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....