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.