Build A Bass

The Logo

Making a decal is simple as long as you have a computer and a printer. You can buy water slide decal paper from www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk (they sell laserjet and inkjet paper, so make sure you get the right one for your printer). If you’re using an inkjet printer you’ll need to seal the ink after printing with acrylic spray to stop it dissolving.


To design my logo I downloaded some free software, Logo Creator. Since the colour scheme was blue, black and chrome I decided a black and silver logo would look best, but alas, colour printers can’t do metallics.

No problem: the answer is to choose a font with gaps for the silver and to print the logo in black onto clear decal paper. I cut the logo to size, and cut a larger piece of blank decal paper. Both went into a bowl of warm water, then I removed the decal material from the blank piece and transferred my printed decal to this larger backing piece – upside down.


Once my decal was dry I painted over the gaps with Humbrol silver enamel, let the enamel dry and transferred my printed decal to the headstock, turning it back the right way round. Job done!

Electronics

We went for the simplest J-style bass control layout with 250K potentiometers and a Mallory 150 .047mF capacitor for the individual volume controls and master tone. Just Google a layout diagram and use a powerful soldering iron to solder the ground connections to the pot casings.


Thanks to the separate control plate, most of the wiring can be done without the risk of dropping solder onto the finish.

The Allparts body didn’t come with a pre-drilled channel to ground the bridge and I didn’t have a long enough drill bit for the job.

The answer was to run a vintage-style strip of metal from the bridge to the bridge pickup control cavity.

We used adhesive-backed copper shielding; Fender used actual brass straps and you can buy repros from Angela Instruments (www.angela.com) for that full-on Jaco look.


Shed Pickups made us a beautiful set of pickups and really came up trumps with a pair of new old stock Fender covers.

Alnico III slugs were chosen because you can get the coil close to the strings without excessive magnetic strength pulling the strings out of tune as you play high up the neck.


Jazz Bass pickup routs provide a snug fit and I found it easiest to push the treble side in first, easing the bass side in afterwards.