And it worked out nicely and now I know where the center of the pickup has to be too. The body will be painted some opaque color, so I'm not worried about the darkness in the plate.
One man's trash is another man's trashy Dolphin Nose bass
- Thread starter guitarbuilder
- Start date
crazydave911
Doctor of Teleocity
Pretty cool 
Printed out a drawing of the plate and where the pickup should land.
I glued it onto the circular blank with glue stick. You should start to see a trend with this glue stick business, eh? Then I drilled some pilot holes for the screws and the slot.
Then I chucked up a step drill and drilled away slowly.
Then using that nice rasp that I got off of Amazon that I linked earlier, I rasped. It's almost like a coarse file. The wood comes off pretty easily. I then took some sandpaper around a 1/2" aluminum rod and sanded the rest of the way until the pickup went through.
Then back to the drill press to drill and countersink the holes.
I removed the pattern with some damp paper towel. I dried the wood off as I didn't want it to warp. I drilled and chiseled some pickup mounting screw and spring access into the body.
And finally drilled some pilot holes for Gibson humbucker ring screws and mounted it.
crazydave911
Doctor of Teleocity
Darn good dimensions there 
Darn good dimensions there
Close enough for me...lol.
I started to work on a steel string spruce top, so this didn't see much action today. I printed out some control pattern pdfs.
I cut out the pattern for the front, aligned it, and punched the centers of the hole locations with a phillips screwdriver.
On to the drill press to drill the 3 holes with a bradpoint.
The holes from the back and the pattern glued onto the back with glue stick. The Dano bass was hollow under the controls, so the pot wouldn't interfere with the control cavity cover which was just screwed to the surface with no pickguard rabbet. I will deviate from this design as I'm using solid wood and need room for the pot. That means the control cavity needs to get bigger or everything shifted over. I'll think on it.
GunsOfBrixton
Friend of Leo's
great work as usual. Keeping warm I hope. Took a walk with the dog earlier. Bitterly cold out.
Thanks. It was zero here for quite a while. The game at Orchard Park tonite should be interesting.
Engraver-60
Friend of Leo's
I just caught up on this thread. Pretty cool, Marty. It should be a fun bass to play. Did you make the lipstick pickup?
crazydave911
Doctor of Teleocity
Why not turn the pattern a wee bit to open it up some. No need to change it
