FINISHED!!!

This thing went together pretty easy, even for me. All the screws went in nice and easy, stuff lined up the way it's supposed to...for the most part, and I did a great job on the finish. Aside from a wiring misfire (wrong grounding setup) the bass is rocking, and sounds beautiful! I wired the pickups exactly like a 60's Jazz bass - Volume/Volume/Tone - I just find the conventional Ric setup overkill, and personally have a thing against toggle switches. I could have done a slightly cleaner job on the pickguard's neck pickup cut out, but you really don't notice it. I really didn't dig the 24 fret board going that far into the pickgaurd at first, but I'm used to it now, and I can't argue with the sound, the neck pickup sounds amazing where it is.
I created the "Sethenbacker" nameplate/truss rod cover by handcutting a piece of plexi, then sanding and buffing the edges. Then, using a hi-rez photo of a real Ric truss rod cover - TRC - I created my own Sethenbacker logo in Adobe Illustrator, basically tracing over the actual size Ric TRC photo. once that was done, the Sethenbacker logo was printed on super high quality semi gloss photo paper using my inkjet printer. I also added "MADE IN COSTA MESA" in the early 60's TRC "made in the USA" position. After some truss rod tweaking (the single rod Carvin neck adjusts beautifully, by the way), a little filing/fret dressing, and a few different sets of strings, I finally got the bass set up to my liking. Ended up using some Labella flats I've had for a few years, the action is nice and low, and the 60's jazz like neck feels great.

Right now, I don't know what to say, I'm spent, I'm stoked, I acheived my goal of totally ruling, I did the namesake justice, and I have a bass that I love to play and sounds amazing. Enjoy the pictures.

Time to rub one out

...a bass that is.
being a fairly impatient person when it comes to fun stuff like this, waiting the required one week to do the final wet sanding was BRUTAL. I made it though, busy work and drinking wine helped to get in my way and keep my mind from obsessing too hard. One week rolled around and I promptly busted out the 1000 grit.

you can see my progress, from shiny to matte

early stages of buffing - meguiar's polishing compound, followed by meguiar's cleaner/wax.

all hand done.

Clear coats and good advice

Color is set, runs addressed, got this thing right where I want it. Time to get my clear on.
There is an "internet" forum I check out called "beat gear cavern", it's full of people like me dorking out on building stuff like this, it's great, and full extremely talented and knowledgeable folks. The Master of this type of thing is a gentlemen named Dale Fortune, he used to work at Rickenbacker, among other SoCal guitar manufacturers, and is the Master of Ric restoration and building. Fortunately he gave me some great advice on spraying and sanding the clear coats, other wise I would have surely burned through my supply quicker than was required. Dale suggested 6 or 7 coats of clear, let dry, wet sand up to 800. Then spray a few more coats, let dry a week, wet sand with 1000 and 1500, and then buff out. I ended up doing a couple coats less than Dale reccommended, as I prefer the feel of a thinner finish. Pictures below are of the post 800 wetsand/final clearcoats.

Shiny

Color time

A few coats of Sanding Sealer and it's time to get to the really hard part, the color. I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to spraying a sunburst type finish, but starting with the lightest color sounds like a good idea. first up : Amber.

Tomorrow evening I'll spray the orange tint, then the following evening the reds. By the time I'm done you probably won't see too much of the amber color left, except for the center of the body.

FIRE!

So far, so good. The Orange went on easy, only problem is the back of the headstock.

Something got on there, an oil or something from the sand paper, naptha, or a cloth, and it is not letting the color take properly, resulting in a blotchy flat area. I'll need to sand and redo the back of the headstock tomorrow. Hopefully blending it back into the good areas won't look too obvious.

OK, back of headstock sanded, and blended back with amber and orange tints, looks good! can't believe these rattle cans from ReRanch, such a great product - in case you are unaware, back in the 50's and 60's guitar companies used a product called Nitrocellulose Lacquer, which is no longer legal to spray in California, hence the rise of Polyurethane type finishes. Nitro goes on smooth, is easy to sand, and has a very organic feel. it also has a warm cast to it, and yellows with age, making sunburst type finshes especially nice. You can still by nitro lacquer in a few places, and there is a small company out of Texas that provides guitar specific nitro in rattle cans, for hacks like myself, they are called ReRanch, and I love them.

So, I have used ReRanch nitro sanding sealer, Amber tint, clear Orange, and now I'm spraying some Cherry Red (this nitro courtesy of StewMac), and some ReRanch 3 color Edge burst red. The cherry red from StewMac is very bright and looks great, the "3 color edge" from ReRanch is the middle color in a traditional Fender style burst, and gives the outside edge a slightly darker and dirtier look. The combination got me very close to the mid 60's RIC Fireglo that I love. Could have used a little more amber in the center, but I'm not complaining, the bass looks GREAT!

next up - the clear coats, waiting, and a lot of elbow grease.....

sand. seal. wait. repeat.

not much to report, just sanding my lil' fingertips off. got a couple coats of sanding sealer on it, smooth and ready for the color. looks good though, could definitely build as is and start rocking, Macca 70's style. The body wings have some nice figuring that is starting to pop with the application of some clear coat. pretty non uniform, just some subtle flamey stuff going on, I made sure to pick maple that was not too figured, as I did not want this to look like a boutique 90's bass. that being said, I'm a sucker for some flamey maple.

Had to order some grain filler for the walnut strips on the headstock, as the grain on walnut is so open, there is no way to get a glassy smooth finish unless you fill the pores. that should take about a week, so I'll be mellowing out on this until then. stay tuned....

little "BIT" more

...and by BIT I mean ROUTER bit, huh huh, get it?........huh...router...bit...uh.....

Ric basses have a caveman-like routed edge on the backs, and on the fronts of the models that feature a binding-less front face. Literally all you do is hit the top edge of the front and back, and bottom rear edge with a hand held router. not sure of the bit size, but it looks close enough for me! When I say "caveman-like" I mean it in the most endearing way, for some reason I think this sort of, um, "lack of elegance" is super cool and I love the fact that the current basses still feature these routes.

Before I get to alot of boring sanding, in ever escalating grades of grit, here are a few details I've added.
On older Ric basses, the front (or neck) pickup, has a channel drilled in the face to accomodate the wire, going from pickup cavity to control cavity. it is literally drilled. a bunch of punches on a drill press, all in a line making a nice caveman-esque route. Modern Ricks feature a clean cnc'd route. Not being a big fan of top-load wire routes, I decided to drill a wire hole from front pickup cavity to rear pickup cavity, then run both pickup's wires down through a hole into the control cavity. Only problem is, the front pickup wires will crowd the already tight rear pickup cavity, so I dremmeled a little pathway for the wires to follow, tucking them out of the way. I also dremmeled out a shallow divet for the jack. In most of my past builds of this sort, the jack is always crowded and crammed into it's hole, so I decided to give it plenty of room with it's own groove to hang out in.

 Front pickup cavity : wire "port" features a recessed entry, allowing the wire to be pushed down out of the pickup's way, if needed.

Bridge/Rear pickup cavity features a lil' wire channel to keep things from getting squished.

Jackhole party zone.

Fitment and Character building

Chopping up wood is easy, making it look nice is hard.

At this point I needed to drill some holes in the plank, all of the pickguard screws, pickup mounting hardware, bridge screws, tuner screws, all of that stuff - everything that's held down by a screw needs a screw hole, so a "Fitment" was in order. That means put all of the parts on the bass, make sure everything is in it's right place, lined up correctly, and no other major wood work needs to be done.

The good news : it's 98% correct.

Turns out Rickenbacker basses have an ever evolving headstock shape. Sometimes they are longer, sometimes fatter, sometimes just different depending on who was operating the tools that day I suppose. The bass I traced for my reference was an early 70's model fitted with a set of transitional Grover tuning keys. These tuning keys had a smaller rear "base" to them, and hence the headstocks from this era had a shorter length, to put in laymen's terms. The Tuning keys that I ordered from Rickenbacker were of a different vintage design, and have a larger base plate, so the FITMENT is not correct, the base plate hangs off the end of the headstock by a few millimeters. The urge to punch myself in the head repeatedly lasts a good 24 hours.

Above: picture #1 we have the classic tuners with larger base plate of an early 60's 4000. pic #2 shows the early 70's Grovers that ruined my day. Notice the extra length and swoopier shape of the early 60's headstock.

I contemplated a lot of things, including trying to buy the same early 70's Grover tuners that were on the trace bass - impossible - so after sleeping on it,  I went down to the Felt machine shop and Keosel-ized the offending tuner base plate into submission. "Keosel-izing" something is bike industry terminology for taking a part that dosen't quite fit correctly, and making it work by sheer brute force - usually with the aid of a grinder or dremmel tool. in this case, the grinder.

my results were very pleasing. problem solved, and looks not so bad (NSB)!

Lesson learned. Longer headstock next time (and yes, I have decided there will be a next time.), let's move on.
Now that the tuner issue was behind me, drilling all the other holes was on the menu, as well as making the hole for the jack, or : "jackhole"...huh...huh....huh.

Young Jake is mezmerized by my ninja like dremmel skillzzz.

drilled and jackholed.

photo courtesy of Eva Lewington®

Once home I slapped it together in a for-reals fitment; with the bridge and a couple tuners attached, I was able to throw the G and E strings on this thing to make sure everything was cool. and it was cool.

below you can see The Sethenbacker compared to the early 70's 4001 that I traced.

...and then, with about 30 minutes of rough sanding on the front and back...

Now it's time for the real work to begin, the finish sanding. Since I plan on doing a "Fire-Glo" esque paint job on this sucker, the sanding has to be top notch. Fire-Glo is a classic Ric guitar finish - a transulcent red & orange sunburst, where the grain of the maple is clearly seen, so there can be no sandpaper Tom Foolery, no cross grain swirly hack job here. That just aint my style though, so this is going to be rough (no pun intended), stay tuned....

Making Lemonade

you know...with those lemons life handed me.

So, with some in-depth discussions, and plan B-ing with my shop equipment mentor, Jeff Soucek, it was decided I would purchase this little sideways blade doohickey for the milling machine. A thin round blade that could cut a near perfect straight line right through the body - right through the glueline that holds the misaligned pieces together. I just need to clamp the body into the mill's vice, line it up perfectly, and cut the bass back into 3 pieces. easy-sqeezy-japaneasy.

I'll be losing about a 1/16" all the way around, but that's within my tolerences. I mean, what choice have I got? When these Rics were made in the 60's, there were no CNC machines cutting the pieces to cloned perfection, it was all templates and hand cutting. If you look at as many pictures of old 4001 basses, like I have, you'll notice a lot of variences (is that the right word and/or spelling?). Body profiles changed quite drastically around the control cavities and horns, Headstocks are very obviously shaped by hand, and pickguards are all over the map. All this makes me feel better about what I'm about to do.

That, and the fact that this is not an EXACT replica. The Sethenbacker has a few extra frets and the accompanying longer fretboard. There's nothing I can do about that I have decided, and that's cool with me. The Sethenbacker is also a 34" scale bass, the industry standard more or less, a standard set back in 1950 or '51 by Leo Fender, remarkably that still stands today. Later that same decade, Rickenbacker would shave a half inch off of that scale length (or is it a quarter?) for some reason. not a remarkable change, or discernable difference I guess, but I digresss....

Let's cut some stuff.

Scary.

After the chop chop, I shaved off a thousandth or two to get all of the edges perfectly flat

and perpendicular.

After a night back in the clamps, it's time to start removing some maple.

I spent a lot of time referring to my measurements of Dan's '71 4001, and consulting my vast library of 4001 photos scoured from the "internet" while penciling in all of the routes. You'll notice I have depth measurements penciled in as well.

Starting the control cavity.

....and there you go.

I think I'll spend some time cleaning up the control cavity with the dremel tool. The pickguard is going to be a little weird with that fretboard extending so far back to the neck pickup route, but I'm getting used to it. so far, even with my little hickup - 100% kick ass.

Measure Twice - Glue Once.....

Look at that thing...It's beautiful, isn't it?

Yeah, except for the fact that it's TOTALLY FREAKING WRONG!!!!

'Member back in that first post when I said something about I make lots of mistakes? 'Member?...you...me...Dick Hale? 'Member?

For some reason I thought I had properly measured the scale length of this bass, which is 34" (yes, totally different than a Rickenbacker bass' 33.5"), and for some reason I THOUGHT that the Ricky's redonkulously massive bridge would be just squeaking into the overall length of the neck blank......

long story short, I done F'd up.

Glued the body wings on a good inch and half rearward of where they need to be. Should of re-measured. Should have payed attention.

oh boy......

The Clampdown

Next up are the body "wings", the shapely chunks of maple that will be glued to the sides of the neck plank, making the distictive Ricky 4000 series bass shape. For those of you in the dark about guitar building practices, there are "bolt on" models - guitars that have a neck bolted onto a body, the most common variety being just about any Fender style guitar or bass. Then there are the "neck through" guitars, which means the main chunk(s) of wood that the neck is made from extends past the end of the fretboard, and "through" the body. This here bass, as most Rickenbacker basses are, will be a "neck through".

People (geeks, internet tough guys, and mr. know-it-alls) can argue all day long that a "neck through" bass will give you much more sustain, punch, sexual prowess, what have you - but personally I have never met a Fender Precision bass (yes, bolt-on) that I didn't like for the most part. In fact one of the best sounding and playing basses the world has ever known, happens to be a bolted together Precision Bass, and as luck would have it, this holy grail of basses belongs to me.
Don't get me wrong, the Sethenbacker will no doubt kick a ton of ass in oh so many ways, I am 100% sure of it, my point is, there are lots of ways to build great instruments - all of them good.

back to the action....

After some extra shaping and sanding of the headstock, by hand and by spindle, it was time to rough cut the body wings. and rough cutting is exactly what happened.

looking like Fred Flinstone's ® bass

Tracing spray mounted in place

That's about as accurate as I am capable of. not so bad!

 

After an hour or so with the band saw.

New blades are a great idea when doing this kind of work.

I could have had this done in half the time, had I discovered that

new blade earlier. D'OH!

Aaaaahhhhh, my friend The Spindle Sander makes everything better....and smoother.

Clamp that crap together, it's time to go home, Son.