who made his own bass?

[Le Chevalier Noir]

Hello

When I see how a bass is done, I'm thinking the construction has not a huge
impact on the sound itself. (I don't say there is no impact at all!)
An then come the crazy idea to see if it is possible to build his own bass
guitare.
Maybe buying the neck is needed, but for the rest....

I don't expect to reach better perofrmance/price ratio that what is on the
market but....

someone tried this?

Le Chevalier Noir

[tho x. bui]

It's impossible to build your own bass guitar.

Or not.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=build+your+own+bass+guitar&btnG=Google+Search

You may also want to visit rec.music.makers.builders.

Tho

[Mark Marsh]

Bud LeCompte is building world class basses himself.
I've built three, and they turned out nice. I did
purchase the neck, however.

If you have reasonable wood working skills it's not
hard.
-Mark

[Tony]

I built my first bass, 40 years ago - slab, thru neck. The neck turned
out great - the body, pickups etc not so great. It's so much easier
today.
Tony (remove the "_" to reply by email)

[bja...@iwaynet.net]

I'm like you! I've got a big slab of walnut in the basement and I'm
trying to figure out just what bass project would be good for it.

I could start simple by buying a cheap Chinese bass to get the neck and
all hardware for a song and then just use the wood to build a body for
it. Or maybe I could go the whole way and buy a neck and quality parts
to make a fine custom bass. Or maybe even go further and even build the
neck. I think if I try that, the first attempt will be fretless to make
it simple.

Right now I'm leaning toward making an exact copy of some classic
Fender body in walnut.

Benj

[fred]

<bja...@iwaynet.net> wrote in message
news:1148716461....@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

I built one 25'ish years back using a toilet seat for the body.
T'was obviously known as the bog-seat-bass.
I 'found' a wrecked neck but had access to a milling machine so milled it
flat,
glued on some wood for the fingerboard and re-fretted.
Dead easy to get the correct fret spacing using a miller.
Not trying to teach grandma to suck eggs -
The 12th root of 2 is the magic number and gives the distance multiplier
between frets.
e.g, fret 5 space will be 1.05946 times longer than fret 6 space.
12 because of 12 semi-tones per octave and 2 because an octave doubles the
frequency.

[Beach Runner]

A solid body bass is no better than the acoustics of the actual
instrument All the strings should
be balanced, and the instrument should sing, even whennot plugged in.
Otherwise it will sound dead.

Have fun!

[Beach Runner]

[Beach Runner]

[Glen]

These two links offer some thoughts.

http://www.grizzly.com/products/searchresults.aspx?q=bass&submit.x=8&submit.y=9

http://www.grizzly.com/products/searchresults.aspx?q=guitar&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Glen

[BW]

Carvin (1-800-854-2235) makes bass kits which could probably be very
useful as a guide, if not the entire project. Even if you just did the
kit, you'd wind up with a pretty darned good instrument. (Carvin makes
good stuff). Nice project - enjoy.

[bja...@iwaynet.net]

I should mention that there was a guy over in alt.guitar.bass who built
a Carvin kit only somehow he talked them into selling him a WALNUT
body! With a bit of construction and tung oil finishing he ended up
with a truly gorgeous custom bass! He had photos and the story
somewhere on the net. Probably can find it by Googling the
alt.guitar.bass group on constuction or the like. It wasn't too long
ago.

Benj