I'm a design student trying to design a new bass guitar for a college assignment. Please help out

There are loads of topics :slight_smile:
Woods (body, neck, fretboard), thermal treatment of wood, frets vs fretless, inlays on fretboard, fretboard radius, how neck joins the body, body shape, WEIGHT!
etc. etc.

Then you’ll get to finishes as many of us buy with our eyes :wink:
Types of paint (or no paint), colours, relic finishes (?)

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In terms of innovation, I’d love to see a design with modular, interchangeable pickups.

So for example, the body has a standard (to be defined) sized cutout with an interface for connecting the pickup with the bass electronics. Each Pickup module is a standard size (to be defined) with a corresponding interface. The user then chooses which style pickup module they drop in… P, J, Humbucker, Twin-J, soapbar etc…

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This is a great idea @HowlinDawg - some version of a molex connector you solder to existing pickups, then terminate the body electronics to molex as well - so you can quick change your connection to the rest of the electronics.

As for the cutout - just go oversized - big enough to fit the biggest pickups out there - and then have adapter plates to fit each pickup shape (you could sell blanks that could be cut at home, or files to 3d print the adapter plate, or pre-cut for popular pickup shapes.)

If you wanted to really go off the rails - you could have one giant cavity under the strings from neck to bridge with a relatively inexpensive replaceable blank plate to cover it - That way you wouldn’t be locked into a J or P or HH, etc configuration - put the pickups anywhere you want. Different plates for different configs.

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GuitarFetish uses a “quickplug” system

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It doesn’t even have to be a male / female connector.
It could be a series of contacts like on a battery or SD card.

Modules could snap in mechanically or even magnetically (if it didn’t interfere with the pickup).

If the standardised cutout was large enough, you could facilitate multiple positions for the pickup. Hell, they could even slide to allow the pickup to be re positioned to taste. :slight_smile:

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https://www.relishguitars.ch/article/focusing-on-material-innovation-and-functionality

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That’s very cool. @jacq

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I like long term projects - so, with absolutely no good reason except learning new stuff, I’m building a large scale CNC router with the ultimate goal of designing and building a bass. The beauty of CNC is precision and repeatability - so if I can get a decent design, modifying and trying something like this shouldn’t be too hard. All I have to do is learn Fusion360, Marlin, GRBL, PlatformIO and a few other programs - plus actually build the thing - then learn to actually use it and work out the quirks. So I should be able to quickly knock out this project in say… 2 years. Maybe. :grin:
(Oh yeah - if I’m going to build multiple iterations of a plate I’ll have to learn to 3d print.)

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A lot of these come down to who the target customer is. Will the bass be modern or vintage?

Modern will have wilder options for finish, vintage will have it’s own color palette. The aesthetic should fit the sound and the consumer.

I know more about writing. When I write, first thing is figuring out who will be reading it. From language to themes the target audience dictates a lot. Does for anything

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I have eleven electric basses, so the list of what I like/dislike is long.
Start with scale length and number of strings.
The vast majority of electric basses are long scale (34”) from nut to bridge but as this forum attests short (30”) and medium (32”) scale have their tonal merits. I also have Mikro (28.5”) and XLong (35”) scale instruments. Your bass need not be limited to one scale as multi-scales (or fan frets) are fun. My favourites are short scale.
The vast majority of electric basses have four strings but again don’t be limited by linear Western thought. A low B string can come in handy, so a five string could be what you need (watch Josh’s video on 5 strings). I don’t yet own a six string but some people like an extra high C string (look at the Bass 10 Commandments thread). 5 string 35”-33” multi-scale basses look the business (Google Dingwall). If you go multi-scale remember to measure the scale along the string itself (not the centreline) because the strings are not parallel. If you like thinking well outside the box, I love the sound of my 8 string bass (4 bass string s and 4 guitar strings tuned in pairs one octave apart).
There are three general construction options:
1 neck through, which seems to be peculiar to basses, where the neck and body are formed in one piece of wood, and ‘wings’ are added to form the body,
2 separate neck and body screwed together (like Fender – Leo was more of an engineer than instrument maker),
3 separate neck and body glued together (like Gibson and ‘traditional’ guitar construction).
If I make a bass with a separate neck there is more room to fit chunky pickups in but I bolt the neck on (screws are the wrong fixing for tension). I prefer neck through as the instrument is much stiffer = better sustain (if you like that sort of thing) but there is less space under the strings for pickups.
Headstock.
I personally like inclined symmetrical headstocks like Gibson and Ibanez but I have stolen the style of classical guitars, arrowhead, Fender, reverse-Hofner. There are so many it’s difficult to invent your own…or you could chicken out and not have a headstock.
I like necks with a scarf joint in the headstock, and a veneer covering the joint across the headstock.
Body Shape.
The smallest are guitar sized, like Les Paul or Telecaster, these are the most difficult to balance on a strap because the neck strap button is near the 15th fret. If you add a horn to a telecaster you get a Precision bass which has the neck strap button at the 12th fret, which generally avoids the dreaded neck-dive. Take the Precision shape and offset the waist about 60mm and you get a Jazz bass body, which is ergonomically better to play. If you want to get to more than 20 frets (not something I have much need for) the single cut design is necessary but the lower horn is only really needed if you play sitting down and don’t use a strap to hold the bass. I recently made a Jazzmaster shaped body (with a slightly longer horn) which I like a lot, though it could be all the shiny plates, knobs and switches.
Do you bind the edge of the body ? or chamfer / round over ? I have tried all of these, I like a chamfer but with different coloured layered woods.
Do you hide the electronics under a pickguard or put a panel cover on the back ? I like a pickguard with all the electronics attached to it but I don’t like plastic pickguards.
There are some cool Rickenbacker 4001 (Lemmy) designs which have a CNC carved body, the options for unique design must be limitless with a copy of Fusion360 and a CNC router.
Nut material – brass, bone or (hard)wood ? I go bone, easy to make and change.
Tuner design – cloverleaf, lollypop or ultralite but you can get away with guitar tuners if your strings have silk whipped ends (there are hundreds of guitar tuner designs). My favourite are ultralite shaft size but with cloverleaf buttons.
Truss rod cover – to have one or not, what shape ? I make mine out of the same wood as the fretboard.
Frets – cupronickel, brass or stainless steel; should the ends be filed at an angle or hemispherical ? Hemispherical are a lot more work but worth it for visual appearance and playability.
Fretless – if you opt for no frets should the fretboard be blank or inlayed with fret markers ? I could not play a blank fretboard but a fretless bass with a blank Ebony fretboard and an underbridge piezo pickup looks very, very, very cool.
The most popular neck wood is Maple. I like Mahogany for the feel but that could be because I oil necks rather than varnishing or painting. Necks made of 3, 5 or 7 pieces of different coloured woods are visually attractive but I laminate woods to improve stability. The shape of the back of the neck is worthy of a thread debate. My favourites are at the extremes – a traditional fat P-bass and super thin guitar neck profile. The headless Strandberg bass has a square-ish shape which is reputedly excellent to play.
Fretboards are where the challenge lies in making the bass because everyone wants an inlayed Rosewood fretboard, design options are endless. I prefer to contrast the neck and fretboard wood colour. There is a thread about inlays. I like block inlay markers that run through the fretboard edge and face.
There is a whole thread about whether type of wood makes any difference to the sound a bass makes. I think the strings and pickups are all that matters to tone but a torrent of comments will now be generated by the bass flat-earthers.
Strings. Another topic with its own thread. Roundwound (sound punchy and bright when new), flatwound (smooth to the touch and sound warm) or tapewound (smooth to the touch and sound a bit upright bassy, usually black). Roundwound don’t generally come with silk whipped ends but the others do. I couldn’t live without all three types of string.
Glow-in-the-dark and multi-colour string sets are available !
I am currently breaking all the rules and working on a multi-scale 28.5”-30”, hollow archtop, offset body, 4 string bass design, maybe with both Musicman and split single coil pickups. With a striped fretboard, or maybe wavey striped if I can work out how to make it.
Have fun.

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I’d love to see, currently available features

Wheel truss rod adjustment
Asymmetrical neck
Compound radius
Simplify adjustment can be just stacked volume/tone volume/tone
If you want to get fancy just add mid sweep knob

Offset body with contour and concave back body like Spector and Chapman

Not commonly offer
Integrated Headphone amp with AUX input or even more awesome Bluetooth connectivity for audio. Traveler guitars and basses have them
Integrated effect, just one, pick one drive or envelope
LED dots and lines
Radius retractable finger ramp like Fodera

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I would love this on my bass!! Hopefully it would be less expensive than buying multiple bass guitars. The chance to try different pickup types and sounds at an affordable price point would be a dream come true. I’m surfing the relish and guitarfetish systems to check those prices. What a great next-step idea for the gas man!!
(edit) - The relish system isn’t so affordable, I’m pretty sure you could land an entry level bass with the different types of pickups for less than their system. If you wanted to use an expensive bass as the platform it might make more sense then buying several fancy guitars.
The KWIK system doesn’t look very quick, I see soldering mentioned all over the pages that are talking about the kwik change system so I’m doubting it is very kwik. The site is kind of lacking in a condensed cohesive explanation of just what would be required to put in, and then swap out some pieces from their system. Hopefully the required soldering would be just to put in the necessary connectors allowing the swap outs, but it doesn’t seem clear on their site.

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I so hope you make this as weird and wonderful as possible and post pictures. Hopefully with some of those glowy strings you mention, maybe they will fluoresce with a black-light to help get trippy pictures.

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My suggestion is that you take a very different and modern design approach. The last thing the world needs is another Fender clone.

I’d look at the work of companies like Status or Modulus, or maybe ESP or Warwick’s custom shop.

My personal preferences would be to go for a symmetrical 2x2 headstock, matching the color of the body, with low profile tuners - anything but Clovers. I would suggest looking at Yamaha, Ibanez or Schecter here.

I happen to love maple necks but nothing wrong with going exotic there.

Truss rod access at the body side with a wheel would be desirable to me.

Passive must be an option but active/passive is fine.

For the love of all things holy, no tortoiseshell.

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Exactly, what the world needs is a different design from a new pioneer like the Stingray. Oh wait sorry my bad, same guy. What a legend :sunglasses:

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No question there :slight_smile:

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One thing that I am not a fan of, is when the cable comes straight out of the front of the bass. It should come out of the side so it doesn’t stick out like flag pole, imo

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You may like the Obsidian line, they have plug and play pick up / output connections to a circuit board, no messy soldering involved. I’ve used them on several 6 string projects and they are quality, imo.

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like the 1969 Ampeg / Dan Armstrong system, maybe ?


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Yes! Very much like that indeed. :slight_smile:

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