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In a world of mass produced guitars all following the same 60 year old design it's really brilliant to see something unique being hand crafted like this :-)
The controls are going to be hidden from the front but conventional and freely accessible from the back.
This is broadly where they will go:
There will be a powered piezo preamp / magnetic pickup mixer (John East ) a 9 volt battery, two pots (blend and master volume as a minimum) and a jack socket.
Because there is little room for error, I'm opting for the much safer forstner and chisel rather than let a router loose on it.
In terms of the knobs access, the chamber is now cut. Here you see it:
...and here you don't:
Next step is the main chamber.
Oh...and remember that the back will be carved concave...and the main chamber will need a cover...which almost certainly will need carving to suit!
Nice idea, those hidden controls...
It might be possible to shape the back cover by first sanding a softwood "mould" against the back (if it's still intact), putting sandpaper on it and flattening the final cover against the mould.
(Though on second thoughts you can clearly handle just carving it.)
In the meantime, I've been carving the control chamber and of all the 'go carefully' jobs, this is the one...
...but I need to work out how much I can/need to scoop the back without breaking through the top and still be able
to fit all the bits and cover and accommodate the back scoop - still to do.
So I will now start considering the back, using the thickness gauge to see just how far I can safely go:
Then I'll start the scooping at the back, after I've finished any remaining routing
Then check the thickness and depth of the chamber and deepen further if necessary
Then back to the top - if the thickness allows, to finalise the lower bout radius of the bass's top
And only then can I finish the carve of the top
And the rout for the cover at the back - that will cover the shallow chamber that will give access to fit them from the back and to adjust their individual slugs - which will be a longer version of this, flush-fitted into the neck:
I've added a couple of sycamore fillets either side of the rear wedge and also routed the back of the neck ready for the coils access cover:
The stripy cover will be flush with the stripy neck and the body rebates will be carved away as part of creating the convex shape at the back.
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If yours is headless you won't be able to use double ball strings. I'm sure that won't be as much of a problem for you as it was for me given the neck will be wood.
[This space for rent]
The basic shape was Mick's (the guy I'm building it for) who's had Ritters in the past so no doubt it's heavily influenced by that style of modernity.
I think the concept of attaching a £24 steinberger-style tuner block to it was all his very own! Sorting out how to fix that in place and get the strings to poke though the front at approximately the right angle was definitely mine but I'm more happy for Ritter to copy that in their future designs
Are your tuners at the back too?
The head block I'm using is actually a double clamp system which means I don't need double ball end strings. I've taken a hacksaw to it and turned it round 90 degrees so it will simply clamp the strings at the back of the headstock. This was the prototype I used to prove the concept:
The nice thing is that therefore the block only need a small locating screw - the string tension trying to pull the block through the headstock is where the main strength comes from....the strings are very firmly clamped and neither they nor the holding block can go anywhere at all.