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Precision Bass

Date completed: February 28, 2022 (~15 hours of work)

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This was my first attempt to build my own bass guitar – in this case a Precision Bass, as I prefer this model most when I play music. One day when I have the proper equipment I plan to cut my own body and neck, but for now I had to use pre-cut and routed parts (body and neck) purchased from Warmoth. Even with that head start, I anticipated challenges as I was new to precision woodworking, electrical wiring, and soldering. Also, I spent a significant amount of time researching components and hardware, as I didn’t want to have to stop building and waste time having to reorder parts because the originals didn’t fit. The entire project took three days of work (~5 hours per day) and, as expected, I ran into some issues that required troubleshooting and the need to get expert advice (mentioned below). Fortunately, I started to keep a journal of all of the problems I encountered, which helped me avoid the same issue in future builds.

Materials

Warmoth P-Bass Replacement Body: Solid Wood Alder, Top Rout Control Cavity, P Bass Neck Pickup Rout, Gotoh 201 Bridge Rout, 4-Bolt Neck Pocket. Solid Sonic Blue Gloss Paint,

Warmoth P-Bass Replacement Neck: Solid Maple Neck and Fretboard Wood, Steel Stiffening Rods, 1-11/16" (43mm) P Bass Nut Width, Standard 21 Fret Neck, Clear Satin Nitro Finish

Pickups: EMG Geezer Butler P-bass Pickups, Tuners: Fender Vintage

 

Tools/equipment

Drill, Countersink bits, Screwdriver, Dremel, Soldering Iron, Wrenches, Digital Multimeter

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Process (my role: I performed all tasks)

  • Step 1: I had to expand the width of the holes in the head stock using a Dremel, and then drilled the mounting holes using standard bits and countersinks. From there, I installed the tuners.

  • Step 2: Attached the bridge to the body with a screwdriver (5 screws), first leaving a wire underneath for future grounding.

  • Step 3: Attached neck and body with four screws in the neck pocket (via screwdriver).

  • Step 4: Installed shielding into the routed body cavity, followed by pickups and electronics, running the wires through the guitar and soldering the potentiometer (volume/tone) and all other connections.

  • Step 5: Drilled holes for the pickguard using electric drill, and installed pickguard and knobs.

  • Step 6: Performed a setup, including setting the relief in the neck by adjusting the truss rod, adjusting the bridge saddle height, setting the pickup height, and adjusted the intonation.

Key Learnings

I learned the overall process and basic techniques needed for building guitars, improved my soldering skills, and learned how to do a full set up. In initial testing the electronics produced an audible hum that I could not resolve, and I had to seek help from a local expert who showed me that I had not grounded the shielding properly. Debugging the sensitive electrical work is still my greatest challenge.

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