Doing Things Wrong

Laboratory

Come up to the lab,
and see what's on the slab.
I see you shiver with antici ...

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... pation !

I like to build oddball short-scale basses. You can't buy them. You can't even buy parts for them. If you want one, you're going to have to start with lumber and work your way up. That can involve some fairly precision work, the kind that requires specialized tooling. I thought I'd post some of the creations from my garage workshop for others to see and perhaps copy or improve on.

Almost everything here can be made from parts and materials from your local hardware store, with a few exceptions noted. There are many good sources for luthiery and general tools and supplies in the Links page.

And all you high school kids - take wood shop. You can make all of this stuff easily there. Man do I envy you for that. I wish I'd taken wood shop instead of French. Would have been a lot more useful.


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I took this 'Bird down from it's usual place up on the wall to take some measurements, and I noticed that it had grown fangs along the ( otherwise excellent Mighty-Mite ) neck that were not there before. Sharp fret ends is something I see people piss and moan about all the time. It is going to happen. It's not that the frets weren't dressed properly at the factory, the problem is that most guitars are made in warm humid places like China, Mexico, Indonesia, and Tennessee in the summer. Wood swells with moisture. When they are brought to the USA and placed in a dry heated winter house, the wood dries and shrinks a tiny bit, and the fret ends protrude. Everything about fretwork is a matter of thousandths of an inch, even the tiniest discrepancies are obvious. So this is not a defect, it is something that is simply going to happen, and it is easy to fix.

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