Hey there sheeple!
Back in November I embarked on a project. The plan was to use a kit as the base to mod to make an axe bass. Now the only axe I knew of was the Cort, but that would change. Since the Cort was the initial model I looked at , there were two kits with a PB/J configuration, one of which was the YB-4. It arrived in the afternoon that I went in for surgery. Since the kit comes with a Basswood body and the Cort was Mahogany, I ordered a custom with a mahogany body. The neck on the Cort had no inlays on the fret board, so as part of the custom order, no inlays. My bro picked up the package from my place, but he couln't bring it round strait away. A week later when he could, his LGA went into lock down, then when he came out of lock down, my LGA went into lock down, and then a couple of weeks later, we all went into lock down! With the end of lock down, he was finally able to give it to me!
It came with a few surprises. First the body was smaller than I was expecting. Secondly it felt realy light. Didn't take long to realise it wasn't mahogany, it was Meranti, otherwise known and Philippine Mahogany, which as close to actual Mahogany as Tassie Oak is to actual Oak. Ironically they cut a lot of their natural forest down in the Philippines and the most common replant was plantations of real Mahogany.
So I bought some Big Leaf Mahogany grown in Fiji (same species as Honduran Mahogany). I was going to make a new body and use the kit body as a template for the neck pocket and pickup routes, but a god tap on the Meranti body give a nice ring, so I decided to build around it as originally planned:
The neck on the Cort is 22 frets, and I could have sworn the kit back in November was 22 frets. The kit disappeared for a bit from Pit Bull's page, and now it's back as 24 frets , which is what came in my kit. No biggie, I will need to modify some curves to blend in with the neck access of the kit.
Since doing some research I decided to combine elements of some of the other axe basses. in the early 80's Gene was having his axes made by Kramer. There was about 7 different axes they made for him with different configurations. They were a Maple body, had an aluminium neck and headstock, inlay on the fet board (made of a synthetic) and had 20 frets. The rare production model had a single pickup and 24 frets. The blade was screwed to the body with 2 screws and the back of the blade, which was in his personal axes and the Cort, was not there
The kit neck had no nut, but it was marked, but not fully sawn:
The last surprise was the nut. I ordered a bone nut, and was expecting a direct replacement for the plastic nut... erm.. spot the difference:
Kinda disappointed with the bone nut. Screw it! At least one of Gene's axes had a brass nut, so I'm gunna make me one!
Well tha'ts all so far, I need to get to the blade blank so I can measure and cut the slot for it. And so the journey continues...
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Originally Posted by Trevor Davies
