# New Bass



## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

Latest bass I completed on July 18th. Birds eye maple neck, snake wood body, snake wood veneer on the head stock and a cocobolo finger board.


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## jw2170 (Jan 24, 2008)

Wow,,,,,


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## CanuckGal (Nov 26, 2008)

That's a beaut! Nice work!


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## papawd (Jan 5, 2011)

Very nice


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## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

Here is a recording from this bass if you would like to hear it. I play the bass and guitar parts over a drum track on a Tascam GTR-1 recorder so no editing is possible, just a sort of impromptu jam session with myself, lol.

MP3 Twit - Twitter music, mp3s, tweet songs

And thank you to everyone for the very kind comments.


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## vikingcraftsman (Mar 31, 2006)

I can't comment on the sound being old and hard of hearing ,but your wood work is great . Is there any part of the wood working that makes the sound better? Things you do different then I would with a box?


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## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

Well all I can say about the sound is it sounds like a bass and the better the player is the better it sounds. And as for hearing I happen to be almost completely deaf in my left ear and impaired pretty good in the right, but I still love music. 

As for the part that makes a bass (or any guitar) an instrument instead of a sculpture is the neck and more importantly the fret board. The neck has to be pretty much dead flat and straight so when the fret board is glued on it's flat and straight too otherwise you'll get weird buzzing or the notes won't change if as you move up and down the fingerboard.

Now funny you should ask about about the boxes because another gentleman asked a similar question on Lumber Jocks web site. I tried building a box similar to those you have done (which are gorgeous by the way) out of some of the mountains of exotic scrap wood I have from making basses and all I did was manage to booger up some nice pieces of wood, waste some glue and pretty much frustrate myself in the process. I'll keep plugging away at them though until I figure out how you guys build such nice boxes. So really I haven't a clue on if I do things different or not.


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## xplorx4 (Dec 1, 2008)

Well done, looks great.


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## vikingcraftsman (Mar 31, 2006)

Thanks Rob and if you are interested I will send you some book titles of box building that will take the mistrey out of the box.


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## Mike (Nov 22, 2004)

I like it Rob. I am almost afraid to ask but how much do you have wrapped up in materials cost for this bass? I am sure other members would like to know more about how you got started and how long you have been building guitars?


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## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

Yeah Viking, I'd be interested in any good references you could provide. Thanks


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## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

Mike said:


> I like it Rob. I am almost afraid to ask but how much do you have wrapped up in materials cost for this bass? I am sure other members would like to know more about how you got started and how long you have been building guitars?


Thanks Mike, between wood, electronics, strings and hardware I normally have around $500-$600 invested in building one (time not included).

I got started about 4 or 5 years ago. I've played guitar and bass since my teens and have been a huge Les Claypool/Primus fan since the early 1990's and as the internet became more prevalent, for an old guy like me anyway, I started researching what type of bass Les played since it was nothing I was used to seeing. Turned out he plays basses made by a gentleman from NYC named Carl Thompson who is renowned in the music industry as the Antonio Stradivari of the electric bass. As a carpenter I became completely enthralled in Carl and the techniques and processes he puts into his instruments. He's also a very philosophical man so he's fun to just listen to him talk about life in general. He also has a whole series of You Tube videos where he not only explains many techniques and encourages people to take what he does as inspiration but also encourages anyone to give it a try. Carl despises the term trade secret as he has stated that many times.

Carl is a very open and honest person, the videos actually started out as a means for him to set the record straight as there are many book references and magazines articles that have made claims about him that are wrong and some just flat out lies. Carl's also is a great jazz bassist and teaches bass and vocals to a few lucky individuals, he's a great music historian as well. He's has built basses for some of the best artists on the planet, but as famous as he is he is still down to Earth to the point that about halfway through my first build I began emailing back and forth with the man that runs his website who in turn told Carl what I was doing. Carl asked for some photos of my first bass, which was intimidating to say the least seeing as he's the best, but he encouraged me through emails and phone calls and never has an ill word to say. I've never been to NY or met Carl in person but I consider him my mentor, inspiration and a true friend.


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## metalmaker80 (Jul 12, 2011)

Fantastic! Great to see a 4-string still in use these days. Seems everybody is jumping on the 5,6,8,32,64 strings bandwagon. They may as well use an upright piano. Haha. Any plans on building an upright? If so, I would love to see it. Great job on this one. I want to build one for myself, if I ever get to it.


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## cajunpen (Sep 30, 2004)

Now that is nice. I'd like to accomplish that one of these days.


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## rlow (Mar 8, 2011)

metalmaker80 said:


> Fantastic! Great to see a 4-string still in use these days. Seems everybody is jumping on the 5,6,8,32,64 strings bandwagon. They may as well use an upright piano. Haha. Any plans on building an upright? If so, I would love to see it. Great job on this one. I want to build one for myself, if I ever get to it.


Lol...Yeah there's some innovative people out there making some outrageous basses these days. Personally I don't see how you can play a bass more than six strings with a fret board that wide but that's just me. Personally I like the more traditional style and many of my basses are simple passive electronics, this one however is a simple active bass but still only two knobs. I haven't really given much thought to an upright bass, with time constraints just keeping up with these and the custom builds I do is hard enough. This bass is what I consider my sort of stock bass and I keep them similar but not identical, and I'm hoping to get enough of these on hand so I can add a showroom type thing onto my shop.


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## kp91 (Sep 10, 2004)

metalmaker80 said:


> Fantastic! Great to see a 4-string still in use these days. Seems everybody is jumping on the 5,6,8,32,64 strings bandwagon. They may as well use an upright piano. Haha. Any plans on building an upright? If so, I would love to see it. Great job on this one. I want to build one for myself, if I ever get to it.


Dan,

I've had both 4 and 5 string basses, and the main reason I prefer my Steinberger 5 string is the string spacing. I guess after playing it for so long, I can't go back to other guitars that easy, especially it seems the 4 strings. I will admit the B string doesn't get a whole lot of use, but it's handy now that my hands aren't as fast as they used to be. 

I've played around with a 6 string at the pawn shop one day, and I know why it was for sale. You've got to have some long fingers for that setup.

As for some of those extreme 8,15 etc string basses.... those are just a little to much for me to handle.


I agree with you, that if I ever finish up all the other projects I've got on my plate, it would be fun to try. My cousin builds his own guitars, and they are amazing. 

Thanks Rob for the inspiration!


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