The Eclectic Electric Basses

I have made a few electric basses in a few different configurations that

are uncommon and being a bass player myself I find it exciting to try

things out and experiment with the different sounds a bass can make and

to know what a nice bass should be like in terms of balance and feel.

The third one I finished (after the fretted one I made when I was in my

twenties and the one that got stolen) was this next one shown here which

I finished in my 38th year. It is a four course frettless electric with octave

strings on the top two courses. The pickups are Bartolini Classic Bass dual

rail humbuckers, the neck is Maple and the fretboard is of Cooktown

Ironwood.

The body is blackwood with silky oak sides and the nut and two bridges

are brass. The bridge pieces are glued directly into the body with the

stringsgoing through to the back.

I love the Bartolini J/P style pickups and sounds really lively and I usually

play it with a bit of the treble rolled off and the blend pot slightly biased to

the neck pickups.

I put a phase switch in that changes the tone so the sound is really flexible

in the mids which is handy because the mids go off.

This is for sale at the moment so feel free to make a bid via email or try it

out next time you come to Nimbin town. Happy High Herbs is where it

hangs.

The next is a the first in a series; a fretless five string (which is finished and awaits

someone willing to bid on it too, but is being beautifully played and recorded and

lives in my friend Matt Ostila's studio) has Silky Oak sides, an Ooline fretboard

and EMG (usa) soapbar pickups I scored from the lovely folk at Frank Foredom

music.

It has a really comfortable, balanced feel and hugs your body and a super nice

neck. It is, I think, the best bass I have ever made and has a nice tight bottom

string and lots of sustain and oomph. Very solid and warm sounding and great

Jaco mwaaaah tops and a really chunky attack. I ended up putting the bridge

onto a piece of the moody gum instead of the rosewood shown as it cracked when

I screwed on the bridge, it sounded slightly warmer. The electrics have tone,

volume and blend and also a phase switch.

The next is a fretted four string with a hipshot whammy bar still needs

frets and a setup. The fretboard is Ooline, the sides Silky Oak and it has a

Wilkinson humbucking bridge pickup and the neck one is a Bartolini

soapbar.

I am glad I made it really light because the bridge weighs heaps and it has

turned out really comfortable as it has the concave body shape at the back

and is balanced really well. The tuners are Gotoh and the veneer on the

headstock is blackwood. The first photo shows the carbon fibre rods I put

in next to the trussrod which makes it really stiff so I make stainless truss

rods so as to be able to crank it in case it needs to move one day.

The third will be another 5 string fretless and has a much chunkier neck

which has the Moody Gum between two rosewood laminates instead. It

has beautiful Red Forest Oak sides and a fretboard of Cooktown Ironwood

which will be bright as it is so incredibly hard and silicous wood.

It needs a final sanding, painting, assembly, setup and nice fat jazz

pickups. I kind of wanted a six string but I couldn't find a six string bridge

with close enough spacing so now I am contemplating making it tuned F#,

B, E, A and D to see if it could work at those frequencies way down there

and not get floppy sounding (a lot of 5/6-strings suffer from this on the

botttom B to my taste, I think because they're not solid enough necks. This

one is very solid and thick in the neck so I will get to see how much the

tone will differ due to this factor and see if I am right. I think it has a good

chance of hacking the extra strain of the super heavy strings and sounding

tight.

Look out Les Claypool here we come...

They last three are all made with laminated through necks using Moody

Gum (the bright yellow stuff) and NSW rosewood (red) which my good

friend Gummy gave me. He had salvaged it from the wreckage caused by

the year 2000 cyclone that hit his place up in Cape Tribulation. The Rose-

wood was a giant 3800+ year old which fell on the moody gum and took it

out too, so these trees were side by side for probably six centuries and

hopefully will be for quite a few more in these basses. The sides are silky

oak family (Grevillea,) but a more tropical native variety which is harder

and redder and has even more amazing grain. Ooline is a very rare wood

and is also known as solidwood for good reason. It is a single species

remnant of a genus of trees which once covered the earth in dinosaur

times and is now rare and endangered. A local wood harvester found a big

old dead one some thirty years ago and milled it into 4x4 inch chunks and

left it in the weather. When I took some home I took about 5mm off the

outside and it was pristine and hadn't checked out at the ends more that

7mm either, remarkable for such a dense, hard timber which usually

would rip itself to bits in these conditions from internal tension as it dried.

Cooktown Ironwood is the hardest wood I have ever seen and is very stiff

and beautiful but I am disinclined to use it too much as it is a bit hard to

glue and the sawdust gives me nosebleeds.

These are all Australian timbers and are all sustainably harvested and

rarely to be found used in instruments although they are very stable and

well suited.

Thanks Stan, Gummy and Andrew for these lovely pieces of wood.

Check out the 8-stringed fretless basses as well.

   I am also making some rosewood Ashbory basses one of which

is finished and already sold to Sam Benge from NZ, an amazing

musician and good friend who loves it. It sounds more woody and

a bit fatter as it has the upgrade piezo pickup I bought from the

inventor Alun Ashworth and a much thinner neck which is a bit

more reactive to the strings hence the woodier tone.

   I own a Fender de Armond one in black and I am really

impressed with it and I have started a craze in the region

amongst bass players by lending it to my good buddy Matt Ostilla

who has been touring with it around the world and going off on it.

Now he owns one too and so do eight of my friends.

    Many thanks to the spirit of Alun for his hard work in getting

this wonderful thing happening. He was a lovely man and I am

also grateful for his correspondance and sharings on the subject

of piezo magic. I got one of his bass/cello pickups for the

resonator cello and it really filled out the bottom end beautifully.

   I used his basic 4 and luxury 5 string violin pickup for the electric

violins as well and they are really good.

   I have made them of various scale lengths, all a bit longer than

the standard 18". I had to change the headstock because they

need a lot more room for the knots to miss each-other and the

tuners only wind one way so I had to chop the heads off and make

new ones and graft them on but it came out well. I have sold one

$650 (bargain rates for the good people) and interest in the other

one that is nearly done too. One day I will make a five string

version in moody gum I think. I have angled the nut and bridge a

bit to see if it easier to intonate, put the strap posts on the

headstock, made the necks thinner and slung the electronics

under the bridge instead of behind to make them shorter (and

cuter.)

   They are a fair bit lighter than Fender's one too and feel

and play very differently. I am curious to try some different

strings out too.