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How to build a bass guitar – The body layout

(Note: While this particular build step is short, it’s important.)

It is assumed for this step that you have already made or purchased an appropriate body blank.

It is also assumed that you have a plan on paper. It might be a plan that you have drawn from scratch for your own custom design or one for a standard design that you have purchased somewhere.

A plan is not the same thing as a body template. A plan is inclusive of all the information necessary to build the body, and answers all the following questions

  • Where is the centerline?
  • Where is the neck pocket?
  • Where do the pickups go?
  • Where is the control cavity?
  • Where do the controls go?
  • Where does the bridge go?
  • Where do the bridge screws go?
  • Where does the rear cover or pickguard go?
  • Where do the screws fro the rear cover or pickguard go?

It is tedious to transcribe all of this information from the plan to the body blank. Our hot tip for you is this: Don’t bother. Go to the copy shop and have a few copies of your plan made. After that, use double-stick tape to make a giant sticker out of the plan and stick it directly to the blank.

This saves a ton of time vs. laying it out all by hand, and has the advantage of being very easy to see the dark lines on a white background, which is very handy on harder-to-draw-on darker materials and less-than-perfect shop lighting. Trying to hold your head in the long light to see a graphite line on a Walnut top is a pain while operating a bandsaw or other shop tools.

Where are the rest of the build steps?
You can view them all here.

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