Hell, the moment at 0:03 when you showed what beast you made of that ebay kit I knew there will be badassery. Your craftsmanship is beyond impressive, Dan, cheers.
Dan, I played guitar for a lot of years and only played the bass when our bass player wasn’t using it. This is the first bass guitar I have ever owned, I built it myself after watching your video and I love it! thank you so much for putting out such a great video the only on building but on setting up the bass guitar!
I would really, REALLY love a video series that shows each of these steps in more detail. It would be very useful to see things like the pickup routing being done in its totality.
Hi, this is Dan from Isabella Wainright, and I'm so glad you did this video! I bought a jazz bass kit a few years ago and threw a set of solderless EMG's into it, and I've been playing it ever since; used it to record with too... Now I'm in need of a new bass, and after seeing this video, I'm going to make another custom, this time a P-Bass. Got the pickups, nut and waiting on the bass itself and hardware. The pickups came with two standard p-style pickups, but only one volume and one tone, so I may buy a single coil and/or humbucker to add to it. I love how you customized it with the engravings, so I may go that route too... Thanks again Dan, keep making more!!!
I totally agree on the body finish, especially for bass. Whether it affects tone can be argued on guitars (it definitely affects the feel), but on basses a natural finish really seems to make a difference. Loving the Chris Farley air quotes!!!! Also your engraving is incredible! Have you found that certain Ebay kits are more usable than others? This has me interested in trying one out.
Thanks for your compliments! I think all these eBay kits are hit and miss. As long as you don't get a really jacked up crooked neck then a little elbow grease will make it play just fine. The electronics are hit and miss too, but they are meant to just get you going, and you can always upgrade them later
As someone who is trying to build a RU-vid channel and figure out my approach, it's great to see how quickly you're growing by just putting out informative, entertaining, and branded content. It's awesome, man. Also, wish I had that bass.
+Going Up? Records just keep at it man, and do every tip RU-vid tells you to do, that's what I'm doing! Oh and do what you love and know, that way if it never gains traction, you're still having fun. Thanks for the compliments!
I really want to have a 5 string bass that has an extended scale length of say 36 inches, but the only options are like dingwalls for example which I can't afford. Any ideas on how to add length to a kit like this?
+Paul Phariss I think that's above my pay grade. It might be possible with a fretless kit, but not with a fretted one, the frets wouldn't be intonated properly.
Guns and Guitars would it be possible by cutting the headstock off and adding some length between the headstock and the nut? That way it would be intonated correctly
+Paul Phariss again, kinda above my pay grade here, but theoretically possible. It would take some real craftsmanship to seamlessly extend the fingerboard, and your fret dots will be off (i.e. the 12th fret would no longer be 12th etc). I don't think I would try it. You might be better off having someone custom build you one, you might be able to find someone that will do it for a lot cheaper than a dingwall. Although, If you're skilled enough to do what you are proposing, then you're probably skilled enough to do the whole thing from scratch as well
Get some neckwood, some fingerboard wood, saw it to shape, route in space for the truss rod(s), Then sand it till you find a comfortable shape and fret radius(You can find radius sanding blocks and fretwire for cheap). Really all you need to build a bass is wood and hardware.
you're correct about the resin effecting the tone. you probably wouldn't notice a huge difference in bass or guitar, but it does create a world of difference on violin. this is why stradivarius violins genuinely sound better than others.... nice video by the way
Hi Dan, I love your videos. It seems to me that the real problem with the string spacing might be the bridge. I would have rolled with a better quality bridge.
you are correct. I was going to replace the bridge, but I liked the spacing of the strings on the neck, I was afraid a wider spacing would push the outer strings too close to the edge
The last time I checked Humbuckers don't need shielding, but it is great for Single coils. I tried the extra screws on the Neck and it worked great. Now if could just find a good after-market neck for both my Carvel 4 string and LTD 5 stinger. Neither made for Flats that warped both necks. Funny as hell as my cheap Chinese 5 stinger build (Warrick Body/Neck with rouge headstock LOL) has heavy Flats and the neck has warped after 6 years and about 3 sets of things and the last hold tune for a month. I order this one because I didn't want a counterfeit. I only do minor tune-ups for temp changes most of the time. Sustain is ridiculous.
realy cool videos you should do it more often. learn more whatching the videos then in school for the hole year (srry for my shit inglis i m from portugal)
Guns and Guitars the videos are realy intreating and the Chanel is groing realy fast (you win 1000 subs in 1 day) do you ever consider in making videos more often?
That wooden pick guard is absolutely beautiful... I love it. Also, this video was really well made overall. Straight and too the point, well edited, and we'll paced. You did a great job on this one man
I got a really cheap plywood bass body, that would work great, but i'm worried about the quality, should i buy a new one or is it okay if i use the plywood? Great content by the way, keep it up
Guenther TheGuy it depends. if you buy something from warmoth, the quality will be a hell of alot better. you can also do a good looking transparent finish. warmoth can be pricey though.
Regarding the bridge ground wire, something I just did with my bass kit is get a super long 1/8 drill bit and went straight toward the neck pocket through the strap button hole into the pickup cvity and then drilled at an angle where the bridge ground comes out to meet the first hole.
TEXTGaming Just rewired my squier pbass vintage style. There's a ton of resources out there on rewiring. I used cloth covered wire and followed the schematics for an original pbass. Sounds amazing
I have an old 70s P Bass and now after this video I'll re juvinate this old boy...great inspiring vids, love the finish and engraving, not to mention all the pro tips ☠️🎸☠️
+Legion of Weirdos watch my vid on how to make a high end guitar out of a cheap eBay kit. It's basically the same video but for guitar. Totally price was around $150 on that build too
a trained eye can spot a diffrent tone with diffrent finishes but you can hear a very slight diffrence when seeing it in an a-b test but you don't notice a diffrence when using it like a normal human
I was part of double blind tests and people (trained musicians, music professors etc)who swore they could hear the difference between one Strat of a particular year and new one, swore they could hear the difference between an ebony fretboard and a one piece maple neck failed. You couldn't see the instrument and there was no indication what was A and B. You just hear two parts with a little pause inbetween and you only decide if you can hear a difference. They couldn't tell apart a strat made from an acrylic body from they beloved models AND there were also a pair where you would just hear the same sound bit twice instead of comparing it with something different. Some heard a huge difference (1-10 scale) while hearing the SAME bit twice. Our body and ears fucks with our perception. It's like the picture with the trampoline elephant and you can almost hear the impact because of the shaking picture. The other thing is what you can feel frequency-wise doesn't man you can hear it (let alone the amp with speakers that won't do anything with certain frequencies. If you can't feel a lot of vibration in the guitar body/neck it's a pro cause you want the vibration to run back and forth through the strings but not leak into the body. It will not run through the body and reenter the strings. You just feel it and you might like it but that is all there is. It is the same with wood...just say you like it for the looks (which is the reason it is mostly chosen from apart from structural stability) cause all the flamed wood and the birds-eye is weaker wood. How do they get in? Those are all dead twigs that wanted to grow but died because of the environmental conditions. They get sick and they die off and leave those dots or disfigurations. The part of the body which has the most influence (after the hardware and the pickups and pots and of course your damn playing style with your fingers) is the neck. It's a long hunk of wood that only has a connection to something solid at the body. Less movement in the neck = more movement in the strings This influence is still freakin tiny! BUT this makes more difference at bass guitars due to the deeper frequencies. So if a bass neck isn't stable and moves around you have a lot more problems. The lacquer on the body makes homeopathic differences if at all (if it's not in the neckpocket or very thick under the bridge. On a bass neck it may add a tiny difference and only the strong believers might feel but not hear. (face it our hearing sucks at lower frequencies even more, but feeling it gets easier) What comes into play are psychoacoustics (this is scientifc term, you may want to check it out, interesting stuff) You play your instrument and you like the smooth feel with juuust the right amount of friction of an blank neck and enjoy playability. Brain is happy and adds the information = sounds better (oversimplified). You may also think that an instrument sounds better cause you played it for a long time. That might not be the case but you adjusted your playing so much to that instrument that your ear is trained on that sound. (It's even important how much pause there is between hearing signals and what other frequencies the ear has to handle at that point which might mask some other frequencies at the same time) If your muscle memory say it doesn't feel right, you'll your brain also says that it doesn't sound right (subconcious). This is why some players say they can't play anything different anymore. If you really poke musicians long enough, they'll tell you that they bought a certain instrument because someone they admired played it. What worked for them may not work for you but you play it long enough and you adjust to it...the instrument forms (or even really deforms) your body and you grow together. What you feel while playing is a combination of a lot of things, but if you just take the sound and you have to rely on your ears you often can't tell the difference. Keep in mind that you don't have the same ears as the person besides you, you don't stand in the same room, use the same speakers, one of you got screamed in one ear during childhood, the other has more earwax in his right ear, he may be sick and some of the airways might be blocked in his head....so why would you hear the same? You set your amp to what sounds good to you and you play what feels good to you. What sounds good at home may sound crappy on a stage playing with others. That doesn't mean there is a sound difference that you can tell apart. If more people would just do that without religion-like believes about the sound, people would get along much better and get better products without getting fucked over by the industry giants selling fake capcitors. Noone would dare to sell tonepolish if the people would be more open to scientific research and THEN buy what they just LIKE and stop telling other people what they have to like cause it sounds better to them. There are books called Physics of the Electric Guitar from Prof. Manfred Zollner, a former electro-acoustics professor from gemrany. Sadly the two volumes are only available in german at the moment but articles will be extracted and translated soon.
Ok for you still don't agree: Sound is movement strumming the strings will cause the neck and body to vibrate the vibration of the neck and body will move the pickups and the vibration also goes back into the strings therefore changing the sound if you have a harder finish or a harder wood the vibration will be different thus the vibrations that go back into the pickups and strings will be different thus changing the sound. in the case of the different finishes it is hardly noticeable (but still there) with the wood of the body and the neck and fretboard it changes a bit more.
@onpsxmember like i said the difference is very tiny if you have the same woods but a different model etc. and i never claimed the difference to be huge but it is there
to be honest no i can't hear the difference between paints but i never claimed to i am just saying the difference is there i said that there is a slight difference didn't say it was audible to me and you are right that there is no observable difference and i never claimed there was. Cheers
Well my friend, you have done it again. Great video and I love the look you did on this bass. I really like how in-depth you go on your videos. Oh and congratulations on reaching 1,000 subscribers. The subscribers seem to really grow after 1,000. Nice job!
sorry just pokin fun at you..i do play bass though my band project is called"Floyd MacIntire"its on my chanel..please have a listen if you've got the time.
Just make sure you’re in a gun free zone and try and regulate guns as much as possible and then simply become popular enough on the internet that someone swats you and our highly trained (to view everyone as a threat to their lives in a perpetual hypothalamus to pituitary gland to adrenaline overload relentless til their whiteblood fell count reduces and their norepinephrine is making them experience constant over alertness) military police with all the excessive surplus you can imagine will come to disarm your fictional arms, and then your actual arms will proceed to be blown off as they mistake your writhing and squirming for resistance. The lesson? Don’t be so hairstyle to Americans practicing their rights because when you look at hitched situations where those rights are suspended for the blunders or the feds, you won’t be free til you’re dead. And the only one who can stop a bad guy or a tyrannical entity with guns are those with equal enough power.
Years ago, I bought a new SX (brand) 5-string bass from Rondo Music. It's basically a '70's Fender Jazz bass copy. It has a beautiful 3-color sunburst, and it plays and sounds great. It honestly needs nothing. Total cost shipped to my door was just $154.
I built one of these before I had even seen this channel before. When you mentioned the lack of a bridge ground connect hole I threw my head back in frustration as all those terrible memories of trying to ground the bridge rushed back to me
The way I actually got around this problem was ridiculous though. I was actually using a bass tune-o-matic bridge on the bass I built. So I drilled a hole out of the back of the cavity and a small hole out of the bottom of where the tun-o-matic post goes. Then I ran the ground wire out the back of the bass and into the inside of the tune o magic post. I covered up the back wire with the an old Floyd rose back panel I had sitting around. It worked out perfectly
+Tyler Keating genius solution man! I almost drilled out the back from the control cavity, then back in under the bridge. I was gonna feed the wire out the back and back under the bridge, then cover it with wood filler and sand it. Only problem was that was a pretty permanent solution. I'm glad I figured out a different way, in case I ever have to feed a new wire thru that hole haha
Fan.Tas.Tic Work. That's some real craftsman talent you're showing. I'll definitely try this. If you ever plan to do this again, I would also enjoy a longer video for further details to follow up better.
I would honest to God expect to find that at my local guitar shop for around £300! Video's great and the bass just looks insanely handsome, can't wait for your trial vid!
I stripped the paint from an electric once and sealed it with tung oil made it a much mellower and not quite as bright tone. Definitely an advocate for natural finishes!
Dan. I just found your channel AWESOME! I'm a Drummer who just started learning bass and I grew up owning, shooting and modifying guns. Keep up the good work GREAT JOB!
+Pete F you're gonna be a great bass player. I also play drums, it's important for a bass player to know how to follow a kick pattern like glue. As a drummer, you'll catch on to this much faster than most!
+SD3Dot haha lots of people want to buy it but it's not for sale till it's done! It'll be $499 with a hard case shipped in the US. Message me on Facebook if you're interested!
Hey Dan, you are a good presenter. I enjoyed the video and got pumped about making my own. I'm a woodworker with more than 30 years of experience and couldn't agree with you more about the tung oil. I have no idea about its effect on the sound, but I know about its effect on the wood and it's all positive IMO. Both the strat and the P-Bass look great! Well done, and thanks for sharing. Cheers.
Thanks for your compliments! yeah I'm not sure if it makes a difference in tone or not, but it feels like it does to me so I guess that's all that really matters haha
The Billy Sheehan, Yamaha Attitude 3 has the 2 screws that go in from the back at a 45° angle. So koodos to you my friend. I am now a loyal follower of you yours.
Dan , really inspiring and positive thinking video. I own a 80's Fender JB and an Ibanez Roadstar (an oldie) I was (WAS) going to purchase a Chinese bass for giggles. These DIY guitars that you've worked on sound just great. Looks and "famous" brands are deceiving in blind tests against other cheaper brands.
Guns and Guitars take all the time you need your videos are amazing. I love the whole diy kit and making it not only beautiful and great but able to use! And plus Guns! The three G's! Guitars, guns, and you fill in the third G. If you can do more diy kits and upgrading them! Thanks!
I like that p-bass/MM pickup setup. I added a MM humbucker on my frankenfender p-bass with jazz neck. I enjoy it, but I don't think I get as much use out of it as the regular ol split coil p-bass pickup. I like that low end growl more I guess.
+mrDROCK yeah, if you left the p pickup where it was then the mm is probably too close to the bridge and lacks some low end. To get great tone from that pickup it needs to be in its "sweet spot" which over laps the p pickup sweet spot.
Could you do a video or something that elaborates on how to build these kits? I.e. measurements used to place things, wiring, adding the 45deg support screws, etc?
Hey, G&G, I am building an 8-string travel guitar from scratch, and wanted o know two things: one, have you ever built something like that? And two,can you try taking the idea for that project and doing a video on it? Your channel is coming along awesome.
I'm totally amazed of ur videos. The only thing upsets me is to do such a guitar u need so many special tools like dremmel and so on and a place to make ur guitar
+Naher1mne1utub a dremel is a cheap tool that can do so many thing. You should get one. As for a place to work, just set up a table outside and run an extension cord. G2G
This is amazing aswell as your channel. I was watching the video thinking this dude has at least 100k but no 9?!? you are so professional and your channel will definitely grow quickly! subbed!
The split P pickup at a 45 degree angle looks absolutely amazing. I've got to do that, but since I'm worthless at woodworking I'll have to shell out a bunch of money to make it happen...
I commented on the original bass vid. Your string margins tell you that your neck angle laterally is incorrect, not the pickup route. This is a 3 minute fix by making sure your neck screw holes through your body aren’t interference fit and loosening your neck screws a little and moving your neck laterally until your margins are right and the pole pieces align. That’s why you run outer strings while you install the neck.
I really like your videos so please keep up the good work! Also, I worked on a similar project a couple of months ago and your videos turn out to be everything I was looking for back in those days. you really inspired me to build my second bass so rock on!
Guns and Guitars good luck, as far as making it a set neck, it should work because the surface area is plenty, but i would recommend finding the best glue you can for it, and making sure there is no finish on that part of the neck or the neck pocket
Great tip on the 3M spray adhesive for the pickguard backing foil. I got a pickguard with no foil and couldn't decide what kind of glue to use for the foil. Also, I dig the slanted split pup. It really makes the whole set up pop. Otherwise it would be so plain Jane. Or Jim?
Great Video man. I think I just found my next project. For anyone debating the acoustic effects of finish and trying to say it doesn't have an impact, I have one name for you, Antonio Stradivari. Obviously it makes a huge difference in acoustic instruments but it also has a role to play in electric instruments.
be careful, there are a lot of nay sayers out there. I feel like it makes a difference too, even if its in my head. If it sounds better in my head, then that's all that matters right? haha
Dan, nice job with this vid! I know, it's over a year old, but it's new to me. Good energy, good speed, showed us what was important. I like oil finishes on instruments because I think they look and feel the best. Keep up the good work!
Don't you love when a kit error becomes one of the coolest looking bass pickups ever? Love that slant!! Probably sounds better than standard alignment lol
