It's Official: Placed Order for Custom Orpheo Bass Guitar

[Snake Aces]

Some more updates from orpheo:

Neck:


Body:

[Mincer]

Really love the pics. Thanks for sharing!

[Snake Aces]

I love the pics too! This is an unexpected bonus to the orpheo custom guitar and bass experience!

Happy to share them!

[ArtieToo]

I love the pics too! This is an unexpected bonus to the orpheo custom guitar and bass experience!

Happy to share them!

I'm stealing construction secrets as we speak.

[Snake Aces]

I'm stealing construction secrets as we speak.

Lol, yeah, I probably should not share these photos, but they are so cool to me! If orpheo wants me to delete them, I will.

[ArtieToo]

Lol, yeah, I probably should not share these photos, but they are so cool to me! If orpheo wants me to delete them, I will.

Not to worry. There isn't a chance in hell that I could ever do this.

[Snake Aces]

Not to worry. There isn't a chance in hell that I could ever do this.

Haha! Same here. I could never do this stuff, but it is amazing to get a sneak peak behind the scenes...

[orpheo]

There's nothing secretive about my methods guys The neck blank is already planed to 22mm tall. I will let it rest for a week or 2 and level it again to 20mm in two stages (1mm per week). Somewhere around September 8, I'll cut the headstock and trussrod slot and around September 11, I'll do the inlay if all goes well. From there on, it's smooth sailing. Some glueing of veneers and pinstripes, lots of dust and straight to porefill. I plan on having this bass fully painted by October so I can have the bass cure for 4 weeks. Completion around Thanksgiving, final delivery date before X-mas.

So far, the only thing that's truly 'mine' here, is how I construct the laminates in the neck (I flip the pieces cut out of the same blank, so the tensions render out to zero, or close to zero) and I use a steel beam to press down the middle of the top when I glue it up. That little stool is my favorite piece of equipment in gluing tops; it raises the piece up to eye level and it's small enough yet sturdy enough to carry 200 pounds of the weight of the clamps plus the top itself.

[Hsb]

Love these behind the scenes picts. Thank you for sharing.

[ErikH]

Now this is cool stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[Snake Aces]

You're welcome! Here is another update:

[Mincer]

Wow, very nice! Orpheo knows how to pick out good wood!

[orpheo]

I'm not one to leave leftovers alone, either in the kitchen or my workshop. So, I "developed" my 17 piece neck design to get rid of small pieces. There was one strip of bocote that was tall enough to be split in two whilst maintaining enough height for a guitar neck (after leveling), so with some veneers, a strip of cocobolo and 2 chunks of ziricote, I made a new neck. As exotic as I can make it while maintaining contrast as much as possible.



Just as an aside. The guitar around this neck will be absolutely bonkers but I'll post more on that in due time.

Right now I'm in that position in which I can offer a 17 piece neck as a standard option for the same upcharge as a 5 piece neck.

And for those who want to know how much glue there is in this neck? Sure, I'll spill the beans

The entire neck blank is 2438 grams after glueing (but before leveling). The pieces themselves, without glue, were 2401 grams and I used 100 grams of glue. Ergo, more than 60% of the titebond used is water and of the glue used, the majority squeezed out during clamping. So, all in all, approximately 2% of the neck is now glue, likely less

[orpheo]

Ironically, the colors of the ziricote, bocote and cocobolo as such that it's just too expensive and too much hassle to actually make a neck like this as a planned build. You can get similar color structures if you substitute cocobolo for bubinga (or padouk if you want it to be a touch redder), bocote subbed for ovangkol and ziricote subbed for wenge or rosewood. A padouk/ovangkol/wenge multi lam neck will yield the same colors but will be 25-35% to make (and a lot easier because ziricote must be the Devil's Wood... it's the WORST to level and sand!!).

My 17 piece necks that will be a standard option, will be of wenge, padouk, ovangkol or purpleheart.

Bubinga is still on CITES, as well as rosewood, pau ferro is prohibitively more expensive as time goes by, ziricote is a pain, coromandel is a nightmare to get hold of in suitable sizes without cracks, cocobolo is beautiful flatsawn but falls a bit short in strips like this (though it sands and works like a champ), same for bocote. Zebrawood/zebrano has no place in luthiery in my opinion, goncalo alves and cechen are amazing to work with but also not readily available, helas.

I might consider doing a multi piece neck of roasted maple, regular maple, walnut and mahogany, but why should I when these great materials are here? I tried using local woods but that's just more pain and hassle than it's worth in my opinion, and using only maple doesn't yield the tonal results we desire as guitarists. Not 100% of the time, anyway. A LP with a maple neck truly does sound different than one with a rosewood neck.

[Snake Aces]

An update from orpheo including shots of the bocote fretboard has me feeling upbeat today: