Designing the neck

Before starting with the neck, I first had to design this part of the bass. I started laying out the neck to get the right string spacing at the nut, the right fingerboard dimensions and the correct tuner placement. I wanted evenly spaced strings (not measured center to center, but edge to edge) and the strings should run straight to the tuners, without bending at the nut.

After finishing this I went to the design of the headstock shape. And again, it was harder than I thought it would be. In total, I think I drew over 20 headstock designs. But after two weeks of messing around, I am totally happy with it and it’s rather unique too (I didn’t copy an existing design, but who knows it resembles some other design….).

Today I ordered the wood for the neck, a truss rod and a japanese saw with depth stop. I am going to make the neck from a single piece of flat- to quartersawn hard rock maple, with a nice rosewood fingerboard.

So after two quiet weeks, I’m back on it again!