The eight string electric bass story begins at the beginning of my instrument making endeavors. I was eighteen and traveling in Thailand and decided to go to Singapore before I came home. I gravitated towards a music shop and had bought an old octaver pedal and a few strings and was leaving when I spied a bass neck hanging in the front window. It was an Ibanez eight string fretless bass neck which must have been ordered especially back in the seventies and not ever picked up. To my knowledge they made a few eight string fretted basses back then but not fretless.

It cost me 90 Singaporean dollars and I carried it around in my backpack for weeks and when I eventually got home I found out what the extra holes in the head stock were for.

I found the matching brass bridge in the Ibanez distributors in Sydney that had also been there since the 70's too and wasn't even on the stock list and I happened to be there during stock take and got it for a case of beer with a two piece brass and bone nut taped to it.

A piece of oak and a bit of QLD walnut from the timber shop and I was away. I lashed out on a set of reflex plus active pickups ($220 was a fortune in 1991!) and soon had it going.

The oak didn't prove stable enough and bent with time (16years) so I rebuilt it in maple.

This lasted until recently when it got trashed by a toddler so now I've rebuilt it again with blackwood. It has an amazing natural chorus like sound and fretless is the go in my book.

The pickups are excellent and super fat and bassy. Here are some recent photos;

Everyone is impressed with the sound and so eventually I built another one from New Guinea Rosewood for the sides and laminated rock maple through neck with a Honduran Rosewood fingerboard. I found a nice looking but as yet unheard `Music tech' pickup in a music shop in Kensington in Sydney which I know nothing about and used Gotoh bass machine heads and Shaller electric guitar tuners.

It was the first major thing I had finished for my new business and the very next day it was stolen from my house along with my wife's laptop and modem. A good friend wanted to buy it and we had only gotten to play it for a while acoustically in the middle of the night, it sounded great. We hadn't plugged it in as my family were asleep so the sound of that pickup is still a mystery.

This is the only picture I have which was taken during assembly.

Another two are being finished at present with Silky Oak for the sides, laminated Maple and Blackwood for the necks, Indian Rosewood and Honduran Rosewood fingerboards, Bartolini's for pickups, Schaller bridges, Gotoh machine heads and brass nuts. I'm pretty happy with how they are shaping up and can't wait to hear them, getting close...just electrickery to go.