Today I’ve routed the final body template out of 3/8" good quality plywood and it came out very nice, much better than my previous templates that I made directly out of plywood.

Here’s the body template:

And here you can see the sides are straight, smooth and the curves very fluent. I think it comes close to a CNC routed template :

Furthermore, I’m in doubt about the neck pocket: not sure the neck pocket is large enough to support the neck and make a solid bolt-on join.

Here’s a close up:

The bass side of the neck pocket is 4" long, the center comes close to 4 3/8" and the treble side ends up being not much more than an inch.

Thinking to extend the neck under the pickguard untill it reaches the neck pickup.

Well, I have to wait for the wood three more weeks (delivery), in the meantime I can work on templates and jigs. Last week was spent on making decisions and finalizing the design. So you’ll have to be patient, just like me.

Quick text-only update:

• Decided to go for the JMVC pu’s in passive mode, maybe I’ll add a preamp later on but initially the bass will be passive.
• I used the router table to copy the shape of the master template to the final body shape template, turns out to be great!! The table works like a charm.
• The body template came out unbelievably smooth and straight! Only one void in the plywood I have to deal with. I’ll share some pictures soon.
• I orderd the wood, pickups, pickguard material, bridge and tuners.

I promised to post photos when my I finished my workshop, it’s not completely finished but operational, albeit very basic.

I have finished the V-string version of my Paradox bass design. It has Delano JMVC 5 FE pickups. Furthermore, I changed the bridge to an Aluminum Hipshot A-Style bridge with .750" string spacing.

Body shape’s the same, and the headstock only slightly altered to fit the straight fretted neck. Oh, and I replaced the block inlays with 1/4" MoP dots.

I’m currently working on a 5-string non-fanned version with Delano JMVC pickups. When finished, I will make a choice between the fanned and the non-fanned version.

I’m in doubt about a lot of constructional difficulties like the volute, frets that have to be twisted on a medium curved fingerboard, bridge grounding (not a big problem but still) and the block inlays that are fanned and made of MoP (expensive and unable to route them flush with the compound radius and due to the compound radius I cannot use a radiused sanding block) and lastly, the hybrid pickup cannot be rotated and is effectively contra angled with the bass side much more to the neck then you would normally do, I do not know if that’s okay, since Dingwall always slants the pickups.

When I ‘played’ on the MDF template it didn’t seem to be comfortable, so compared to all the extra effort I wonder if it’s worth it, that’s why I tried the Dingwall to help me in my decision.

So.. that’s why I am investigating how it would look as a regular V, being the more safe option.

Today the flamed maple top arrived!

I contacted two suppliers of Delano products (since Delano itself did not reply to any email I’ve sent) and they both confirmed that I can simply swap the bass and treble pot with a 50k/50k stacked bass/treble pot. Bass-Parts from Germany sells them: Stacked Potentiometer (bass/treble) – BassParts.de

As far as I know I can simply solder the wires to this one and I’m done.

After completing the neck template I noticed it didn’t feel the way I wanted, so today I tried a few different basses to make up my mind:
– Dingwall Afterburner (4 strings, fanned, banjo frets)
– Fender JB Deluxe (5 strings, larger bridge spacing, smaller radius)
– Warwick Streamer (5 strings, narrow bridge, large fb radius)

Conclusion: I don’t like fanned frets as much as I thought. Also, I like the wider bridge better, gonna stay with 5 strings and I don’t like banjo frets. The radius of 20" I planned is too flat and I am gonna go with a smaller (compound) radius.

Good thing is I can keep the master template for the body. I will of course store the neck template with the fanned version. Now I am going to do some redesigning…

Some more template work in progress going on..

Sexy, isn’t it?

Though I’m a bit in doubt about the neck width and fanned frets now I’ve got the template. The first fret on the low B seems hard to reach, and the first frets do not feel very natural, despite my modest fan (34.5" – 33"). However, the mid section feels very good. Just not sure if it’s okay for me, 5 strings and fanned… if I invest all this time and money it must be perfect, so at the moment I am rethinking the plan. Checking my options.