IB-6S -- Zhenya

[michael]

My IB-6S arrived here in Pennsylvania, USA, on Wednesday morning, just as the first real snowfall of the winter was coming. This weekend was Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, so it arrived just in time for me to start on it.

First, though, some background. I'm a bassist who has always been curious about building instruments, but didn't dare start until I modded a cheap Ibanez I bought for $10. That project, still in progress, is on the left (missing strings), here:

I refretted the Ibanez with gold Jescar frets, bought a gold bridge and tuners, and have been blinging it up. With that project nearly complete, my wife gave me permission/approval to build one from a kit. I had been looking for something other than a J- or P-bass, and found the IB-6S though Google. I pre-ordered it right around the first of November, and it arrived in less than a month. Nice job, Adam!

So, the IB-6S. As you can see from the thread title, I'm naming it Zhenya, after my wife (it's her name in Russian). Let's unpack it, shall we?

What did I think of it? Well, I can only post five photos per post, so wait for the next entry!

[michael]

I'm pretty happy with the spalt! Time to do a mock build:

Looks pretty good! My cat Sophie even likes it.

The hardware in the last picture will not make it to the final instrument. I ordered a Hipshot A bridge and Bartolini quad coil pickups during a Black Friday sale over the weekend. I'm planning to drill through-body holes for the strings, and get a Michael Pope Flexcore pre-amp with coil taps.

[michael]

What about color (sorry, I'm American, no unnecessary vowels for us!), you may be asking? I did dozens of tests, with over 100 coats, before settling on a Minwax blue woodstain (water-based) for the spalted maple. For the back of the body, I'll be using a Minwax walnut stain. My wife has some ideas for the back-of-neck staining, and we're undecided on that as of yet.

Here's the final blue maple stain sample next to the headstock:

I love the blue color on other spalted maple instruments I've found. I tried using a ink-based stain, but wasn't happy with the application process, or the final color, so I opted for the Minwax stains. I'll probably finish the body with Tru Oil. I bought some for testing, but haven't had a chance to try it on my sample woods yet.

Here's the walnut stain on a test piece of basswood:

I'm still undecided about the fretboard. It's going to be fretless, which is just as well, because the frets as installed are kind of a mess:

The fretboard, as seen above, isn't perfect, either, but sanding would take care of the glue spots on it. I'm doing a test, right now (as I type this) on a spare fretboard to see how I'm going to fill the fretslots and inlay dots (I wish I knew I could have custom ordered a plain fretless fretboard a few weeks ago!), and stain it with an ebony Minwax stain (my tests look good with that!), but I may replace the fretboard entirely with a piece of ebony or pau ferro from LMII or Stewart MacDonald.

The spalted maple and basswood body look to be in great shape. I'm going to carefully sand the spalted maple (it's thin!) before staining. I was going to do a base, pore-filling stain of black, but I don't want to do too much sanding on it.

My plan for the fretboard is to have no fretlines, with slight (1-2cm) accent fretlines at the top of the board, near the B and E strings, for the fundamental frets (3, 5, 7, 9, 12, 15, 17, 19, 21, and 24). There may be other decorations on the fretboard, but I'm not skilled enough yet with the Dremel to even conceive of any!

So that's that with Zhenya. I should get the Hipshot bridge and the Bartolini pickups by next weekend, and maybe I'll start on the staining then. I have to decide on the pre-amp soon, and if I need to drill any more holes for switches or a sixth knob. I originally planned to have a piezo bridge, but the control cavity looked too tight for an additional module (and second 9v battery), so I opted to add that later, if necessary.

Off to finish the gold Ibanez project...

[Nickosaurus]

My god you are the splitting image of Nolly from Periphery:

[adam]

Hey Michael I'm so glad you got your kit and you're happy with it. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[wokkaboy]

hey Michael, mock build looks great and your plans sound good. That walnut is almost black ! Should go well with the blue you chose for the cap. You will need a bone nut for a fretless.
I have built one of these kits and love it !
Look forward to seeing this build progress

[michael]

Yeah, I have considered a replacement nut, but I'm not thinking too much about that now. My big decision now is how I want to do the Flexcore preamp. Two of the five knobs are for volume (push/pull active/passive) and pickup blend. For the other three, I can either do bass, treble, and stacked low mids/high mids, or stacked bass/treble and separate high and low mids.

[michael]

I'm going to be getting the Bartolini pickups and Hipshot bridge tomorrow, so I will start drilling as soon as this weekend.

I have a question: What's the best way to remove fretboard inlays? I don't like any inlay dots on fretboards. Should I drill or sand them out?

[WeirdBits]

Too deep to sand them out, try this: Removing/Replacing fretboard dots. Once the small holes are drilled you can often just take the drill bit out of the drill, flip it around and insert the shank in the hole, give it a wiggle to release the glue and pop the dot out.

[michael]

Very cool, thanks for posting that. I need to find rosewood inlays, although these turquoise ones (http://www.lmii.com/products/shopbro...tegory_id=1191) might work well with the blue stain I'm doing. They're 6.35mm, not 6mm, however.