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NGD: Parker-ish Build (Bumblefoot content)

5K views 35 replies 24 participants last post by  noodles 
#1 ·
Long story but basically was on a Fountainhead kick and decided I needed a fretless guitar. Considered buying something cheap and modding it but didn't see anything I liked much, plus I'm OCD about matching guitar, so I decided it'd be fun to try a Parker style build to match my two main players.

Being bolt on instead of the set neck like a real Fly, plus not planning on attempting a carbon fiber layup this early, I didn't do the full back carving but I got the top as close as possible. I also got lucky with an especially light piece of mahogany.

Anyway, pics.

Here's the original haul. Fretboard started out as 1/4" 6061 aluminum bar stock ~36"x5x" (Thanks Metal Supermarket!) and the 8/4 plank of African Mahogany that would be the body. The thing on the right is maple for another build.



I build guitars ~10 years before I got the CNC, so I'm big on letting the CNC do what it's good at and letting the hand do what it's good at. So in this case, I let the CNC do the main outline, the pickup routes, the neck pocket, etc.

So, off to the Shapeoko.



Just recently (well, in the last six months) got into letting the CNC do the neck carving. This one is based on my favorite 6-string neck profile, the Super Wizard. I let the CNC do the precision work like the neck tenon, then some rough outlining and left the final shaping to sander.

Oh, and the neck is a piece of Phillipine mahogany as opposed to the African mahogany of the body. The Phili is noticeably more "brown" and open grained and heavier. The African has a more golden hue, tighter grain and noticeably lighter.



Kind of mocked up before the top carve. The fretboard tappered but not contoured yet. The CNC+ballnose did NOT like doing the contouring but more on that later.





This is after initial carving. I used a flap disk for some heavy removal, also a saw and chisel, then spokeshave/rasps for some of the fine stuff, eventually up to 80grit on the mouse sander and I think I was up to about 120grit by the time I snapped this.

The wood had some imperfections. Some of it I was inclined to leave, some of it filled, some of it I chased (there's these vertical scratches behind the bridge) and they kept going and going, so I decided to leave those too. Nothing there that effected stability or killed the look enough to bother me.





Here's a test of it, I think this is after sanding to 240grit and just rubbing it down with alcohol. That gives you an idea of what it looks like finished but also is good for raising the grain before your last couple sanding stages. This starts to highlight the koa-like golden hue.



This part was a bitch, so there's minimal documentation but basically put a 16" radius on the fretboard. Tried the ballnose and the motors did NOT like any amount of plunging into it. I did a full operation of that and it basically left a couple scratches and no real carving. I decided to try the same carve based on the ballnose but stuck in the square bit, and THAT worked.

It was ugly ugly ugly and I ended up having to sand it by hand with a radius block from 40 grit up but I got there. I believe it was like... 40, 60, 80,100,120,200,240,300,500,800,1000,1200, 1500, 1800,1200 then 000, 0000, 00000 steel wool. It was hell but here we are with no polishing.





A bunch happened between here and it being finished but not much documentation. Finish sanding, fitting, drilling, etc.

For the logos, I always liked the little 'Fly' behind the headstock, and since this is partially inspired by Bumblefoot, I decided to put a little Bumblefoot bee on the back. Also decided to get 'cute' with the headstock' design.

Fretboard as fret markers on the side and 'dimpled' fret marker dots.

For finish, this got Polycrylic. I didn't want to get into the full nitro/2k spray rig for this and decided to try something new. The Polycrylic claims "no runs" and they're full of shit :lol: It runs, it goes on sloppy and ugly with a nasty purple hue. BUT, it dries really nice, which is what matters. It self leveled pretty well and I liked being able to use water for cleanup. It got wet sanding up to ~500grit, then steel wool and then scotch brite to flatten it but keep some sheen.

Pickups are a Tone Zone and Air Norton combo I had laying around. They may or may not stay but I do like the look. I was broke by the time I got around to completing this, so the tuners were nabbed off of one of my Parkers that has been waiting to be restrung anyway.

Bridge is, idk, no-namer flatmount I chose because I thought something that strung through the top only would sustain better. Knobs are some NOS Parker CS knobs I got from Gman.

Anyway, finished pics:

















 
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#4 ·
Now that I'm remembering it, the maple WAS originally for this build but I did a repair job on an LP Studio sometime after that and really liked the porous mahogany neck on it and decided I wanted to go with that.
 
#6 ·
Sick work dude. That would work great with a 2Tek bridge. Curious about the nut though. It seems like a non metal nut would be "too warm". I would assume you would want a metal one to equalize the tone between open strings and fretted strings, for the same reason some people like zero frets. I'm not a direct mount fan, but the more angular cuts for the tabs look better than most routes. The black pole pieces on the bridge pickup gel well with the hardware too. Need some black pole pieces on the neck pickup.

Is the wood cover for the control cavity one of those corksniffer "held on with magnets because I am too good for screws" deal?

Ballsy idea too. Fretless bass is one thing, due to the relative lack of polyphonic chording in bass compared to guitar, but I can tell you for damn sure I wouldn't even want anyone to hear me attempting to play a fretless electric.

What's the scale length? I feel like if you decide a fretless bass is more usable you could build a new Bass 6 type neck for it and convert it fairly easily, since the bridge isn't one that has a ton of routing going on.

Also, what's the truss rod situation going on there? No truss rod because the metal for the fretboard is robust enough?
 
#11 ·
Thanks folks!

Curious about the nut though. It seems like a non metal nut would be "too warm". I would assume you would want a metal one to equalize the tone between open strings and fretted strings, for the same reason some people like zero frets. I'm not a direct mount fan, but the more angular cuts for the tabs look better than most routes. The black pole pieces on the bridge pickup gel well with the hardware too. Need some black pole pieces on the neck pickup.

Is the wood cover for the control cavity one of those corksniffer "held on with magnets because I am too good for screws" deal?

Ballsy idea too. Fretless bass is one thing, due to the relative lack of polyphonic chording in bass compared to guitar, but I can tell you for damn sure I wouldn't even want anyone to hear me attempting to play a fretless electric.

What's the scale length? I feel like if you decide a fretless bass is more usable you could build a new Bass 6 type neck for it and convert it fairly easily, since the bridge isn't one that has a ton of routing going on.

Also, what's the truss rod situation going on there? No truss rod because the metal for the fretboard is robust enough?
Seeing if I can answer these in order :lol:

I THINK I considered a metal nut early on in the process but either forgot or had trouble finding the right specs. I'm not sure how much a difference it makes but yeah, sustain is an issue with these in general, so anything that enhances it would be wise. I was considering an epoxied wood board but went with aluminum for that exact reason. The low strings actually resonate really well, the top two not so much but I hear you need higher tensions and better technique to make it "work".

Pickup routes are J. Custom stylized just because I liked the tight triangular ears. I didn't choose them specifically for this, I happened to have an accurate set saved in CAD from an Ibanez mockup years back. I like the way it looks but I'm direct mount vs. pickup ring agnostic, so I could go either way. Pickups are just what I had lying around. I didn't realize they shipped with black screws standard on one and chrome on the other at the time, which is part of the reason they sat :lol:

Wood cover is an afterthought. I planned on just good ol' plastic and screws but I forgot I'm out of cavity material. I used a piece of scrap I have lying around. In Fusion 360 with that specific CNC, .03" extra removal from stock is the magic number to make anything fit but hold in place under tensions. So for now, it's just being held in there by pressure, it will probably get screws. The magnet thing is cool but mounting them is a PITA that I'm not so interested in.

It's a normal 25.5". I watched a bunch of YT videos of guys playing them (including lots of Bumblefoot and Fountainhead), and it's definitely got a sound reminiscent of a fretless bass on the low strings but the high register is it's own "thing". I'm looking forward to trying it with the eBow when I get it home (haven't actually plugged this in at all yet).

No trussrod on this for basically the reason you said. I did a lot of testing trying to bend that aluminum board and it's VERY stiff. When you route the truss rod, a lot of people forget you're adding a metal rod but you're also cutting out a giant piece of wood down the middle of the neck right down the spine. I felt like the stability from leaving the neck solid plus the aluminu, would be a good balance. It actually has a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny pinch of relief to it, surprisingly.
 
#20 ·
Thanks again, folks!



Thanks!

This ended up being surprisingly economical, timewise. The initial inspiration came from a Bumblefoot thread on here and according to the date stamps, looks like I bought the lumber in early August.

The woodworking part was kind of a culmination of stuff I've been working at for a while. I've had a Parker CAD I've been working at for a while when things were slow at work or at night before I got to sleep, the neck profile I had from a while back for a different build I was working on, the pickup routes came from an Ibanez I sketched up some time ago, etc.

So yeah, that helped a lot. The woodwork itself was fairly modest.

The real ball buster was the fretboard. I'd consider doing one of these again but I'd have to rethink the fretboard part. THAT was just raw elbow grease, sitting at the bench for hours doing the same thing over and over.

That is fucking crazy cool! I sooo want to play that guitar :lol: Man that looks like so much fun and it is gorgeous besides. You did good my friend, that is sweet :) I would usually say at this point, "play the frets off her" but play her 'til she wears out!
I can relate to that sentiment. I saw that Bumblefoot vid and started replaying the Pitts Minnemann album and was like "fuck, i NEED a fretless just to try out" but the options are so good thin, I said "welp, the only way I'm going to get my hands on one is to make one, so hop to it", which had a LOT to do with the pace this ended up getting done. 2.5ish months and my ergo thing took at least two YEARS :lol:

Very neat :agreed:
But hey, what happened to the double neck build we talked about.. ;)

Curious about the 6061 alu slab; why did you pick this specific type of aluminum?
While I'm not fully into all grades of alu, I assume it's fairly close to 6075, which I know better.
I'm so early in the fretless thing to say with certainty that I'd need to have both necks at the ready, and this ended up being a budget conscious build, and double necks sounded like double the price for the expensive parts (hardware, electronics, etc) and also double the work. Still may be in the cards though.

I know fuckall about aluminum :rofl: I went to the supply place, looked at the menu, 6061 was at the top of the list based on commonality, found a piece of 1/4" flat and flex tested it since I knew it was still going to be nearly a full 1/4" thick down the center after I was done, that'd give me an approximation of rigidity.

I'm happy with it from a stability perspective, it seems to be prone to light scuffing but I don't know how common/uncommon that is. I'd maybe consider stainless if I made a second one. I was also thinking about a sheet of stainless or aluminum curved and glued overtop of a wood board as an option.
 
#17 ·
That is fucking crazy cool! I sooo want to play that guitar :lol: Man that looks like so much fun and it is gorgeous besides. You did good my friend, that is sweet :) I would usually say at this point, "play the frets off her" but play her 'til she wears out!
 
#19 ·
Very neat :agreed:
But hey, what happened to the double neck build we talked about.. ;)

Curious about the 6061 alu slab; why did you pick this specific type of aluminum?
While I'm not fully into all grades of alu, I assume it's fairly close to 6075, which I know better.
 
#22 ·
The CNC is in my home shop. It's a Shapeoko 3XXL, which I got based on seeing a couple builds on SSO and subsequently watching a lot of videos online. I've had it for a year this past August.

I've been drawing in CAD for about 14 years and SOME form of 3D drawing for the last... 10ish? The 3D stuff had been kinda rudimentary but all the CAD work was done 1:1 scale to print up blueprints so that I could print them out (usually at Kinkos or OfficeMax), cut them out and glue them to hardboard to make templates.

That's the main way I've been making stuff for the last several years, with stacks and stacks of templates I'd cut copies of with different pickup/hardware configurations and I'd source the pickup templates from places online. That worked alright but templating out a new design was cumbersome and with the way router bearings bind up, you'll inevitably wreck a template and you either had to make or buy new ones. That gets expensive, VERY time consuming and really frustrating when you are midway through a project and have to wait another week for a template to come in, or you spend several hours cleaning/hiding spots where the router skipped.

I've wanted to go CNC since the mid-2000s, but the technology just wasn't there. The machines were expensive, enormous and you had to do a LOT of manual programming on your own. I'd check back every couple years and it was getting better but still, the only affordable units were from places like AliExpress with little guarantee of what you were getting and even less certainty on how you were going to program it, or DIY building the machine yourself which was way over my head.

The Shapeoko was the first unit I got acquainted with that was assembled and shipped from the US, had a reasonable footprint, shipped complete (you need to assemble it, but all the parts are there), was affordable, had quality software and had a good support structure.

There are three variation of the Shapeoko 3, I went with the XXL because the other sizes were too small for cutting any larger sized bodies and if I was going to spend any decent money, I didn't want any roadblocks early on. I forget the retail price on the XXL, I think it's around $2000 but then I had to add on the router, a bunch of carbide bits and some assorted odds and ends, plus building the bench for it. So I think I ended up around $3000 all in for the machine assembled, mounted on the table with the basic bits I needed.

I have probably 200+ guitar bodies etc. from all those years in AutoCAD, and luckily Fusion 360 is the preferred modeling software for 3D and *** work (and the startup license is free), so I could import my DXF files directly into it, use similar 'push-pull' tools like I was using in Sketch-up and make something resembling a guitar body in pretty short order.

It's been said a million times but bears repeating. There's a lot the CNC does but a lot it DOESN'T do. For me, I basically use is for the templating process (saves me the $18 a piece print from Kinkos, and ~5-6 sheets of hardboard for several templates needed for one guitar) and for the precision spec'd cavities (electronics, neck pockets, etc.; saves me ~$20 a piece on plexi templates). I only recently started using it for carving neck profiles but I think that's as far as I'd go.

A lot of guys I've seen try and fail at using the CNC use it for tummy cuts and arm contours, etc. Which is fine, some do it successfully and that's the way they do it in bigger factories but from experience, those are the things that take an outsized amount of time in the programming process, take an outsized amount of time in the machining process and are most likely to go wrong. I've seen a lot of guys get into building backward where they'll get the CNC machine, expect it to do all the work and when it spits out the body with tool marks that need to be sanded out of inconvenient places or with flaws that need to be fixed with actual wood working tools (like blowouts that need to be fixed with a chisel and a dovetail saw for the replacement), and they're not equipped to do any of that, so the guitar sits unfinished, they get burned out and the machine collects dust.

So yeah, even as a hobbyist, it's good to learn what the machine does well and what the hand does well. But as far as the CNC goes overall, I definitely encourage anybody interested to give it a try now that it's more accessible. For me, it's honestly saved me a lot of money and time, and it works as a second pair of hands in the shop.
 
#25 ·
Dude, that is a thing of beauty!

I badly need to sort the wiring in my fretless as some point, as they're so much fun to play...
 
#29 ·
On a more serious note, I'm a small business owner for the last 15+ years. I service my customers one at a time, and I know how impractical the custom guitar market is, both in fulfilling orders for multiple people at a time, and making a practical living out of it.

I do marketing and multimedia production work for a living, and I can sell product for $1000 - $3000 with little to no expense to me vs. trying to sell guitars for anywhere within that span and expecting $500 - $1000 in hard costs per guitar, tons of risk, hundreds of man-hours and having to actually manage the customer and hand over a flawless product. It's entirely impractical. So no, no Black Friday runs anytime in the near future.

I basically build stuff for myself, I build some stuff I might post up if somebody wants something finished (of which there is none, because it's not a priority) and occasionally I'll offer the odd project for a friend or to help someone out. Guitar building is a stress relieving, creative outlet for me and that's a pace that keeps it that way. I know my limitations and I try not to move beyond them on my own, muchless with someone else's money.
 
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