Acrylic and Aluminum Fretless Bass | No Wood, only "Tone Acrylic" :)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 11 янв 2025
- I made this short-scale, fretless bass from a piece of reclaimed acrylic that was used as a TV show prop and an aluminum cutoff. The pickup was rewired by Gemini Pickups.
Special thanks to Vectric for sponsoring this video: www.vectric.com I use their Aspire software and LOVE it.
Also thanks to Tools Today fro providing the cutters. Parts list is below:
www.toolstoday...
51428-K 1/2” Dia Up Cut Plastic
46577-K 1/4” Dia 3D Carving / Flat
46294-K 1/4” Dia 3D Carving Ball Nose
46292-K 1/8” Dia 3D Carving / Flat
45771-K 30° V-Groove
MA10080 10” Acrylic saw blade, Mamba by Amana Tool
My CNC: www.avidcnc.com
Oh yea, and Paul Jackman is at: www.jackmanwor...
---
Tip Cup: www.paypal.me/t...
My Patreon:
/ timsway
My Website:
www.timsway.net
www.newperspect...
My Podcast:
www.reclaimedau...
My Etsy:
timsway.etsy.com
be good,
Tim
smoked acrylic is a superior tone plastic to clear acrylic.
I used to work at a plant that had a smoking and a non smoking break room. They were separated by an acrylic door. It was yellow af.
@@jeremygunkel ooh! Get ot for me so I can make a "reliced" guitar from it!
The tone acrylic debate is ON! Aaaannnddd GO! Clear acrylic has a crisper high end and better finish while smoked acrylic is more brown and bluesy.
@@timsway smoked acrylic makes every pickup sound like a humbucker.
I damaged my lungs by smoking acrylic.
I'm pretty sure aged acrylic would have more sustain , everyone knows that !
legit though the resins in wood crystalise over time and that changes the elasticity of the wood, depending on the wood that can change the sustain. i can't say it'd be actually noticable without breaking out the oscilloscopes but it is actually a thing.
@@franky4000 do they massage the acrylic?
I’m sure it wood
is it because it gets harder with age .makes sense i am not familiar with its charectoristics please if you dont mind tellme more im on a learning curve with this material
@@lazberta6322 this comment's a joke, friend, as a lot of the comments in this section are
Loved it, but I still like the one you built for me to give to my son. Update: He is doing great, he had a heart transplant 4 weeks ago, and is coming home from the hospital next Monday.
I am so glad to hear this! I hope to see him up and playing it soon! ❤❤❤
Best wishes to you and your son
Great to hear, Felix!
Best wishes for your family
lets see it. post a short video please
Don't flame polish. Just sand with progressive fine papers down to 1200, then lube with Vaseline and stay at 1200 greased sandpaper for a while. Then finish with car chrome polish mixed 50/50 with Vaseline on a tshirt cloth, you can get a glass like finish without any risk of melt rippling.
That would also stop any heat warping of the neck.
Gluing the aluminium fingerboard to acrylic will never work long term because of the different heat expansion of the two materials the join will always fail later.
wow wiz dude, amazing advices you give us, thanks, i will do as you say :D
Braso works great as yah last polish
Aluminum neck-through, with interchangeable acrylic wings
Aluminium haha
Chris Raine aluminum is used quite a bit for guitar necks. just look at the old travis bean guitars
@@sirhenners204 Never neck throughs.
For some reason the machinists that make aluminium guitars tend to model them on Fenders, so bolt ons all over the place.
There was a guy in the UK making 100% aluminium guitars - with a bolt on and sodding string trees! WTF!
It's not like he'd scanned a Fender neck - he'd made several design adjustments.
I asked him about it via Facebook and he did a kind of verbal shrug at me, as if I was suggesting some kind of alien probe, or using unobtainium.
check out electrical guitar company on instagram. absolutely beautiful aluminum instruments.
Alumimun is strong enough but it has expantion and contraction issues. I had a kramer aluminum neck guitar in the 80s and had major tuning problems when your using them on stage. Graphite is a much better non wood option.
I love your acrylic bass! Very cool & the "use of acoustic "tone acrylic" was an inspired, choice of material to use for the build, Clear clean highs, and transparent lows, and the midrange tones are virtually as smooth as glass!! Thank you for sharing your project with us viewers.
Tim: I was talking to my dad about your acrylic bass a few days ago and he told me that he's seen guys at his job's model shop (back in the 80's) polish acrylic using a soft leather wheel. The friction would melt the surface but not affect the overall stability of the parts. It might work with artificial leather too. I also saw a guy who was restoring old screwdrivers and his final step was something like 12,000 grit paper. Might be a better solution than heating the stuff as it's a lot more controllable.
Indeed. Next time I'll try polishing compound. I thought flame would be easier but live and learn
@@timsway try a solvent vapor polish :>
This is legitimately one of the best build videos I've ever seen, on any topic. If everybody did this, youtube would be 5000% better.
Even better than what I expected from this acrylic and I expected a lot!
I think you can also incorporate acrylic screws, knobs and strap button (for the lack of term) to make it more acrylicky.
Acrylicacious!
Acrylicalicious
Acrylic bridge too?
I think an acrylic strap lock would be a bit cooler but WAYYYY harder lol.
strap pegs, thats their name
Very impressive... oh wait wrong channel.
No kidding tho that's a rly cool bass I'm actually impressed 😂
Josiah Ding that’s a nice Davie reference. But he can play anything anywhere anytime.
Lol are u also a Davie fan 😁😂
*Davie504 would like to know this bass's location*
Hahahaha.
...BUT CAN YOU MAKE ACRYLIC AND ALUMINUM WITH BASS?
A brilliant build! The armadillo absolutely works - armored animal, bulletproof polycarbonate, Excalibur-like aluminum fretboard! Very cool! Keep doing what you do!
It's clear. It's cool. And no hidden broken nails to mess up a planer. Nice Tim..real nice.
haha! truth!
I dig the armadillo. The bass sounds better than I thought it would with an aluminum neck. Very creative and entertaining to watch.
this thing actually has quite a unique sound. a problem i have with most fretless basses is that they lack a lot of attack to their sound, and their high strings sound a bit whimpy. when you had the tone turned up with high gain, it sounds almost like a fretted bass, but with the ability to slide like a fretless.
Old timer tricks :). A rolling paper is even better, for setting your bit.
This was amazing man. Truly, well done.
lol good tip!. I recently got an auto-z plate which is, indeed, way easier.
Tim, this is some pretty impressive CNC Router work! Wow! Good job! I also learned a lot from your voice over. Thanks for sharing!
wow, that means a lot coming from you! Thanks. I'm really starting to "get" cnc and 3d designing.
Tim sway---- not afraid to fail or succeed. Doesn't care what u think, doesn't claim theory as fact. And I's willing to sacrifice time and money to answer all of our questions. Tim u are a genius and a true Luther love ya brother
Nice work! Maybe consider polishing the neck in the traditional manner? (400, 600, 800, 1200, 2000 then a couple plastic polishes on a sponge pad in a drill.) You can flame the cavities as well for a nice look, though the haziness gives a nice contrast. Keep up the excellent content!
Awesome accomplishment on your very first prototype Tim! Twas very interesting and therapeutic to watch! All the very best Brother!😎👍🏻✨
All in all, despite the things that you were unhappy with, I think you've made a beautiful instrument.
Your method for making build videos is fantastic. I love your honesty with the viewer, it makes your uploads full of useful content for other folks wanting to emulate you. In other words, you rock man.
Actually, you could leave the neck satin finish, anyway...it would probably be less sticky and feel faster!! Very cool project.
Bruce Richardson was thinking same
Bruce Richardson
It would also look fantastic.
@@ryanwilson5936 Damn straight, the sanded but unheated finish looked mint.
If he would've added programable multi-color LED lighting along the wiring cavities and line tunnels with just the hand sanded unheated finish, it would've defused & muted the color/brightness of the LED's throughout the entire body of the bass. That would look wicked while playing a show with low lighting (which is where most bass players end up getting pushed to). It would dazzle in the dark, but look the same in daylight under close inspection. Joe Perry from Aerosmith has had an acrylic 6 string electric guitar for decades & is his favorite guitar. Why copy what's already been done when you can innovate?
We are always *way more critical* of our work than anyone else is. That thing looks and sounds great! Nice work, thanks for posting! 👍🏻
As a prototype is very good. You have done an awesome job. I would really like to see how you are going to upgrade the next creation. 👍.
cheers! I learned a lot on this one...
Great video! Never even considered how to go about using a CNC machine to build an instrument.
This was very relaxing to watch.
Thanks Tim
Awesome project. Must have been fun to make.
Sounds good too.
All that is left is the question of pickguard or no pickguard (3-ply transparent acrylic of course).
Nice pfp
Pickguard. At THIS guitar. *facepalm
Dude that turned out sooo good!!! Love the starbond trick you used on the carving
The idea of a cyberpunk looking bass like that that plays with an upright bass sound is amazing
Impressive acrylic cutting, beautiful instrument. Not too many other cnc musicians out there!
You guys with your new fangled plastics - I'm sticking with a traditional carbon fibre Steinberger - thats the real tone plastic. The warmth of kevlar and carbon fibre just can't be denied. Ned got it right the first time.
That pick up sounds cool. Bass looks killer. I like seeing the metal fret board
Mold one out of Lead. Then play some Heavy Metal on it! (and get some exercise in the process).
Edit: Give it several coats of polyurethane.
Reminds me of how someone on TDPRI did a Telecaster out of concrete.
[EDIT]
Found the thread!: www.tdpri.com/threads/rogercs-2012-challenge-build-thread-completed.317873/
Wonder how heavy it was, lol.
Paint it in that uranium orange you find on fiestaware!
Ultimate heavy metal challenge: build a guitar out of Mercury
@@danielfogli1760 osmium
I can only imagine how that thing looks in person. Beautiful work Tim.
thanks! It has a few flaws if you put your face to it, but from a couple feet back, man oh man... :)
Tim: "I made an Acrylic and aluminum bass guitar with my CNC machine. Although I wasn't really happy with the final result, it was a great learning experience."
Me: proud of myself for successfully replacing an axe handle.
*Aluminium
@@pingpongpung dude. Aluminum is the correct spelling and pronunciation. Not just in america either, that was the name it was given when it was discovered.
@@MicahBurginGTVPO Wrong. In 1808 Sir Humphry Davy, the British chemist who discovered the metal, named it “alumium.” He did change his mind four years later, though.
@@arvidbreitenbach1853 to aluminum. Still the correct periodic table name of the metal in English.
@@MicahBurginGTVPO Still it was not "the name it was given when it was discovered": I stated no more than that.
Dude, I don’t even think I’ll ever make a guitar, but I appreciate your casual feedback on your mistakes. The fire polishing was particularly interesting!
cheers. Whether one is making furniture, guitars, art, etc., the techniques translate - so I hope people who aren't particularly interested in instruments still find these videos entertaining and informative.
That is simply amazing. It sounds great from what I can tell through my headphones.
thanks!@ It's alright. a little plasticy and metallicy sounding. I don't know why... :)
Amazing! Your ideas are always so original but yet elegant
Ahhh yes, the legends of the Peruvian Jungle Acrylic tone has spread far and wide. Won't be long before they have to start replanting the all those Acrylic Trees...
That's what I love about being a maker, Tim. If you want an armadillo on your project... bam... you can put an armadillo on it. Love the bass!
indeed
Amazing! If I had that machine, I’d be making guitars all day. Of course, they wouldn’t end up as nice as yours. ✌️
Really reminded me of the gilter guitar, the sound of it and the way it looks is so spacey and alien, really cool!
That was fantastic. Well done. It looks great.
you are way too hard on yourself bro. it is amazing and gorgeous. i've never seen anything like it. i can't do this kind of stuff cuz i got hurt during the war so i live vicariously through you. i prefer the voice over. it helps to answer all of my questions. thank you.
Thank you for the kind words and your service.
Hey Tim, great build and great video. She turned out beautiful.
I love how you always show any errs or missteps along the way and how you corrected them.
P.s. on your next acrylic guitar, I think it would look awesome If you used your fretboard mounting screws as the marker dots, maybe even anodize them🤔
Very creative idea about the screw holes being marker dots. He could get some screws that are anodized to look like gold, copper, or any one of the metallic colors they make them in. Fantastic idea!
Looks great, Tim. Nicely done.
Very cool idea, thanks for sharing. I've used Micarta (Phenolic) for fingerboard/fretboards with much success. Sands and polishes nicely. I use it for nuts too. Black India ink dyes it well. Just an alternative to Aluminum if you want.
cool! there's a company that makes them, too. I've yet to try (although I do have a little piece I sometimes carve the nuts from).
I really need to get more into machining, this is a perfect fusion of stuff I'm already into: fabricating stuff, bass playing, and learning new skills! Been working with learning Fusion 360 more to design my own stuff to print, but I've dreamed of having an end mill or even a manual lathe since I was a teenager.
That bridge is wild!
cnc/machining is interesting stuff. I'm pretty new to it myself but am fascinated by it.
Amazing. Next level stuff, Tim. Congratulations. The reclaimed plus CNC continuum that you work in blows my mind.
I would love to see you do a collaboration with Burls Art, the guy who has made guitars out of colored pencils and stuff like that. He makes a mold and pours acrylic around the pencils. His setup is really DIY, and he keeps pushing his own boundaries. A
This is satisfactory on so many levels!!!
I would love a Superstrat like that but obviously with frets. I’m so curious how that would shred and sound.
Brilliant craftsmanship and awesome video!
Thanks. I have made a couple acrylic guitars with wood necks. You can see and hear them at newperspectivesmusic.com
You look like an older version of Peter from Peterdraws.Nice video and cool bass BTW.
Simply beautiful & transparent musical instrument like your work!... Congrats Tim!
Dude this is AMAZING
Beautiful. What a daring project. I’m really inspired by your video. It has given me so many ideas. Thank you so much for posting this.
awesome! I'm glad to inspire you! I believe in and love "open source" learning and sharing of ideas.
Hey Tim! Definitely one of my favourites so far. I also think a wood neck would do better, but loved the fretboard and the sound. Cheers
of course. cheers!
Your playing was the most fun part of the video, very skilled, wow!
i know you mean it good but in most of his videos i like more the building process, very interesting, instructive, and amusing, because he even integrates humour here and then. Apart from that, its ALWAYS a joy to see him doing anything with his skills and machines, plus hes doing it (almost always) all alone! Last but not least hes a really good bassist in this vid and i wish he would play more of the funky stuff he suggested ;-)
How about full aluminium neck? There are a few companies/luthiers that make those already but it would go nicely with the no wood idea.
I drool over those all aluminum guitars. I play an aluminum double bass. Believe me it's on the list!
@@timsway vintage Kramer Duke?
@@timsway have you seen what Ned Stienberger is making these days?
@@gruvedoktor indeed
On first I tought, oh no man, acrilic? No wood? But what a amazing end you give to us. A wonderful bass without wood. Cheers! You are a genious.
thank you! There are other all acrylic and no wood guitars out there, but I got that piece and I just had to try it for myself... :)
Maybe try something like the Kramer approach to using aluminum in their bass necks for more stability?
Not bad ol chap I like the one you did before hand with that wood inlay and I could imagine how it would look with a wood neck but diggen the fretless
Tone: It's ALL in your pickups, electronics, and bridge type
Also colour. Red guitars play faster, black guitars have more mid-range aggression. I thought this bass sounded really CLEAR.
Ahhh no
Kinda, however, a hollow-body will sound very different from a solid body, and a bass made out of pine will sound different than a bass made from walnut... can you correct the difference with pick-ups, electronics, and bridge type? Sure... but you could also just buy a relatively inexpensive bass and just buy a suuuuper good amp.
At least most of it...
@RDE Lutherie Ok, but after reading your comment and then reading my comment, I don't see how you think that I think that I am right. However, that being said... the reason I said a pine bass will sound different than a walnut bass is because walnut is heavier and more rigid than pine. *(but only marginally, so it probably doesn't make as big a difference as i thought, taking into account all your technical jargon about mass and vibration and the fact that if the instrument is too light it cancels out the vibration of the strings)*. The other half of my comment was about a hollow body compared to a solid body. Wouldn't a hollow-body pick up a bit of the resonance from the strings in a similar fashion as an acoustic instrument, and thus add to the tone, or is a hollow-bodied electric instrument a gimmick? I don't really believe in "tone-wood" for electric instruments as over the years i've played all kinds of electric guitars and basses. Bad sound has been due to bad pickups and potentiometers, or really old strings, or a warped neck. None of those things have to do with "tone-wood" except that if the bass/guitar was made out of a wood that was more structurally stable it stands up to the tension of the strings better. All in all, I agree, tone has little to do with the kind of wood, and much more to do with density, resistance to vibration, quality of the p-ups and pots, and whether you have Yin Yang symbol on your bass or a Fender Jazz bass.
Neat stuff as always. You never know what you'll accomplish and what you'll learn until you get busy working at it. Peavey proved to the guitar world that CNC was possible in guitar work... and that kicked open a big door for creativity and efficient production.
next time try printing the screwholes as they were the 3-5-7-9-12 guide points of the fretboard. i know this is fretless but it would look symmetric and artistic as you say. good work!
He said he was gonna do that in the video.
Looks awesome from behind while playing. Not every day you can see a player's right hand from this side.
How cool??! As a semi-masochistic bass player, the idea of a metal and acrylic fretless is almost too much to bear! Only problem is not having a CNC! Hmmmm.......anyway, here's a fretboard idea: Yes, attach it to a flat surface to flame-polish it but, when attaching the fingerboard, try soldering/brazing (threaded) copper studs to the backside of the fingerboard with matching holes drilled in the 'face' of the neck (I can feel those screw holes ripping at my fingers now!!)! If you then use a solvent-based adhesive (model glue) in the holes, it should pretty much 'weld' the fingerboard in place! Even if you prefer not to use model glue, it would give epoxy places to gain a 'purchase' by gripping the studs' threads! BTW, what are you using for pickup(s)? Nice 'thump,' but with some nice high-end definition (that I always lean on pretty heavily!). :-)
The screws are recessed below the fretboard so you don't even feel them. If I were to do it again, that's kind of what I would do next time: CNC them as art, screw them down and fill the screw heads with CA glue like I did the other carvings, so they'd become position markers.
I love it. Cool, unique design. I really love the neck too, smooth. Impressive work! Would love to see a 7-string or 8-string guitar done.
I have a 7 string in development for a client right now (but not acrylic). thanks and stay tuned :)
The armadillo was the star of the build.
Love it! Watching this was super satisfying, you’ve got great pacing for your video. A dream of mine is a light up/UV acrylic bass with a metal neck/fingerboard, so it was nice to get some insight into the process!
Would acrylic made specifically for guitar building be called "Luthite"?
™ ™ ™ ™ ™
Already a trademarked name!
Cort made the Cort Curbow basses out of a resin
called Luthite. I have one and it is a fine lil fretless bass..
Play it as often as I play my Ric fretless and my 78' Fender
fretless.
Looks like the best instrument to tour with since the acrylic will be unaffected by weather conditions!
with future necks you can do like Kramer used to do back in the 80s with an aluminum neck
Damn that came out nice!!! Love the acrylic and aluminum combo. I've been looking forward to see thia ever since you spoke about it on the podcast.
This is the coolest bass. Try making the entire neck from aluminum next time.
Or, make the finger/fret board from a different colored acrylic.
Looks absolutely gorgeous. Thank you for sharing this with us. Excellent job brother 👍👍
How about a smoked acrylic someone mentioned with a carbon fiber neck?
Kinda reminds me of a clear and woodless Kubicki Factor.
Nice work, looks and sounds great.
Never mind the acrylic - what grade was the Aluminium (yes - I'm from 'the rest of the world', where we can't get 'aloominum').
Was it harvested by moonlight from the north slopes of a magical fairy quarry?
That's where you get the best tone Aluminium.
The problem is where you are you can only get aluminIUM which lacks the tonal characteristics of true, 'Murican imperial-system tone aluminUM. The reason our aluminUM sounds better (and I used 3011) is because each pound (not kilo) we harvest gets individually transported via gas-guzzling monster truck to its own WalMart and packaged in non-recylcable materials. The tone is in the carbon footprint!
tim sway xD
@@timsway haha brilliant
So satisfactory, both making and the final product
He's using a picc??!!!
*OMG, I'm callin tha police*
I've been playing Bass for nearly 40 years and I always use a Pick. It gives a brighter sound with more attack. A lot of Bass Players use picks, especially Rock and Heavy Metal players!!
@@roberttbird4507 but do it with your fingers is way more interesting and just cooler
not epicc
Chris squire used a pick
slap like now!
That is gorgeous, Tim! Great job as usually.
Also, watching the fretboard being birthed made me feel like even I should have had MY safety glasses on!
you probably should
you might want to try an electric heat gun , ie ; an industrial blow dryer , adjustable heat settings , less likely to scorch Tony
Beautiful! I want one long scale with a headstock!
Haha! "Name drop" Ha!
someone's gotta stroke that poor kid's ego. lord knows he doesn't do it enough himself (heavy sarcasm).
@@timsway Right!?
wooow
I did nor expect the bass to be so damn cool after what you said about it not working out the way you planned :))
You've got some serious handy talent as well as bass playing skills
I wish I had awesome tools like you do
I see clearly the idea you had here. And with all the talking, I felt like I was on a PodCast with you. Weird, I know !
sorry about that.
What kind of dog is that it's precious
Woe thats awesome! Thats definatley outside the box. Good job love it!
thank you
Ahh yes, the perfect 4AM video find.
Awesome looking bass, though!
4AM here too mate, yup; definitely the right video!!
Nice RIFFS at the end! That's awesome! Man, I can tell you like stepping out of the box with more rare and unique creations! Reminds me of the BC Rich Warlock acrylic I recently learned about... apparently there's some available now but they had a cheaper acrylic common model and then the USA made bullet proof LEXAN that wouldn't crack and split inside so much. Here's a short vid of Sandra Pokorney and her husbands Lexicon one you can't even find comps for online cuz it much rarer. "Rikki's Lexicon B C Rich"
People need to realize that "tone wood" don't actually exists. It's more of "tone materials".
Cause essentially, we're talking about density, resonance, timbre. Any material other than wood can have these characters. But I guess most are traditionalists.
That's something that drives me nuts about people who bitch about "tone woods". Most of them immediately assume that body material doesn't matter at all when the argument is just about getting ripped off by companies.
Wood is easy to work with, source, is more sustainable and lighter than most if not all metals so there are at least 4 more reasons for using it.
@@alexdattel2757 no doubt I agree with that. But I think it's not wrong to look for a more viable, and sustainable solution. If one day a material is discovered to be cheaper, more practical and sustainable to build, produce and keep for a long time, I don't see a reason why not.
But that's more of an environmental factor.
@@alexdattel2757 and I think that's one of the main reasons why new perspective music exists in the first place.
Suprised at how it sounds, i would totally rock that!
You're too hard on yourself Tim, that was an amazing project.
really nice.... actually sounds better than I would have expected
You should try a Krammer style and just do the entire neck with aluminum. Will be heavier but it will save you time and wood.
*Aluminium
Always inspirational to see these things happening
Davie504 and the other bassist:
*SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!*
Jul Jac epico
Naaah
not funny didn't laugh
checkmate!
@@baldkiwi444 agree not funny
Dude this is beautiful I’m jealous of your fabrication skills
Maybe a Aluminium/Acrylik Neck like a Old Kramer.
Holy crap. That thing sounds really good surprisingly! I would totally rock one
Let him play this.
Yes
Him
Epico.
This is the most unique bass I've ever seen.