Hello folks 

My lad is a million times better musician than me even though I taught him to play the guitar some 14 years ago. I blame YouTube.... if I'd've had the internet when I first strummed along to "the streets of London" when I was 13 I'd be filling stadiums by now and be a Rock God with a sobriety plan and recovering from a serious coke habit on my own private Caribbean island,  but oh no, we had to learn by ear or being shown by mates or gazing at tab books in music shops that we couldn't afford..... which means I'm a crap guitarist. Oh yes, it's so easy for da yoof of today 🙂

But I digress...... 

As a 'well done son for graduating with a degree in music and scoring a job in the music industry during a Pandemic' I thought it would be a great idea to build him a bass!

So here's the rub...... I've only ever built 2 playable guitars before.  Funnily enough both were from Mark's onliners. One electric and my acoustic, "the toad".

He wants a Fender jazz bass (he plays a P bass atm so no pressure there) so one drunken night I said "Yeah mate, I'm sure I could knock you one up......leave it with me...... any cider left?"

So fast forward a few weeks (stay awake at the back) and I'm  assembling the parts. I reckon that if I share it here and it all goes horribly wrong we're all in the frame, but if it goes well then we can all take the credit 🙂

I've scored a beautiful maple neck blank from some geezer in Scotland called Bailey and a nut and chunky bridge. I've bought some j bass plans from which to make me drawing and will worry about other hardware like machine heads, pickups and pots when the time and money comes.

I want a nice piece of ash for the body but Mr B seems to be out of stock. I've looked online but there seems to be such a range of prices that I'm not sure what to do. Any recommendations for a decent bass size, thicknessed bodyblank please?

I'm assuming that I can radius the top of the neck blank to use as a fretboard and wang the truss rod in from the back, covered by a fillet?

There's 2 options for the truss rod on the plans - curved or straight - any thoughts?

I do make myself laugh cos l recently bought a fret template for guitars and then choose to try and build a bass!

I'm hoping that between the design, build electric, and bolt on Bailey vids, together with this forum that I can build bass that my lad can gig with - that would be so humbly satisfying and testament to me Guru, Mr B.

Apologies for the rambling post but I'm excited to see what happens here.

Any bolt on bass tips greatly received 

Many thanks 

James