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The Recycled Resonator Guitars |
The Eight String Fretless Basses
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, score! Obvoiusly this was destiny. A piece of oak and a bit of QLD walnut from the Anagote Timber and I was away. I lashed out on a set of reflex plus active pickups ($220 was a fortune in 1991!) Active pickups were the latset thing, these are I think English made and sound amazing, really fat. I soon had it going. The oak didn't prove stable enough and bent with time (16 years) so I rebuilt it in maple. The Queensland walnut body has cracked a bit. It was made of two pieces one of which I cut the control cavity out of and the top which I cut the pocket and the pickup cavities out of, which worked well. This lasted until a couple of years ago when it got trashed by a toddler falling on it so now I've rebuilt the middle section from a thicker piece of Blackwood. If you have never heard an eight string bass, the sound has a natural chorus like sound somewhat like a 12-string guitar only it is in the mids instead of tops. For some reason the bass range is fatter still and it has a solidness to it and definition that feels like a stone wall of bass. Kind of reminiscent of what happens to the sound when you heavily compress it. The play of overtones as the notes decay lends a motion and pleasing complexity to the sound that I love. Fretless is the go in my book. I feel restricted on a fretted bass now and miss the extra expressive- ness and feel. I end up playing more notes and more complex harmonies to keep it fun. Here are some recent photos;
Crystal Grid Rainbow Music studios in Byron Bay used it as a house bass for a few years and recorded a buch of things with it, Tone loved it.
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 totally unknown "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. I had placed the knobs 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 and my minidisk. My best friend was in the market for a bass and wanted to buy it. I strung it up and did the nut and we had 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, and Honduran Rosewood fingerboards, Schaller bridges (now out of production unfortunately), Gotoh and Schaller machine heads . I'm pretty happy with how they are shaping up and can't wait to hear them, getting close...just electrickery to go. The acoustic sound is like the last one, really nice. The J one has a Piece of Brazilian Rosewood on the headstock, Honduran Rosewood fretboard and a brass nut;
I got a Classic Bass series humbucking Bartolini jazz style bridge pickup and in the neck position for a good top-end response there, a single coil Bartolini bridge pickup for a bit of extra tops there. It has a crossfader and volume and tone knobs.
The sister to the one above has an Indian Rosewood fretboard and headstock veneer and and an Ironwood nut and USA Dimarzio J/P ultra bass series pickup set and it has the same electronics setup and the really nice looking abalone top and Rosewood knobs as well. Really nice tone and very very fat bottom end. Still experimenting/tinkering a bit with the electronics to optimise the controls and loving how it's settling in...
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