ST-1JR ...but it may not end up that way.

The purpose of this build is to finish with something that my 8 year old daughter can comfortably play.....

Along the way we will see:
a. Is building guitars suitable mantherapy (and therefore supported in future by She Who Must Be Obeyed),
b. What will a guitar essentially designed by an 8 year old girl look like,
c. Does Dad have mad skills that have been dormant for 46 years,
d. If a father and daughter who have questionable trade talent can build something together that's playable and looks cool, and
e. Is it possible to turn an ST1JR into a short scale bass?

WTF have I started....

Now that's an intro!
a. Yes, mostly. Though it can lead to GAS (Guitar Acquisition Syndrome) which most likely will not be supported by SWMBO.
b. I think we all need that question answered!
c. You may surprise yourself, your daughter and SWMBO
d. Review some of the other threads, consult the Oracles (The same knowledgable and helpful names pop up in every thread, start with DingoBass and Wokkaboy) and read through the How to Section, you'll do fine.
e. Not sure if you can without having a specialist neck made, as I imagine (I don't know for sure) that the fret spacings will be different @DB, can you advise?

Above all, just have fun with it! At the very least you have a sanding assistant, that's a step up on the rest of us!

Welcome to the Forum Tony! Looking forward to following your build.

In answer to your questions (from my experience..)

a. Is building guitars suitable mantherapy (and therefore supported in future by She Who Must Be Obeyed),
Yes, but you will struggle with the Ministry of Finance & War after half a dozen builds...

b. What will a guitar essentially designed by an 8 year old girl look like,
Pink or pink/purple. A pink or purple strap is also required. It may involve flowers or Hello Kitty

c. Does Dad have mad skills that have been dormant for 46 years,
Yes, we all have an inner luthier buried somewhere inside us

d. If a father and daughter who have questionable trade talent can build something together that's playable and looks cool, and
Most definitely and is good bonding time

e. Is it possible to turn an ST1JR into a short scale bass?
Not sure on that one!

Kudos to you Tony.

I've been thinking about building a hello kitty Jr. Strat for my daughter so I am keen to see how you go and what your daughter comes up with

Hell No Kitty is kooler
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...psztkg4yqi.jpg

Nice one Dedman love kitty's fangs

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Dedman you would be spot on for Miss 8's psychopathic little sister, and yes andrewdosborne it will involve some pink....ok maybe a lot of pink.

Hi Akpane, like your thinking but not sure it can be done without a few mods such as...

a) the 6 peg holes would need to be filled and then re-drilled to take the larger Bass Machine Heads. Also not sure peg head would be big or strong enough.
b) would require a new nut with just 4 slots not the 6 as comes standard with the kit
c) cannot even think what guage bass strings you would need as if they were super light it may not sound too much different to a guitar
d) agree with others that the Hoffner might be best bet as it is the smallest body, semi hollow plus 30" scale

Waz you are entirely correct. Miss 8 has identified 'her' next build as the HB-4 'cause it looks kind of cool' ....and it may also help that a certain Grandpa is a Beatles nut.

We are going to give a set of short scale flatwounds a go...it may or may not work..this whole project is a suck it and see...and if something doesn't work the first time around, we'll just find another way until it does.

So we started our build back at the start of March when we received out box of doom containing the ST-1JR, a PBG N1M Maple neck and a set of Tonerider TRP1 PBass pickups.
Attachment 11242

We then went to work on the neck plugging the unwanted holes with dowel..
Attachment 11243

Cutting off the dangly bits...
Attachment 11244

and then bogging any gaps front and back..
Attachment 11245

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by apkane

Is it possible to turn an ST1JR into a short scale bass?

---

Absolutely!

You'll need heavier bass strings than normal to compensate for the short scale though. (And obviously you'll need a bass bridge and a 4 slot nut)

Oh, and you'll need 4 pole pickups as well.

[edit: I see you've already got the Toneriders]

At the end of March we took the neck over to Grandpas to use Great Grandpas drill press to sink 4 new holes that we templated up.

Once the drilling was complete, we then ferreted around for some old stain so we could add some colour to the anemic neck.

Lastly we cut and shaped the headstock after finding a suitable shape on the interwebs (it may or may not look similar to a Bill Crook headstock) and making a template with some of the cardboard from the box that the guitar came in.

Here is the neck with the new bass nut.
Attachment 11246

Now, where did that body go?.....

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wazkelly

a) Also not sure peg head would be... ...strong enough.
c) cannot even think what guage bass strings you would need

---

Answer a) Not a problem as there will be much less tension than a regular tuned 6 string. Because of the shortened scale, you'd need to really loosen off the strings to get it down to E A D G tuning.

Answer B) I'd start with the biggest, thickest strings you can get. If they're too thin, they'll just flap around like over-cooked spaghetti.

I'm thinking a good place to start would be E - 0.130, A - 0.100, D - 0.080, G - 0.065. Basically a 5 string set without the 0.045 G string.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by apkane

here is the neck with the new bass nut.
Attachment 11246

Now, where did that body go?.....

---

How do you intend finishing the body? If you're thinking of a solid colour, I'd recommend using the same colour on the front face of the headstock to hide the dowel ends.

The body will be a very fetching shade of O.M.F.G. its PINK! Now, to those of us who are not 8 y.o girls, we might think that having the headstock the same colour as the body makes sense to help hide any possible imperfections.....but we are wrong.

Should look really cool once it's finished, building something can definitely be very good therapy, I get a great sense of achievement whenever i build something, one build project that I'm going to be working on soon is a guitar amplifier, but not just any guitar amplifier, it is going to be one that uses old-fashioned valves, i started a thread about it in a different forum section, I'll see if I can post a link for you.


Here we go, here's the link to the thread :


http://www.buildyourownguitar.com.au...ead.php?t=4590

I tip my hat to you for diving into a fairly complex build first up. You seem to have it all under control, so I'm sitting back and watching with interest.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Muzza

I'd start with the biggest, thickest strings you can get. If they're too thin, they'll just flap around like over-cooked spaghetti.

I'm thinking a good place to start would be E - 0.130, A - 0.100, D - 0.080, G - 0.065. Basically a 5 string set without the 0.045 G string.

---

Good suggestion Muzza. Just hope an 8 year old girl can get her tiny fingers down on such thick strings without too much trouble.

Just told my wife about this exciting PINK project.
She said regardless of the result make sure it's kept safe and produced at her 21st birthday party.
We'll be watching in 13 years for the posted vid. LOL

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wazkelly

Good suggestion Muzza. Just hope an 8 year old girl can get her tiny fingers down on such thick strings without too much trouble.

---

She's just got to get the strings down to the fret. Any thinner will flap like, well... They'll flap a lot.
She'll be fine.
At the end of the day, it's a starting point. I'm pretty confident I'm on the money though. Have you see the size of the nylon strings on those uke basses?

Nah mate, never seen a Uke Bass? Anything shorter than 34" scale on a bass makes me feel a bit cramped these days. Mind you my very first one was a SG copy and suspect is was 30" short scale but that was about 37 years ago and my memory has faded a bit since then.

They're more like rubber bands than strings...

Whoa! Missed this one.. conveting a ST to Bass... trippy idea, love it.
Of course the scale length is not "correct" as such but no reason why it cant be done... Why be normal??
Cant wait to see this one up and running

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Brendan

They're more like rubber bands than strings...

---

But they're THICK rubber bands.

Anyone remember that Bass from the 80's that had rubber strings?
Felt like playing soggy pasta...

I remember black plastic coated bass strings late 70's to early 80's.......cannot remember why anyone bothered to use them as they sounded pretty dead.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dingobass

Anyone remember that Bass from the 80's that had rubber strings?
Felt like playing soggy pasta...

---

You mean one of these...
http://www.freewebs.com/lowendr/Ashbory-azul.jpg
They were supposed to sound like an upright bass, but only 50-60cm long. I saw a mini acoustic bass with these string yesterday
http://cdn6.bigcommerce.com/s-ih7nm/...0.1280.jpg?c=2

The first time I saw one of those ukulele basses was a jazz trio - banjo, clarinet and one of those shown above.

I must say, they've got a pretty remarkable punchy bass tone. Much better than you'd expect.

So we hit April and it was body time.

We needed to make the pickup space larger to accomodate the Tonerider TRP1 pickup. So out came the very sophisticated Mark 1 ver 0 router.....

Attachment 11558

As it is going to be a bass, we needed to fill in all of those annoying holes that are used for the trem and front pickup. We traced around the holes and made some paper templates and then cut and shaped some of the pine left over from the Guitar Rack project.

Attachment 11559

Once made, we then glued them in....

Attachment 11560

....filled in the gaps with Timbermate and waited a couple of days for it to set before sanding, sanding some more and then sanding before undercoating the front....

Attachment 11561

...and then the back.

Attachment 11562

So next was choosing the right colour. One that conveyed the class and sophistication of such a time honoured and classic design...
Attachment 11563

How hard can it be?...It says Spray Easy on the front...

True to label the colour was both neon and pink....very err pink...
Attachment 11564

Attachment 11565

After spending a lot of time reading all of the build and painting threads and taking into account the effects of the Queensland weather, we decided on waiting at least 5 days between coats.

We ended up shooting 2 coats of undercoat and 3 of neon pink, making sure to sand between each coat. The waiting was deadly for both the Daddy and the now 9 year old.

Once satisfied with the colour, we did 3 coats of clear and sanded with progressively fine grade wet and dry. We decided to stop when it satisfied our 'shiny' test. It was never going to be perfect finish.
Attachment 11566

This is progressing nicely, it's going to be a truly unique bass. Once fame hits in 10 or so years Fender will probably want to do a Custom Shop Artist version.

Next, it was on to the other stuff. Using the pickguard that came with the ST-1JR kit as a template, we then cut out an new pickguard from a pearl white blank.
Attachment 11574

We spent a fair bit of time shaping and refining/smoothing to make it look presentable.

Then we shielded with copper tape
Attachment 11576

Next we needed to remove the black fret markers and replace them with pink ones. Removal was easy, again after consulting the forum pages.
Attachment 11569

But where to find pink markers? Nothing on the interwebs, so it was off to the $2 shop to find something that was plastic, pink and cheap to repurpose....and the result was Hot pink silicon egg rings for $2!
Attachment 11570

Teamed with a hammer and a 6mm hole punch and Roberts your Aunty, 6mm pink fret markers.

We then masked off the neck and around the holes and proceeded to fill them with glue and pink dots. End result was more pink awesomeness.
Attachment 11571

Next we had to finish the front of the bass. Pink flocked Leopard print contact from Something-mart was the order of the day in the continued battle between my daughters vision and my skill level...
Attachment 11579

If you've ever covered books with this stuff you'll know my fear at this point. So we took everything very slowly....firstly, cutting to size.
Attachment 11581

Then applying and smoothing steady as she goes...
Attachment 11577

Next it was on the the wiring and sorting our what needs to go where....and how it fits together....and omg wtf am I doing?!
Attachment 11580

I have to admit that it took me a while to get my head around it, but thanks to this forum and all of the info shared by the members and the tutorials, it turned out to be really simple to do.
Attachment 11578

Oh yep and the bridge is one of those Schaller adjustable jobs. Absolutely essential to get the weird ultra short string spacing right.

Then it was just a case of nailing everything together, putting the strings on, tuning it and hoping for the best.....and guess what?
Attachment 11582

Well I can report that the project was a complete success and exceeded expectations from both the visionary and the mechanic.

Its strung with Short Scale Round Wound Bass strings 50 - 105, it makes the right sound, holds tune and only the E feels slightly (ever so slightly) slacker than a 34' scale player. And no, I don't know how that works either. I'll get around to posting a video shortly.

What an awesome project, this has come up very nicely and love the pink finish.

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Great job and very quick too!

Bravo, well done!

really well done and an awesome guitar of maximum pinkness

Great job.
To stop the waffling of the E string, you need a set of thicker strings.