Iceman style bass rebuild

[MadAsAHatter]

This is project I started back in the beginning of this year, got sidetracked with other things, came back to it during the summer and finally finished it the other day.

This started with an Iceman-ish style guitar body that I picked up several years ago. After it sitting in the closet for a while I decided I wanted to rework it into a bass. I already had most of what I needed in my parts box. The only thing extra I had to buy was a bridge & strings.

I forgot to take a pic of the body before I started everything, but I'm sure you can picture what it would have looked like. The first step was to fill in the neck pocket, pickup routes and any other holes. I went the easier way and filled in everything by routing it all out into a large cavity then filling it in with a maple block. I also played with the layout of everything while I was at it.

The original plan was to use some leftover flooring to make a top, but that didn't work out too well. I f'ed it all up trying to shave off the backing. Switching to plan B I had some southern ash left over from another project that would make a nice looking top.

This is the flooring I was originally going to use and the Ash being glued up for the top.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

The next steps were to plane the body flat, glue on the top, trim it all flush and route cavities for the neck and pickups. To plane the body and the ash top flat I built a thickness plainer sled for my router.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Now I was at the stage to make a final decision on how I wanted to finish it. I planned to stain the body. I ended up staining it with some of my fountain pen. I used Noodler's Dostoyevsky which is an blueish/aqua color. It's also an archival style ink so it's not going to dull or fade.

I started off with the intent to do a satin poly finish where you could still feel the wood grain. My usually process for that is not use any grain filler or anything and start off with spraying clear gloss poly. After building up enough layers it would be topped off with a couple of mist coats of satin poly then hit it with some 0000 steel wool to smooth out any overspray.

This worked out as intended for the back and sides, but something went askew on the front. For some reason it looked all blotchy and you could see the particles used to make the poly a satin finish. It just looked like crap. So I changed plans there to keep the sides and back as is and do the top as a gloss finish.

Doing the gloss finish on the top took longer and was more of a pain since I didn't do my typical prep work for it. After all was said and done I got it to where I liked it.

Here it is after some work and doing the last couple of poly coats the all buffed out to a mirror shine.

You can also see where I did a natural faux binding. The way I did that was to leave the top edges square, stain the body, then cut a 22 degree chamfer to create the binding look. The router makes a nice clean line.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Now that all the body work was done I could wire it up and get all the hardware on. After that I just had to do a little bit of work on the neck. The main things were to sand down the headstock & stain/finish, make a heel plate to cover excess screw holes, and do a little cleanup on the fretboard.

I did one last dry fit of the neck after I completed the body. This is sort of a preview of the finished product.

 

[MadAsAHatter]

Here it is all finished up. One of the other things I did with the neck was to hit the back with some 3000 grit sandpaper to remove the shine. THis gives it a nice, smooth, slick feel. I prefer that to the way a buffed out gloss finish feels.

The only thing I have to do is give it a full setup and put the truss rod cover on. I like to let things sit for about a week or so before doing the full setup so the neck can adjust to having tension on it again. I did do a half-assed setup to get it playable and give it a test run.

There are a couple of minor imperfections here and there. Even though I used the same ink to stain the neck it came out a little more of a blue than aqua color. I guess that's from the maple being naturally whiteish and the ash naturally having a more yellow color. I also wasn't able to blend the new finish to the color of the old finish where I was shaping the heel plate. Oh, and as an homage to the original top I was going to use I made the heel plate out of a scrap of the flooring.

Final specs are:
Northern ash body (I think) with Southern ash top
Maple neck w/ rosewood fretboard from an unknown Ibanez bass
Gotoh 201 Bass Bridge
Gotoh GB707 Tuners
Dunlop dual design locking strap buttons
Schaller "Double J" pickups that came from a Kramer Duke bass
Chrome knobs with MOP top.

The pickups are 4 coils each so wiring options were near infinite. I ended up settling on a Volume and Blend knob and a mini toggle for each pickup
The neck pickup toggle selects between P / Full / Reverse P
The bridge pickup toggle selects between Front / Full / Rear
Just that basic wiring gives me a plethora of tones. Every switch position has it's own distinct sound. I wasn't expecting to hear so much of a difference between P and Reverse P on the neck or Front and Rear on the bridge pickup. And of course with the blend knob I can combine as much of any of those tones together as I want.
I also painted the electronics cavity with nickel shielding paint. Even with some heavy overdrive it's dead quiet; no hum whatsoever.

The lighting in these pics make everything look a little darker than it actually is. In person the color is brighter.