FAQ
The main tools that will be needed for a solid body bass with are:
Scroll, jig or band saw. Either is fine and serves the purpose but a scroll saw will do the finest job on the curves. You may need to use a band saw if you are using a hardwood such as oak.
A chisel will cut out the spots for the pickups and electronics, but a router is more commonly used because it is much faster and does a better job if you are used to using one, but it is more dangerous.
Sand paper. Sanding is one of the most important things in making a bass especially if you are staining, because the dents and rough edges will soak up lots of stain and you will have uneven color.
Tape measure
You will need clamps to clamp the wood if you cannot get the proper height, width or thickness to make the bass.
A drill and drill bits to drill the holes to place to electronics in the bass
Will I need a certain type of wood?
No, not really. You can use any type of wood that you desire. For example; we used pine which is a very uncommon wood used in basses and guitars. We used it because it is very cheap and easy to work with. In our research on the Internet we found that some of the better and more common woods are:
Alder
Northern Ash
Southern Ash
Basswoood
Cherry
Koa
Mahogany
Maple
Oak
Poplar
Walnut
Will I need a certain type of pickups?
Yes and no. There are many types of pickups. You can choose anything that you want, but you will need to make sure that when you are making a bass that you have bass pickups and not guitar pickups and vice versa.
What do I use for a pick guard?
You can make pick guards out of plastic. Plastic is what they are most commonly made of. If you want to use plastic and you have none you can order it. Pick guard material is available in most mail order guitar supply stores and so are standard guitar or bass pick guards. Most sheets of pick guard material are big enough to make two standard size pick guards. Seeing we didn't have much time to make the bass we were going to use plexy glass and because you could see all of the electronics and this was appropriate for a science project. During the process of making the pick guard, due to the thinness of the plexy glass it cracked. We scrapped the idea all together. They have also been made out of wood but this is very rare and we think that it would be quite tricky.
Should I make or buy my neck?
Well this is up to yourself, but we suggest you buy it or get an old one as we did. You can make the neck if you are skilled with wood work. We have not tried it yet but fretting is said to be the most complicated, hard and important part of making a guitar. We are not exactly sure about how the steel rod is placed in the neck but it seems to be a difficult thing to do. Although, if you have a strong enough wood you may not need a steel rod. It will probably cost you around $70.00 to buy the neck but if you make one,
it will probably cost a lot more.
What do I use for color and finish?
This is really up to yourself and depends on how you want your bass to look.
If you want to see the grain you can leave it natural and just varnish it, or you can go with a stain and have color but still see the grain. We went with mahogany stain. We picked stain because we thought it had a really nice look. When you stain you want to make sure that you sand A LOT and use a fine grit, at least 280 grit. You can also use up to 1000 grit which would almost polish the bass. If you have any rough spots or edges it will soak up a lot of stain and create uneven color. We are not that familiar with using paint but sanding is not as crucial as when you stain. In our research we found that you can use any type of paint that you like. The most common paint used on guitars is a laquer which is the same as what is used on cars, this is called Nitrocellulose Laquer. The other option would be regular enamel spray paint finished with polyurethane. This comes out great but there is one fault, which is that polyurethane has a yellowish tint, which is needless to say, undesirable.
What kind of finish do I use?
We went with a Diamond Finish varathane which cost around $20.00. This seemed to work great with the stain and after a few coats gave a great, hard glossy, finish. You can also use polyurethane but as we said before it has the yellow tint. One option that we had explored but decided not to go with was a product called Pour On. It's a mixture of two liquids. You have to mix it yourself and the you pour it on to the surface, it hardens to create a very hard surface which supposedly is equal to 50 coats of varathane. We didn't go with this because it is mainly just flat surfaces, so its probably very hard to do the sides of the guitar. Also it was a lot more costly.
