GBBO Project

I couldn't help myself this year, I joined the GBBO for 2021. I'm most definitely not skilled enough to be a true contender, but it looks like a lot of fun. Also, a portion of the entrance fee goes to assist aspiring builders/luthiers who don't have the means to get materials or training, which is a cool cause. I also happen to have a project that should be a great challenge for this competition.

I got the kit a few months ago as a second/special, with no idea what I was going to use it for. I started working on ideas for it, and then the GBBO was announced, and I wanted to go really crazy with it. Just about everything with this bass it outside my norm, but there's no time like a competition to try out your wackiest ideas. Here's the plan so far:

-Hand paint body using the materials below. If all goes to plan, the body should not only be "the pinkest pink", but it should glow in the dark a kind of peach color
-Upgrade the pickups to Dragonfire Phat J Bass pickups
-Swap standard bridge with piezo style bridge pickup
-Install preamp to increase piezo output
-Change control panel to 4 250k CTS pots and re-route output jack (still deciding on location)
-The most complicated idea I have, if even possible, is to hard wire a small speaker into the bass. I was inspired by a video I saw of a guitar with a built in speaker and MIDI drum machine so it was it's own small band. I wasn't as drawn to the MIDI board as to the speaker, so I'll go for it if the measurements line up

All in all, it's a lot of things I've never tried before, but should be a lot of fun.

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It sounds pretty fun. I had a car that color once, though it didn't glow in the dark unless it overheated.

There is not a lot of room there for a pre-amp. It will be interesting to see how you deal with that issue...also you'll need to add a battery box somewhere.

The speaker may be the most difficult, at least if you want good sound. It will have to be pretty small to fit, and that will not be very conducive to producing much bass sound. Bass notes require moving one heck of a lot more air than guitar notes, which is why the bass player usually has more watts and larger speakers than guitar players. . Also you'll need to run it with some sort of an amp...and if all that works, you may still have feedback issues.

I will be interested in how you like the Dragonfire pickups. I really liked dealing with the guy out in Oregon who sells them when I bought a few things of his site. Haven't tried the pups yet, tho.

Thanks for the feedback fender3x! It should be a lot of fun (and my biggest challenge yet!). The pre-amp I've been looking at is the Fishman Powerchip. Luckily with this being directly attached to a pot I think I could make it my front volume control knob and use some of the extra routing in that area for more room. From the research I've been doing it should have the setup I need for the purpose of this build:

https://www.amazon.com/Fishman-Power...4014812&sr=8-1

The speaker is the part I'm willing to accept leaving on the drawing board. I'm waiting for it to arrive to do some testing and fitting first. According to their website it works as well for bass as for guitar, but if not, I've got a defunct NES classic that I can gut and turn the housing into a speaker instead.

Either way though, if both can fit it will require a lot of routing being added to the back of the body, so it's all going to take a lot of planning. Should be a little easier once it comes in and I can plan, but we'll see how it all goes!

Still waiting on the speaker to come in to determine if it will fit in the body, so no work on the body yet. Got started on the neck this past weekend. While coming up with ideas for this build, I was trying to come up with a name. Because it's going to be so pink, I'll even venture to say obnoxiously pink, and so unique for my builds, I decided to call it The Unicorn. With a name like that, it needs a shape to fit:

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Still needs more sanding and TLC, but I'm happy so far, definitely has the horn shape I'm going for! The goal is to darken inside the lines to help add depth to the coloring. I'm also thinking the headstock will be white, or white/pink alternating stripes.

I've also decided to make my life more difficult by adding a 3rd pickup. The body is a slightly smaller scale than the neck, so I had to push the bridge back a bit. Now with all that extra room, it looks boring with just the two pickups:

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I'm considering between another single coil pickup, but tele style, or a MM style humbucker. The single coil would be an interesting, almost Strat style, SSS setup, where I feel like the humbucker gives more variety. I'll probably go with a set-up like this below:

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The Fishman Powerchip will allow me to blend a magnetic pickup and the piezo in the same pot, so I'm thinking the knobs will be vol (neck), vol (middle), vol (bridge and piezo), tone, and then relocate the output jack. I'll update as the build moves forward!

After much debating, pacing, staring, and just a little bit of swearing, I decided the amp kit won't fit in this build. With consideration of what fender3x mentioned above about the feedback the amp may cause, and limited space on the body, it just won't work for this purpose, so the amp kit got a new purpose!

Altogether this little project took about 3-4 hours to build, and most of that was figuring out how to get all the bits to fit together in a compact but pleasing way, and getting the housing to the right shape.

I'm a huge video game fan, so an NES themed portable amp is right up my alley. I do have one last bit to do, and that is to paint the cross hair cover. I am thinking either black to match the coloring, or a matte orange to imitate the NES Zapper. For a little package, this amp has a very loud, crunchy, high gain kind of sound. It has no volume knob, it's all controlled by the volume on the guitar. I noticed my single coil guitars sound very quiet on this, but anything with a humbucker, or any of my basses absolutely punched! It also has an output to go into a full-sized amp and get a fuzzy/distortion sound. Definitely a fun use of a few hours!

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That's cool! Please tell me you employed at least the original power button to turn it on [emoji3526]

That took an unexpected, but cool turn. Nice! I am a huge fan of repurposing.

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Thanks fender3x and Bakersdozen! It definitely wasn't the original intention for the amp, but it was a pretty fun way to spend a few hours. Unfortunately my wiring skills/understanding weren't enough to re-purpose the original power button, plus I was unobservant enough to accidentally by the 9V battery power option, not the DC option :eek:. That may be a nice future upgrade as I also wanted the original light to work, or at least be able to get the new light in the original spot, seems like a good way to kill two birds with one stone.

Not a whole lot of progress to report, this is moving slower than originally planned as work has consumed my life lately. I need to apply one or two more coats of primer for the neck, I sanded through in a couple small areas.

This weekend I decided to try my hand at routing out some wood on the body. I need to close up and re-drill out the holes for the pickups, so I started by removing the material between the existing pickup. I've never routed before, so after some testing and some sweating I decided to give it a go. Because my motto seems to be "work harder, not smarter", I free-handed all the routing before remembering my routers came with guides for making straight passes. Overall, I'm very pleased with the results even if it takes some extra sanding and filling to correct a couple small issues:

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Once the wood I ordered arrives, I will glue in, and then open up holes for the pickups again. Once that's finally done, it's ready for primer on the body!

Finally a new, albeit small, update on this build. The block for the middle of the body was cut, shaped and glued in this weekend. As you can see it's not a perfect fit, but I have fillers to use for the gaps.

I'd love to get some advice/opinions on the pickup positions before I start removing wood. Last night I was loosely test fitting the pickups in their new positions, and thought the standard horizontal layout for the pickups may be a little boring. I was considering having them at an angle to continue the upward diagonal shape from the headstock, but don't want that to affect tone. Will it affect the sound in a positive or negative way if they are at an angle vs being horizontal? Below are a couple of pictures of the potential fits, thank you in advance for any advice/opinions!

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Probably marginal as long as it’s not too strongly angled. Because of the angling, whilst the two middle strings stay within a strong magnetic field, for the single coil pickups, the two outer strings are being moved to the outer edges of the magnet, so they nay be a little quieter, but not much.

The humbucker is a bit different as the A, D and G strings stay within the magnetic field of both coil’s magnets but the low E is now quite a way from one of its magnets so its volume again could be a bit less. It may not make a lot of difference but you may notice something.

And the other thing is that the upper strings will sound a bit more bassy, the lower strings a bit more trebley than in the vertical position.

Simon, thank you very much for the helpful answer!

It's funny what you'll discover when you forget to test fit new hardware. Turns out the pickups are just wider than the originals, and the spacing on the saddles is a little narrower than the original bridge, so the strings didn't fit well if the pickups were horizontal. Once I turned them diagonally they lined up much better with the strings. The single coil poles are centered, and the humbucker poles are evenly distributed on either side of the string. Based on what Simon mentioned, I'm interested to hear how it sounds with this change.

Routing this time was much more nerve wracking, and next time I'll make/buy templates as free handing was a little rough going. There are a few mistakes, but nothing I can't fix with a little veneer, glue, and sawdust. I'm pretty happy overall though, and now it just needs some sanding and tidying up. After that it's time to sand the body, fill left over holes and start painting!

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Not a huge update, but could use a little advice. Haven't had a lot of time for building, so the last two weeks have just been cleaning up the pickup cavities, routing a section for a battery box on the backside, and drilling holes to run wires. I also used a small piece of wood to fill the cavity just above the control plate, making a pick guard for this shape seems complicated and not totally necessary, so now I don't need one to cover any holes.

After doing all the items above, I started looking at the j bass control plate and don't particularly like the look without a pick guard, the shape just seems a little off. So I have been toying with the idea of using a tele plate instead with a five way switch and 3 knobs (VVT). All has been going fine until I got the 5 way switch in the mail...and of course it requires deeper routing in the cavity.

This lead me to the question, how thin is too thin for the body to be? If I stick with this course, the cavity would need to be routed to roughly 1.4 inches to fit the new switch. My concern is, the body is 1.65 inches thick, which would only leave .25 inches of wood under the switch. Being the accident prone individual I am, I'm convinced one day I'll bump that part of the body and punch a good sized hole in the body. Is that level of concern unnecessary for this case?

The other solution I found was possibly using one of these rotary switches instead. It would require less depth than the Oak Grigsby switch, I would only need to go down .15 inches instead. The problem is I have no experience with these, so would love some feedback if anyone on here has used these before. I'm just curious on the quality of something like this, and when switching positions, is it a smooth blend like a pot would be, or does it have defined positions that "click" in place, like a standard blade switch?

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Reverb Listing

Thank you in advance for any assistance!

Anything that says switch has definite switch positions that click, and those rotary switches need a reasonable effort to turn. You also need to work put how many poles you need to duplicate a 5-way blade switch, as each contact is independent, unlike a blade switch where positions 2 and 4 link two sets of terminals. I think a 5-position three pole rotary switch should suffice. More poles may be provided but you’d only need three of them.

I always view 5mm as sufficient thickness for the bottom of a control panel, so 1/4”, at 6mm, would be fine. So a standard blade switch can be fitted.