Cowbell Bass Guitar (1/8) ~ Luthiery Laboratories

Cowbell Bass Guitar (1/8)

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Built as a testbed for a number of ideas:

The body is typical Danelectro-style masonite over chambered plywood, finished in 'hammered' copper spray paint.
Bridge is Fender-like mounting for piezo saddle. Bronze strings.
All electronics mounted on one plate in a recess in the end of the body.
32" Radiata (pine) neck with maple/walnut fretboard.

And everything works great.

More Cowbell !!!

1 2 3 8

All Built, Basses, Body - Built, Body - Hollow, Body - Masonite/Plywood, Body - Tolex Binding, Electronics - Active, Electronics - Piezo, Featured Projects, Medium-Scale Basses, Miscellaneous, Neck - Built, Original, Projects,

Miscellaneous Projects

BC Rich "Osprey" Bass

Cowbell Bass

Kubicki Bass

Mosrite Bass

Harmony H617 Bobkat

Kubicki Factor Guitar

Brownsville Violin Bass

These are the rest of my experiments and a few modified factory pieces.

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Masonite

Modern Danelectro construction of a classic design

Masonite is the classic Danelectro body material. Vintage Danelectros are Masonite over a poplar core, modern ones substitute plywood for poplar, which is actually better and cheaper. Masonite is available in 1/8" and 3/16" thicknesses. For luthiery, 1/8" is preferable, but 3/16" can also be used, especially if a slightly thicker and heavier body is desired.

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Radiata Pine

Here in the Northeast ( and probably everywhere ) Home Depot sells two grades of wood: Number 1, which they label as 'Select', and Number 2. Number 1 costs about twice as much as Number 2. Lowes is similar. Both grades are pine, not hardwood.

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Danelectro Tolex Body Binding

This is what the binding looks like on a vintage Danelectro. I've never been able to find a 'weave' pattern like this. Reissues use a cowhide texture; I also like pebble-grain.

Tolex side binding is something that is particular to Danelectros. I love it. There are many good points to using Tolex side binding:

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Piezos & Buffers

These are all of my piezo creations, so far. All of them utilize a version of the original single-transistor CafeWalter piezo buffer. He encouraged me to use his newer two-transistor version, but I never did get it to work. The simpler circuit works just fine, and I am a great fan of simple things that work.

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Fender-style Piezo Bridge

I just built this - my first bridge. The plate is 1/8" aluminum, screws from Home Depot, springs from the ~~junk~~ tone box. The saddle is from the truss rod I just destructed, plus a scrap of phenolic I found and shaped to a pointed 12" radius. The bushings are black plastic and were the hardest part to come up with, I finally bought some plastic chain that fit and cut them from that. They are drilled and threaded for the screws, although with plastic you can just force the screws in.

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Hammered Paint

Hammered spray paint is formulated to produce a mottled two-tone finish. The surface is smooth but not perfectly even and can be anything from matte to high gloss metallic. Hammered paints are available in a range of colors at any hardware or hobby store.

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