps pick holders that she makes. the whole family loved them and they now live in our library on the shelf with various other little trinkets, and also the room where my wife practices. (i dont actually use picks, but i love cats and i love amps)

I next started on the headstock logo/badge. i opted to try machine this on my little cnc router, que about 8 iterations while i learnt how best to do it. i started with an engraving bit which had many struggles, mainly the router isnt very stiff but also the brass was knocking the edge off the needle sharp engraving bit and was giving inconsistent results. i tried a few more times and with some different tooling but couldnt get it good enough. i then picked up a diamond tiped drag bit used for engraving, this tool doesnt spin up the spindle and simply drags the diamond over the surface giving excellent fine lines. i tried a couple different styles including a demo run on some stainless steel, though i prefered the brass logo against the similar tones of wood and the silver just didnt look quite right. i might clean up the edges on this one and attach it to the case though as while its not perfect, its not too bad either. once i got the process nailed, i set to redesigning the badge itself as i wasnt actually happy with the actual design. the final part looks awesome and im very happy. pre cleaning up the bevel edges with jewler file and satin clear applied. Done and glued in place apologies for bad, glary photos, everything is so shiny its a bit of a nightmare to capture but to the eyes everything looks awesome.

I got to the below point and was feeling pretty happy, i sent a pic to a good mate whos a painter in the airforce and a good guitar player, who crushed my dreams by informing me that it still wasn't done. he suggested i go look at my wifes squire strat (a good, but entry level guitar) and to come back and tell him if i saw anything but a perfectly flat surface, i didnt even need to go look because i knew that guitar was amazing, so he said my bass should be atleast as good as a squire. mother fucker it took weeks of effort to achieve that, but he was right. So i set to more applications and sanding off and eventually made it here. As you can see there were still a couple of defects which got sorted i think its at an even more polished state now but i havnt got any pics, it will get polished again after i fit all the hardware and then remove it again before final fitment. here it in in its current state with hardware either fitted or dummy placed. getting real excited now.

So as shown above i got the best Christmas present ever of a chunk of wood that was shaped like a bass guitar. this fucked nearly all of my other plans for my Christmas break so the house and cars barely got touched as i got stuck into sanding and boy was there alot of sanding, not because the model was wrong or Nicks machine inaccurate, but because i found out why they call hardwood, hardwood My family graciously allowed me to turn our dining table into the most efficient dust production factory you've ever seen and i worked on it most days untill i was happy, it turns out i didn't take any pictures of this untill i started marking things out for truss rod install and tuning machine holes. Once i was happy with the finish sanding i built a basic rack to help with the application of finish. I initially started with Tru-Oil, i gunstock finish product and while it looked great i quickly realized the grain on the red oak was far too deep for this product to ever fill, so i went looking for an oil based polyurethane and landed on Resene Qristal, i picked up a high gloss and a satin with the intention of doing the recesses 'pickguard' satin for a bit of contrast and potentially the neck if i opt not to use the Tru-Oil here aswell. Very happy with the resene product, and que about 50 coats with sanding in between to eventually level off the surface and get a proper high gloss finish, but once done it looked absolutely incredible, unfortunately im not a great photographer so i cant really portray just how great this wood looks. the stripes of purple heart and Filipino mahogany look almost metallic against the soft tones of the beech and oak. Starting to look like something...

I can offer a slight teaser with this photo of my cat, the logo inspiration, sitting near the headstock. She usually looks angrier so I must be doing alright.

i definitley owe this thread an update, ive been spending a substantial amount of my spare time on this and its very nearly done.