Here’s a cool Maple Stude. Maple with a mahogany, maple and purpleheart neck and a persimmon fingerboard that had already been leveled, marked and lined. There was a fair bit some reshaping of the rather larger top wing as well as a reshaping of the lower horn and the end of the fingerboard. The additon of a soap bar humbucker, in place of the original single coil J, and a three way switch add to the tonal flexibility of this bass.
Work Completed:
Reshape/remove wood on top of lower bout
Shape/sand body to 80 grit
Re-edges and re-contour back
Trim excess fingerboard
Drill for recessed side jack input
Shape/sand body to 150 grit
Shape/sand neck to 220 grit
Clean-up pick-up rout
Add headstock veneer
Routed for new p-up
Sand of fretboard 220 grit
Sand fingerboard to 800 grit and polish
Paint cavity cover
Filled holes/gaps as required.
Sand body to 400 grit
Sand/shape neck to 400 grit
Shield cavities
Re-drill for ferrules
Route and drill for three way switch
Paint cavity cover
Seal wood
Apply Tru-Oil
Sand-back and polish
Fit string thro’ ferrules
Redo wiring harness add tone control and three way switch
Fabricate nut and bridge
Refit hardware
Notes:
A few minutes with a band saw and about 30mins on my sanding wheel and we are definitely more Lobe-like IMHO!
I used a fretting saw to cut the ‘board down to the body and then, with a hot iron, loosened the glue and used a pry to lift the ‘board and ‘voila’ no excess fingerboard. I then reshaped the end to be a little rounder, taking inspiration from one of my favorite luthiers.
The headstock was a little thin, so a maple veneer to match the body was added.
Having worked on this bass for a few weeks I had time to think about the pick-up options. The EMG J-Select was not a bad pick-up, but it is sonically challenged in a one-pick-up configuration. The spacing between the neck and the bridge was such that adding a second J would have been too much of a compromise, so I decided to re-route for a Kent Armstrong Humbucker, which was wired to a micro-switch to give parallel, split and series options for a full pallet of tonal variation.
