Double Neck Bass

I've just recently begun work on a Double Neck bass. It is going to be a 30" short scale bass on the top with an active circuit, and a 34" scale fretless bass for the bottom with a passive circuit. The body is Honduran mohagany, the neck will be maple with ebony and rosewood fretboards. At the request of Jost (the musician this is for) I have routed in a series of shadow boxes and we've selected small objects and memorabilia to place in them.

Short Scale Bass for Nick Pagano

I have I've been slowly plugging away at a new short scale bass for Nick Pagano of Fairhaven. This Glider is a 30" scale bass with a wenge top and matching headplate with an alder body and a 3 piece maple and wenge neck. It has one Seymour Duncan Ceramic Musicman Style Pickup by the bridge for a very detailed sound.

This bass was a lot of fun to build for a number of reasons. For one, Nick Pagano is an exceptional bass player. It was very exciting to make an instrument for a musician who can really bring an instrument to life. It was great to make something that was straight foward and less complex than what I normally produce, but it was also a challenge to preserve the quality of the Glider's shape & scale as the body on this bass is guitar sized.

Fairhaven Live

Nick approached me about building him a custom after I built him a replacement neck for his P-bass.

The 1st neck

The first neck I built was damaged in a loading accident, so I built him a Re-replacement. In the process of building neck #2, we sat down and modified some details for the new neck like a new headstock shape and a U profile instead of a C.

The New Neck

As you can see, the headstock has changed from an old P-bass shape to more of a Telecaster shape drawn by Mr. Pagano himself. We didn't include the outer wenge stripes as they don't photograph well (evidenced by the first picture). He was so thrilled by how this neck turned out, he broke down and put in an order for a complete custom.

New HOWL Video

Congratulations to the guys from HOWL on their new Music Video for their song "Heavenless". Keep your eyes peeled for Rob Icaza's sweet custom amid the gore!

http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/news/music/1643

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!