Earlier this year we sold this bass on Ebay to Mark in Long Beach CA. It's an Oakhurst Model 5-string bass with the following features:

  • Three-piece laminated neck in hard maple and walnut
  • Indian rosewood fingerboard
  • Hard maple body with a 3/4" thick flame maple top and hard maple back
  • Bartolini j-style pickups and passive electronics
  • Gold hardware

Mark decided that he wanted to upgrade the bass as follows:

  • Satin chrome hardware, including Hipshot ultra-light tuning machines
  • Bartolini preamp and battery holder
  • A new neck:
    • Lakland style headstock
    • Birdseye maple fingerboard
    • hardrock flame maple three-piece neck
    • Double-action truss rod
    • Graphite stabilizer bars
    • Flame maple truss rod cover with inlay

We're also refinishing the body to fix some of the small scratches and dings that have occurred since this bass was built 4 - 1/2 years ago.

 

 

 

 

We started by making up the neck blank for the replacement neck. This block consists of three pieces of flamed hard rock maple 7/8" x 2-1/2" approximately 40 inches long. We'll get two neck blanks out of this piece:

The pieces of hard maple that make up this block are oriented so that the annular rings in the wood run close to vertical through the neck blanks. This and the three-piece lamination result in necks that are stronger and more stable than the traditional one-piece flat-sawn wood used by Fender and other manufacturers.

The next two pictures show the two neck blanks we got from this block.

After the channels were cut, the truss rod and graphite stabilizer bars werre installed. The graphite bars are glued in place with high-strength epoxy, and the truss rod is seated in a bed of silicone cault to make sure it doesn't rattle. Then we made up the headstock overlay, a 1/16" thick piece of flamed hard maple, which came from the same batch of wood the neck blanks were made from. This overlay was glued in place as shown here:

Then the birdseye maple fingerboard was cut to rough shape ald slotted for frets, and (as shown in this picture) glued to the neck blank. This gluing operation uses lots of clamps.

Note that the headstock overlay has been shaped to the headstock:

Another view of the headstock while the fingerboard is being glued to the neck:

The neck is now ready for shaping. We bagan by radiusing the neck with a sanding block that has the 16" radius cut into it. Then we carve the neck in the Ryobi oscillating drum sander. This view of the neck was taken during this shaping process:

The neck heel:

Once we have the neck properly shaped, we install the position-marker dots in the fingerboard top and edge. The position markers are 1/4" diameter, and the holes for them are made using a 1/4" Forstner bit in the drill press. Then they are glued in place with Super Glue. The side-marker dots are made from 3/32" diameter black plastic, which is Spere-Glued into holes drilled into the edge of the fingerboard.

This picture shows this neck and another one we're working on, for another customer in Ireland.

The next step is to inlay the CYR logo in the headstock. These logos are made up for me by Andy DePaule. They consist of a black mother-of-pearl substrate into which the while mother-of-pearl ring and paua abalone letters are inlaid.

11/19/07: Here's the neck with the frets installed:

More pictures showing the fitting of the neck to the body. The neck has been finish-sanded, and is ready for finishing:

From the back:

The next two pictures show the neck after two coats of the General Finishes Semigloss has been applied.

Here's the body after four new coats of lacquer:


All Pictures and Text
(c) Copyright 2007, 2008 by Stephen Cyr
Last updated January 29, 2008		 Best experienced with

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