pretty sure!
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Super exciting!
Are you going to go with a natural wood finish? A dye? Burst? I assume with the fancy quilted top that youāre not painting it. Curious about your plan to tie in the gold hardware.
Iām ready to make a bit of sawdust on my builds tomorrow (planing the slabs).
I am first going to highlight the open pore figured grain with black dye, sand it back, and use red dye to color the rest. The headstock cover will match. The back will be black. The stain I am using is water based, although I am still going to use denatured alcohol instead. It is not a solid stain, so the grain will show through. I ran across this short video that demonstrates the process, but on figured maple.
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I generally donāt care for bright colored dyes on wood, but I do really like when folks use a black dye to highlight the grain. Thatās definitely sharp.
Iād thought about doing so for my build, but I think the fact that Iām using ambrosia maple means thatās unnecessary and that it might take away a bit from the existing black streaking (that follows the grain already) from the fungus.
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I donāt know if your wife and you like or dislike headless guitars or basses?
Shortly before I bought the Ibanez Mikro, I bought a really cheap bass in even 65cm scale length, but even worse, they had a .100 low E string installed. Could only find a .130 replacement string in the internet which I suspect a bit heavy on the other sideā¦
But the bass was really nice and pretty well made that I decided to keep it and transform it to headless. Then, there are metal parts to attach the string where the headstock would be and the stringās ball ends go into the tuners (where the bridge is) (but there are also headless systems where the ball ends go to the headstock).
So - this way, I could use also the normal bass strings of other scale lengths and just shorten them and not take care about any thinner parts of the strings.
Iām usually a sucker for the look of the wood, without color, certainly, on my acoustics. Jenās āspirit animalā if you will, is phoenix rising from the ashes. She even had a company with the name. My plan is to do a phoenix inlay on the neck.
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I was actually looking at doing a headless bass, but I didnāt think it a good idea for my first electric build. 
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I considered doing a headless design for my guitar but had the same thought about not choosing that for my first build.
I paid for someone else to build the necks and headless was not one of the options. Meaning if I choose to use that design in a build, Iāll also be building the neck.
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What a great project. Good luck! Canāt wait to see and hear the finished version, but hey itās all about the journey isnāt it?
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Thanks, for me it is definitely the journey and challenge.
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Good luck with this one, itās an interesting project. Youāre wise avoiding a headless design for a first off, itās not an easy project, thereās a lot of design ideas to think about at the tuning end; the fingerboard end isnāt too difficult, thatās the easy part. The other thing to think about is the construction of the neck itself, a lot of them these days tend to be made from more than a single piece. Mine is a laminated 5 piece neck made from 3 different woods, itās not just decorative, itās for extra strength to give better stability. Itās not so important with a short scale Bass but with a standard or long scale itās a good idea. Some of the high end ones have carbon fiber strips between the laminations also.
TBH with your experience of making acoustic guitars Iām a bit surprised that you didnāt go for an Acoustic one, theyāre much lighter and really nice to play, haha, Iāve got rampant GAS for one since I had a go with a good one - unfortunately my pocket doesnāt stretch to Spector prices 
Looking forward to seeing this Mark.
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I have a solid maple neck, but I am putting in carbon fiber rods. I thought of doing an acoustic base, but @LongSufferingWife Jen wasnāt really interested. She does have a Hofner Bass which is light, but she doesnāt like the sound that much.
Iām a little late getting my updates on Jenās new bass. I am starting on the neck, since that is going to drive some decisions on the body. I also had to learn how to use a new video editor as my old one is no longer supported. 
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I love this ā¦
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Thanks, I donāt remember how I came up with it. It sounded a bit dorky, but I liked it. 
I hate that. I used to use an old version of Sony Vegas I bought something like 15 years ago. Did all the things I needed it to do, was fairly intuitive once I had my process down.
Several years ago, it stopped working for everything I needed to do. Other software surpassed it or something. I thought Iād buy the new version. Not so fast! New version wouldnāt work on my computer! So then I was on the hunt for something new. I ended up with an open source video editor. It was a LOT more basic but it did mostly what I wanted. Got a new video card a couple years ago and decided to look into the upgraded version of Vegas again (owned by Magix now). Hoorah! It works now. Except now it doesnāt play nice with the way I store some of my video files (unrelated to music - I have a camera on an owl box in my backyard with a 2nd computer dedicated just to it, recording footage onto an external hard drive. New Vegas canāt access files on a drive shared on my network). So I still have to use the open source program for editing footage from that camera. Such a PITA.
Slowly breaking down making a neck makes it feel a lot more attainable. Which is nice since if Iām going to do something with my āmistakeā lefthanded electric ukulele body, Iāll need to make a neck for it.
Mark, thanks a lot for letting us take part in your endeavour! 
Whenever I will buy machines for woodworking, Iāll ask you first, because yours make some much nicer noise than the others I see elsewhereā¦ 
I was a bit scared when you marked the fretboard with the knife, because you didnāt attach it with a clamp or something else. I am sure you put the right force with your hand to secure it, but I was all the time hoping it didnāt slip all the slightest bit, haha.
Curious to see what your ideas for the inlays was!
I am also curious if you did decide for the shorter scale length like on that Ibanez (72cm) and take the risk that the string choice is limited? Or will you possibly go for the standard short scale length (76cm) to have more string choice?
I have to admit I didnāt get further with my guitar and bass building/modifying projects - always lots of other stuff coming upā¦ 
Cheers, Dominique
After some research I did go for the 28.6" scale length. I know that there are 2 sources, and the Ibanez strings should be available for quite a while.
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I created the inlay and installed it on the fretboard (multiple times) and injured my back. Live and learn, hopefully.
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