The Viola Bass

This bass will have the following characteritics:

• Chambered genuine mahogany body
• Top and back made from curly red maple
• Body sides veneered with curly maple
• Bass will be fitted with a Line 6 Variax 700 synth system
• The neck will be made from a 3-piece curly hard maple blank
• The scale will be 32"
• The fingerboard will be dark Indian rosewood

This is the picture the body shape will be based on:

And the template, showing the locations of the controls. Notice how the body is wider than the picture above:

The design for the headstock:

The construction begins with the body, shown here cur to rough shape and ready to be chambered:

Here's the body with the chambers cut and sanded smooth on the drum sander:

The top and back are made from curly red maple. The top is about 9/16" thick, and the back is 1/2" thick. These pictures show them glued into bookmatched plates:

These are the body plates cut to shape. They will overhang the body by 1/8". The points on the body have been sharpened in preparation for adding the maple veneer to the sides of the body:

I bought some veneer softener that will be used to prepare the veneer for bending into rather tight curves.

These are two neck blanks I made up - I will choose one of these for this project:

October 9, 2009: More progress on the neck: the fingerboard has been glued on, after installing the double-action truss rod with the adjustment at the headstock end:

The Top Has Been Carved:

Vintage P-Bass Body

This is a one-piece swamp ash body modelled after the original Fender Precision bass (later versions are called the Telecaster Bass).

Fender/Squier Neck Refinish

This neck came from a late 80's Made-in-Japan Squier Precision Bass with a 32" scale. Squier made a series of Precision and Jazz basses that were about 7/8 of normal size, with the shorter 32" scale. Rick is a collector of these basses, and I'm building him the body above and refinishing this neck for two of his bass rebuilding projects.