The design is of my own , and derived from my guitar body model, just enlarged for the larger scale length.

It is a 34" scale length and the neck is based on a p-bass.

All hardware and pickups are Wilkinsons.

Body is American Ash , the neck is maple and a rosewood fingerboard.

I cut a scarf joint with my japanese Ryoba saw, pretty clean cut so I did not need a lot of planing to get it trued up.

The headstock is planed down using a handplane and I made a headstock face plate from 4 or 5 pieces of black veneer and glued it to the top of the headstock.

I also cut the rough shape of the body on the bandsaw.

I then cut the fretboard to size, cut the fretslots, radiused ( 16"radius ) the fretboard, glued the fretboard to the neck and installed the frets.

I did not take pictures of the neck shaping, but you all have seen that before dont you?

I used a contour gauge to copy the shape of a neck of a bass I have ( on the 1st and 12th fret ),

drawn it out and calculated the location of the lines for the facets. then carved, planed, rasped and filed the neck to a rough , but usable shape.

After routing the neck pocket, I tested the fit, which is nice and snug..

Then I installed the bridge  and made sure I got the depth right, as well as the scale length and I assured myself that I would be able to get a good low action and proper intonation.

 Next, I routed the pickup and control cavity and wired the electronics.

In the pictures you can also see that I already marked roughly  out my carving lines.

I then cut and polished the bone nut as perfectly as I could.

and made a cover plate for the control cavity.

Then I carved the body.

Finished the body with Danish oil and Wipe on polish, while the neck is finished with danish oil and pastewax.

 Finally , I applied my logo decals and quite some coats of Motip clear varnish ( 15 or 16 coats in total ) to the headstock.

Anyway, brazillian mahogany body with ash top, brazilian mahogany and maple neck, ebony board, set neck and so on.

Brazillian mahogany with yew and resin top. Neck is maple with brazillian mahogany up the centre and some form of rosewood board.

This time to deal with levelling the resin I knocked up a router sled, it's brilliant! What a time saver. I did the body, back of neck, heel and back of headstock with it so far.

After a protracted break from guitar making I have decided that I really do need to produce an electric bass to further my ambition of seeing an entire band play with instruments that I have built. I've got the acoustic and electric 6 strings and all bar the kick drum of a drum kit, so the bass is the one important thing missing.

I will be using the same (although possibly slightly larger) outline as I did for my electric build (shown below), which is derived from the shape of the Maccaferri acoustics, and I would quite like to incorporate a tail piece on this build a bit similar to that on the Hoffner violin bass, purely to echo the original Maccaferri construction.

What I am looking for is advice on whether this is a good idea or if it would be better to go with a more standard bridge set up. Any down sides to a tailpiece on a bass?

I don't know much about bass guitars, I've never played one, but there does seem to be a vast difference in the bridge positions. Are the guitars with the bridge almost falling of the bottom doing so simply because they have a very long scale length and this is necessary to bring the nut end of the fretboard within reach or is there some other reason? Clearly, with a tailpiece, the bridge would have to more central to the body but does this have any effect other than making the headstock further away? The guitar will probably be either 30" or 32" scale length so I don't think this is going to matter from a practical point of view.

Lastly I would like opinions on body/neck materials. I have some of the same plank of khaya that I used for the six string electric or a lovely big lump of ash, which I guess would end up being considerably heavier. For the neck I was thinking of laminating maple with either khaya or walnut and, if I can find a piece big enough, I will probably use some of my late uncle's Rio rosewood for the fretboard (just to make sure that I can never be forced into selling it 🤣 🤣) or, failing that, some nice variegated ebony. I quite like the continuity of using the khaya but maybe this isn't a species especially suited to bass construction, I just don't know.

Ok peeps, over to you, all comments and observations very gratefully received.

Cheers

Darren

First I made a 1:1 scale drawing of it and picked some wood for it from my wood heap.

Mahogany and spalted maple for the body, a mahogany and maple laminated neck blank and birds eye maple for the fretboard. Tuners and bridge are Gotoh in cosmo black.

Pickup will be a Seymoru Duncan SMB 4A.

Today I started by making the router pattern for the neck.

 And for the neck pocket.