Body

The mahogany for the body was supplied in one long piece. I planed this to the required thickness marked out the shape of the body using print outs from the PC and roughly cut them to size. I left the pieces square so that the guitar could be clamped together tightly during gluing. The cut outs adjacent to the neck were rough cut to size and rounded over before gluing.

I slotted the treble side of the body to make channels for the pickup and battery wires before gluing to the neck. At this point all came to a halt until the end of May 2003.  Without any cooperation at all from the manufacturers of the hardware, ABM, I was not able to drill the channel for the bridge piezos. Until I could do this I was not able to glue on the treble side body wing.

I placed the order for the bridges in October 2002 from Pincotts/Allparts. They had not materialised by the end of May 2003. Pincotts did their best to get me the dimensions that I needed but could not gee up Allparts in the USA, who remained unable to determine a delivery date. Boy, was I frustrated about this!

When I finally got the dimensions of the bridges, still no hardware, I was able to drill the neck channel, glue on the treble side body wing and rout the recesses for the pickups and battery box.

Finally the body was I routed the body to shape using a template. I found this part of the build very rewarding as the bass was starting to look the business. With the body cut to shape I glued on the fingerboard to finish sand it to size on the neck.

The saga about the bridges continued. In my frustration I managed to contact Shadow in the US, the manufacturer of the piezo elements. I had previously tried their head office in Germany with as much success as ABM. Joe Melchiorre at Shadow US was able to break the deadlock for me with Shadow, Germany, who finally replied to my emails. After many months waiting, they told me that they could supply the bridges off the shelf. I placed an order via Shadow's UK distributor, Barnes & Mullins. Barnes & Mullins would not supply directly to me but they would supply to my local music shop. I collected the bridges from Tuba Talk (now Hooters), Watford, on 17 June 2003.