Standard 5 Jazz body arrived!

[Michaelga]

The body arrived last night! It is vintage tint on alder. I really like the grain on it. I am pairing it with a maple neck with rosewood fingerboard, Hipshot kicka$$ bridge, John East J-retro preamp and Nordstrand pickups.

Michael

 

[Cagey]

Nice choices! Looks great! That's gonna be a helluva instrument.

 

[Michaelga]

Thanks! I'm waiting for the bridge pickup and I need to cut the nut (I'm not sure what the best way is to do that, but I bought 3 bone blanks, so I hope I can get it right before I use them all up). I can't wait to put it together!!

Michael

 

[bagman67]

Schweet!

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Snazzin the Jazz, nice!

 

[Michaelga]

I have a couple of questions for assembling the bass. I’ve heard it’s a good idea to lubricate the wood screws. What should be used and where do you get it? For attaching the neck, can you put the screws in without drilling a pilot hole?

Michael

 

[Cagey]

Lubing screws is important. Particularly the smaller screws like you'd use on the tuners where it's very easy to twist the heads off the things. I use beeswax, which you can get at crafts shops, but a lotta folks just use a candle or paraffin block or crayons or something. Some kind of wax, is what I'm saying.

Never try to run screws into hardwood without pilot holes. Besides being somewhere between difficult and impossible to do, the chances of the wood splitting are very high.

 

[Michaelga]

Do I need to use pilot holes on the body as well? I've done a lot of machining in metal, not wood. Do the pilot holes need to be centered, or do the holes just need to be drilled with the neck (or whatever) in place?

Michael

 

[rgand]

I'd be concerned about them going in crooked and binding up, causing one to break off. If they do go in crooked without breaking, I'd then be annoyed by crooked screw heads showing. Just use your existing skills to center the holes. If you have transfer punches, use those to center your pilot hole. I don't have any so I just run a drill bit the same size as the hole backwards through it just enough to transfer the center of the hole then drill it to the correct size.

 

[Michaelga]

Thanks for the help! I'm going to start a new thread in the Work in Progress forum as I put it together. I have the material to build another Standard 5 bass, but I'm probably going to sell it all after I put this one together.

Michael