Hello friends and family,
The new bass guitar prototype is finished . . . Sort of. I still have some kinks to work out in the electronics. They’re very complicated. And, I am working on the neck, which is pretty nice, to make it play even better. There’s also a small weight problem. The body is so light that the neck is too heavy. Which is odd because the neck is also very light. I will be adding some kind of weight in the body cavities to balance it out so there won’t be any neck dive.
This is a prototype so all the kinks will be worked out on this bass and any future production models will be as close to perfect as I can make them.
The body is made from Southern Swamp Ash, hollowed out to be almost a hollow-body. Only the bridge and pickup are solidly attached to the body. The hollow body is covered by Spruce which is meant for acoustic guitars. The 5-string neck is Roasted, Quilted Canadian Rock Maple. Roasted, also known as Torrified, means the neck has been heated in a special oven until much of the moisture is ‘roasted’ out making the neck similar to a vintage neck which will resist swelling and warping as a newly harvested piece of wood will tend to do. The headpiece is tilted 13-degrees from the neck and has a Spruce headcap. The fingerboard is a nice piece of Gaboon Ebony, an FSC sustainably harvested wood with 24 frets and the nut is a Graph-Tech slab, shaped by me specifically for this bass.
The bridge is made by Ray Ross. It’s unusual in that it doesn’t use bridge-pieces. Instead, it has pins that go straight into the body for direct contact with the body. I like the concept. The string doesn’t have to go through contortions to get the resonance of the body.
For electronics, I’m using a Delano Ray/Jay pickup. This uses a switch for a full-on Music Man Sting Ray Humbucker or it switches to a Vintage Jazz Bass pickup . . . Nice! This is controlled by a Dark-Glass Tone Capsule which has Hi Mid, Lo Mid and Bass controls in addition to the Treble-Cut and Volume controls that the Ray/Jay pickup needs. Once I get the electronics all straightened out, this will be one heck of a tone machine.
Well . . . On to the pictures. I hope you enjoy looking at the bass. It is an all-original design and concept and I plan to start production next year, in 2020. The production will be slow to start because these will be completely hand-made and customized per the customer’s specs.
Thanks for reading,
Love to all,
David T
p.s. Comments are very welcome. You can comment at the end of this article.
