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

[jeremy]

there is nothing secret or unusual about the methods hes using in those pics. great lookin wood though

[Snake Aces]

Inlay preview:

[blakejcan]

is this bass for Cobra Commander or Serpentor?

[Mincer]

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.

I do like reading about the different woods. I like the look of padouk when first used, but then it sort of turns to a muddy brown after. I hear good things about goncalo alves, too. Wild stripes on that.

[orpheo]

All wood will discolor over time. It's just a truth of life you've gotta learn to deal with, if you want unfinished necks.

About the inlay. Yeah, I was surprised how very, very doable this was. The inlay isn't sanded completely, I leave that till later, after it's glued up. I've gotta level the board anyway, so why do the same job twice when the first time isn't necessary per se?

Now, I'm waiting on some veneers for all the necks I'm making right now. Once that is done, I can start the marathon process of gluing the veneers and the fretboards. In that week, I will do ALL the headstock caps. I've got eight I've gotta do, so that will be cool.

I don't know if this build will get my standard 'Stork' inlay on the headstock. Might be cool, though. It is not unthinkable, though, that we'll go with the same glow in the dark green epoxy for the headstock logo for this one!

All the others will get a simple, standard silver grey inlay.

[Snake Aces]

I like the idea of the glow in the dark headstock logo.

[Snake Aces]

is this bass for Cobra Commander or Serpentor?

Nope, just me. Haha.

[orpheo]

OKAY... Let's bump this topic and give out a few photos and stories.

First of all, I am aware, painfully so, that this build has taken a long time to come to completion. I hate that. I hate myself for that, but a lot has happened.

When we started this project, I was still in happy spirits, with my now ex-girlfriend. A few weeks after I started working, she left me. Then, due to Covid, the workshop was closed for almost a year! The complex I hired a workshop from was closed down because it was a place of "public gathering", so it had to close. Then, when I started working again, I met my current wife, had a short but intense stint in the hospital due to early-caught cancer, then, when I picked up the bass, disaster struck and I had to start all over again. And from that point onward, I took the decision to not rush it, at all. Rushing means making unnecessary mistakes that take a lot longer to fix than just taking it step by step.

The bass itself is insanely complex, even though it may not seem so at first sight. Let me give you a breakdown:

* ash top on Spanish Cedar bodyback: Spanish Cedar is amazing, tonally (it's part of the mahogany family, it's not a cedar!), but both woods suck up finish like a sponge. I did my best to combat that, but more on that in a moment.
* The neck and fretboard contain bocote; bocote has to come from the devil's backyard because it glues to NOTHING it seems. I used all my knowledge to let this come to an end and even then, I had to re-glue the fretboard to the neck, and the binding to the fretboard a few times. It's just a pain. And to just allow it to be glued, and hope for the best, would be ridiculous!
* The wiring... Just a 1 pickup wiring, master tone/volume, that's easy. But this bass received a 3 band switchable preamp, a USB charging port for the battery, and a single/series/parallel switch, all in a LP control cavity. To make that fit, is like Tetris, and required a LOT of planning. And that's where the big booboo happened... My jig to drill the wiring hole slipped, and the drill exited the top. I was almost done, but had to start all...over...again. Level the top, find a new top, level the body, joint the new top, level that, joint it to the body, and start all over again.

Sometimes I felt like crying. Heck, I even did. I remember calling my wife (She was in Mexico at the time), and I just couldn't take it anymore. I felt so frustrated and defeated. A sense of hopelessness is not cool.

[orpheo]

It started with this bocote fretboard. It had to be milled, and then the inlay. That was the 'easy' part!

[orpheo]

Overview of the bass as the was in June 2022, after a wedding, a lockdown, a cancer treatment, and a whole lot of work.



Total shot. You can clearly see the bocote fretboard, the green glow in the dark inlay.


Horror, gasp, nooooo! Drill slipped.



I relayed this to the customer, and 4.4kg is not too bad for a bass, not at all, but now we had the opportunity to make the entire thing even lighter. I think I shaved off (literally) 1kg/2lb off the bass in the end?

[orpheo]

Second Round!



It starts with a new top. I leveled the body, and took off the old neck pocket so the new neck pocket can align nicely. Also, that neck pocket would be difficult to reuse, so best to just cut a brand new pocket.







To quote Guns 'n Roses: "what we've got here, is... failure to communicate!". This horrible, horrible finish is the result of the paint not wanting to stick to the filler. It should leave a thin film, but it didn't. It resulted in spots and droplets.




This is the final result, after I took of the faux binding but before scraping. I solved the issue by adding a very thin coat of binder before I would spray the color layer. Then, a coat or two of finish, and THEN the burst.

Obviously, all carved, cut, sanded, sprayed by hand.

[orpheo]

I took this photo in the dark. All lights were out. The light that the inlay has emitted illuminated the photo.


Here with artificial light. Notice the nut is not cut yet.



The process of polishing the body. You can see how I solved the issue of the control cavities not linking up: I routed a small channel underneath the neck pocket where the wires could be looped through, reaching the treble side of the neck pocket, then going to a channel that was cut underneath the top.

The preamp module forced the location of the preamp pots, in terms of sizing and geometry, so this is what it became. You can also see part of my polish process. I start with SuperAssilex blue (p600), orange (p1200), black (p3000), all dry, and then I use 3M Trizact P3000 and P8000 wet. I then use a 3M polish compound on a green polish pad and then on the yellow polish pad. First on the Rupes Bigfoot, then on the Mirka Deros. Both are excenter polish/sanding machines. The Rupes has an excentricity of 12mm, the Mirka 5mm. That prevents swirls, especially with the more abrasive polish compounds.


Saddles installed, pickup installed, neck is there, tuners are there, earth ground wire installed under the saddles... Time for strings. Let's see what this neck does under tension!

Answer: very little. That neck is stable (for now, let's give it a day or two). Normally, I'm used to hearing some creaking noises but this neck was silent as a mouse. That's good news. The Trussrod allowed for proper relief setting.


Daylight photo.

What's left to do?

Clean up the nut, it's a bit sharp at the moment.
Fix the last steps in the wiring process (jack, USB port) and check for errors (fingers crossed!!)
Backplates
Knobs

My god, I'm almost there.

[GuitarDoc]

Very nice! Love the inlay work.

Might I inquire the cost of such an instrument?

[jeremy]

dang, that does look nice. sucks about the delay for sure.

as far as cost, a 50% deposit of $1600 was mentioned earlier in the thread

[JOLLY]

Looking good.