Brian Gibson Custom

My rate of production has slowed down a little, but my most recent project to leave the shop has been one of the most exciting yet. While it may look plain, it's anything but.

This is a 34" scale 5 string for Brian Gibson of Lightning Bolt. This bass is made entirely out of maple (at least wherever wood can be used.) Brian had discussed with me that he was looking to get a similar aggressive sound like Cliff Burton of Metallica. Cliff started with a Rickenbacker 4001 which was made mostly out of maple. Taking this into account, I tried to play up as many of the qualities of a R4001 as possible to re-create the sound Brian had in mind. Brian wanted something that was visually toned down, so I used maple for the fret board, neck and body and nut. It's outfitted with a Seymour Duncan SRB-1B. I made a custom bridge out of a piece of angle iron so that I could achieve 1/2" string spacing. The neck on this bass is only as wide as a 4 string bass, but I've squeezed 5 strings into the same amount of space to give Brian strings that are close enough together to allow him to play the fastest he can.

Wheres Brian?

8 String Bass

The newest project in the shop is an 8 string for Ryan Magoni. Ryan found a 4 String Schecter Stilleto body online and asked me to make him a replacement neck for the body. Since it was a 4 string body to begin with, I had to widen out the neck pocket to accomodate for a neck that is closer to a heel width of a 5 string.

The Schecter body is basswood with a Cherry finish over a maple burl veneer.

The neck and fret board are Bloodwood, Maple and Wenge. The neck is 5 pieces, the fretboard is 20.

Vermillion Tinyhawk

The most recent bass to leave the shop was Joey Bence's Vermillion Tinyhawk. This is a pretty sweet bass if I don't say so myself.

I'd like to start off by saying that this is two firsts in one for me. This bass is both my first lefty and my first five string. Its fun being able to knock those two out at the same time!

Here's a rundown of the specifics of this bass.

Mahogany body w/ Paduak (Vermillion) Top

3 piece Maple Neck

Wenge & Paduak fretboard

Spar-Urethane finish to preserve the color of the Paduak.

It's equipped with a Seymour Duncan Quarter Pound Jazz Pickup in the neck position and a SMB-5D in the bridge position. Joe writes,

"Loving the bass, thanks again. The tone is simply astounding. Blows my other bass out of the water tenfold, and of the few people that have seen it, nothing but wows. "

2010!

2010 has been a busy year thus far. I haven't really had a chance to update in a while, mainly because I've had so much going on in the shop. First off, Jimmy Lazer of Sick Electric has finally received his guitar. Here's a picture of it right before it was strung up and handed off.

This guitar was a pretty crazy project to work on. The most difficult part of this guitar was trying to turn an arcade button into a kill switch. After struggling for about a month, I discovered a type of kill switch at Radioshack. It's a fairly simple circuit arrangement, but it took a while for common sense to kick in.

Here are some pictures of Jim with it at the album release for "Death by Electrocution"

I've also been at work on Ryan Magoni's 5 string. Ryan recently gave me the piece of wood that he's selected as the fretboard. This piece of wood may be one of the the craziest pieces of wood I have ever seen. Its a piece of Black and white ebony (its definitely the craziest piece of ebony I've ever seen). I'm currently refering to this fretboard as the "Holy Shit Fretboard". More pictures will be up soon!