The rails are prepared generally using the same wood as the neck laminations or fingerboard for the sake of color coordination. Dowels hold the rails in precise alignment while they are glued and clamped. The rails add enough width to the neck blank to hold the pickups and bridge assembly. The cavities for these parts are routed using a vertical milling machine to exact tolerances with a slight added width to account for wood shrinkage in dry winter weather. Channels and tunnels for wiring are milled and drilled along with cavities for batteries and electronic tuner. The dovetailed slot for the battery cover is also cut on the mill.

Woods for the body wings are selected according to the figure, color and sonic properties desired by the customer. I usually use a harder, heavier wood on the front with a softer, more resonant piece on the back. Curly and quilted maples are favorites for the beautiful figure and bright tone they impart. The deeper the figure the more troublesome it is to carve and shape but the more rewarding the results. The highest grades of maple are of a uniform bright white color that backlights a stain or tint with stunning results. Other popular body tops are walnut, koa and zebrawood. Body backs are often of alder, swamp ash, butternut, sassafras, soft maple, walnut or narra.

The chosen planks are cleaned up to expose the figure and then clear plastic body templates are moved around until the best match of figure is obtained. Often I try to incorporate swirls or patterns in the grain that follow the body outline. I spend hours and even days contemplating (agonizing) how to make the best use of a given piece of wood for a body. Once the outlines are traced and cut out on the band saw, they get cleaned up with the belt sander. The gluing surfaces are flattened on the jointer and then thicknessed before they are painstakingly scraped and fitted for a perfect joint. The tops and backs are glued and clamped heavily to eliminate the possibility of 'creep' along the glue lines. The wings are then milled for electronics cavities and to establish the outlines of the carved areas. I use a band saw to rough out the contours and round off the corners before doing the heavy carving with gouge, round bottom plane, rasp and scraper blades.

The wings and rails need to be carefully mated to avoid glue lines, I use chalk on one part to see where the high points rub on the other. Dowels line up the wings and I try to glue them as soon as things are tight, before the wood gets a chance to move on me. I can usually get by with 2 clamps, doing the lower wing first and then the upper. For final shaping, some broad areas and convex curves can be cleaned up on the belt sander before I resort to hand sanding with blocks and pads. With heavily figured wood, I must alternate scrapers and sanding with special free cut files. Sometimes a scrap of broken glass is the only tool that can work figured maple.

Sanding is an all-day chore best done out-of-doors if weather permits. I designed and built a down draught table to filter out dust for indoor sanding but it makes for a noisy environment. I own 4 different orbital sanders that I've tried over the years but now do most sanding by hand to keep dust down and to have complete control over the complex curves of the body and neck. Final rubbing is done with 0000 steel wool. By this time I can see the glow of the wood and pick out even the slightest scratches or undulations of the surface.

Holes are drilled for the pots, switches and output jack along with mounting holes for the strap buttons and tuners. The whole bass is then dusted, vacuumed and washed down in acetone. Stain is applied, sanded then touched up and re-sanded. If oil is the final finish it is applied with cotton pads under a heat lamp to promote deeper penetration and even drying. The first coat is allowed to dry overnight and the second coat is applied with coarse burlap to meld into the first coat and avoid sanding. The third and successive coats are applied alternately with finest steel wool or bare fingers and rubbed into the grain pores until these are filled. If a high gloss is desired a thin coat of oil is rubbed in with the fingers as it dries it can then be burnished to a gloss with the heat of friction. (A great way to get blisters).

Once the bass has sat a few days I can paint all the interior cavities with conductive shielding paint, running it down through the wiring tunnels. I don't do lacquer here so I won't get into that except to say it adds 2 weeks and 10 hours to the construction time. It's a real trick to keep the lacquer out of the sliding control covers and to get it into the recesses of the D shape. I use razor blades for leveling, 4 grits of sandpaper and 4 stages of compound and paste wax on lacquer. Buffing it out is an art that takes lots of practice. The overhead investment for spraybooth, explosion proof safety wiring, compressor, spray guns, polution and dust control filters, special lighting and buffing equipment have kept me from from getting involved directly with lacquer.

The titanium truss rod is hand threaded in several passes because the material is so hard. The rod is bent double using heat from a blowtorch and a gigantic machinist's vice to forge the bend precisely. Hardware milling is done in batches of 5 or 10 sets of each string spacing. 10 sets equals 190 separate parts and takes at least 2 weeks to complete. My mill is a cheap Taiwanese machine that I've rebuilt and improved many times but I still need to check tolerances on every part with a digital caliper. Figure 10 hours per set including de-burring, sanding, buffing, polishing and cleaning. I send out plating and anodizing to avoid EPA waste treatment regulations. Plating is an art in its own right and I don't mind paying the $50 to get it done well. Plated parts need to be resized to account for the 1/1000" additional thickness. Mating surfaces need to be lapped on a diamond-encrusted plate to flatten them again.

Pickup mounting is done with thick foam rubber for springing them up and soap on the screws. The main electronics cavity is further shielded with conductive, adhesive-backed copper foil, which is seam soldered and grounded to the conductive paint. The pots and electronics are pre-wired on a jig before final connections are made and the pots installed. The active modules need to be fastened in place with Velcro or foam double-sided tape. All the ground areas are tested for continuity with a meter before the hardware is installed. String slots can then be cut into the nut and strings installed. Fretwork is checked once again on the neck jig under full string tension with the truss rod adjusted. Intonation at the bridge is set and then checked at the nut as well. String spacing and bridge height is optimized before a final intonation check.

Batteries are installed and the bass is tested and played for an hour or two to determine proper pickup heights and finalize the set up. The best test is a rehearsal or a gig so I can really hear how it sounds up against guitars and drums. I'll often get someone else to test it for me just to have a clean opinion. I'll note down any idiosyncrasies or general observations on the order sheet for future reference. Strings are removed to allow the frets to be polished and to remove any steel wool threads from the pickups. If new strings are needed they are installed before the bass is packed with its instructions, tools and invoice.

Total time about 100 hours over 3 months. Total cost: wood; $200- $500, metal and plating; $100, electronics; $300, strings, screws, oil, etc; $25.I figure I can make $15 an hour if I don't screw up too much. If I add in wood shopping, travel, time messing with computers, time cleaning the shop and rebuilding machinery. Time harassing, threatening and cajoling suppliers and talking to earnest customers, I can count on $5 an hour.