UPDATE 12/19/2007: To see part two of the DIY Bass Guitar saga, please visit http://www.maxopedia.org/DIY_bass_guitar_for_fun_and_profit

So, sometime around the age of sixteen, I started getting into music. The first instrument I learned to play was the electric bass. One thing I quickly learned about musical instruments is that a decent one costs a good amount of money; the sky is the limit for premium and vintage instruments.

So, shortly after I got my first cheap bass, I was scheming to build my own home-made bass guitar. Building an electric bass or guitar is not that difficult in the grand scheme of woodworking, but making an instrument that looks nice and plays even nicer is a fine art even when you're talking about electric instruments.

I cooked up a Carl Thompson-esque design and started sourcing my parts. Even though I was seventeen when I started the project, I had enough money from working a couple shitty jobs to drop $700 on materials and equipment. I already had a good bit of tools before and I had even more after I was done.

The instrument was built as a neck-through. I did not want to buy the tools or spend the time to learn how to do fretwork and shape a neck, so I picked up a Carvin neck with a blank headstock. The tuners, knobs, and output jack are all Carvin-sourced. The pickups are Seymour Duncan, the bridge is a special brass Hipshot - that kind of sucked though because it was back-ordered for several months.

The body is made out of mahogany that I got from a local furniture builder that just happened to have some in the thicknesss I was looking for. This was actually unfortunate as the wood was not suitable for building instruments. It was mahogany, but not the appropriate grade. One thing I learned about mahogany is that the dust is essentially poisonous. Part of the reason the damn thing took so long was the sanding process... it would lay me out for the next week with congestion even though I wore a mask. I hand-carved all of the body contours and the scroll work in the horn. It's funny, because in some of the pictures I took, that horn looks a lot like a penis. I didn't realize my bass guitar's upper horn was a paean to masculinity. The finish on the wood is danish oil, and although I know that this is not a protective finish, the wood just becomes more and more beautiful over time. Also, if it ever sustains serious enough damage to necessitate a re-finishing, the process is relatively simple.

Foolishly, I did not make or buy templates for routing the pickup cavities, so they were done freehand with a dremel tool and router attachment. Perhaps this adds character. One particular challenge with the way I designed this bass was routing the wires from the pickups to the control cavity. I did this by (foolishly) buying a long-ass drill bit and just sort of 'guess-drilling' from the control cavity to the approximate location of the pickups. Oh boy howdy, do I have excellent planning. Needless to say, I didn't do it perfectly, and you can see a near-miss in one of the pictures that caused damage to the top of the instrument right around the pickup cavity. The price you pay for success I suppose.

The project took me about 2 years to complete, and technically speaking, the instrument is barely finished. I have left many of the details quite rough as you can see in the photographs. I need to replace the output jack at some point and re-do all the wiring in the control cavity. It is an awful mess and I have spared you those pictures. The control cavity cover with two different screws in it is actually intentional, and I would leave it on the 'finished' instrument. I view it somewhat as my signature although some people have suggested that I should literally sign my bass or in some way put a logo on it. The headstock is a ripe spot for some design, but I kind of like it simple.

Appendix A

I didn't just spring out of the womb with fully formed knowledge of woodworking - I had a lot of help along the way. One great resource was the forum at TalkBass. I put up a thread there about my project, and received some very good responses. Here are some of the more direct questions.

()smoke() - i'm sure the experience you gained is worth a great deal as well--do you plan to build another?

Well, this was something I was thinking about lately. I'm not sure I'd want to build another bass for myself, I'd probably want to sell it. Obviously I'd have to pay a lot more attention to fit'n'finish but it might not be a bad idea. If I made a different design though, I wouldn't want to sell it. It might be advantageous to just keep the design the same, and spend time perfecting it.

Handyman - Looks great! You just need to come up with a spiffy logo for your headstock now.

I think if I was selling someone a bass like this, I'd want some sort of logo on it, if for nothing else than promotional reasons. I don't know what approach I'd want to take with that either. I'm not knowledgeable about inlay techniques, which is what I see when I think of a logo on the headstock of my bass, but perhaps I'd want to take it in a different direction. However, I am somewhat ignorant of my options.

62bass - That's a very nice bass for a first job. I wouldn't worry about "high end" pickups. Those Duncans sound great. How do you like the Carvin neck? I'm very impressed with their quality. Great fret work on mine and didn't need any leveling.

I love the neck, it really makes the bass. I'd probably just go with it again even though I think it's a bit pricey.

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of the tone of my bass. It's my main instrument and it has a good sound, but it's not what I was looking for when I made it. I'm not sure if this is due to the low-grade mahogany I used, or the pickups. It seems to me that the tone of most electric basses is largely a function of the pickups.

Don't get me wrong though guys, I love my bass. I wouldn't bother taking an insurance policy out on it, because it's priceless.

Appendix B - add mass to bass headstock or bridge for sustain

I saw someone found this page by this search query: "diy add mass to bass headstock".

It's interesting, because this was one of the things I was thinking about when I was working on my bass. I really wanted it to have a lot of sustain, and that's why I special-ordered a heavy brass bridge.

I also thought about this idea of adding mass to a headstock. I decided not to to do it because it would unbalance the instrument and make it unwieldy. It's also doubtful how much sustain it would actually add. Furthermore, it necessitates further design complications and considerations. If anyone has ever done this successfully, let me know!

I would have also put the strings through the body, but I did not want to add this extra time and effort to my design when I was originally building the guitar.

One thing that really worked against me was the relatively low density mahogany I used for the body wings. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Overall, I'd say my bass ended up with average sustain.