Basvarken

Plus I made a (short) video this afternoon

The bridge rails use saddles of a Gotoh 12-string guitar bridge. Plus custom made base plates. My sister Pauline is a certified gold-smith. And she made the bridge plates from a brass profile: I sprayed them black with a 2K spray can to match the rest of the black hardware. The crazy graphics were done by cutting the pattern in a low tac film. Then spayed the black over the Lake Placid Blue layer. After it dried I peeled off the low-tac film.

And the profile for the truss rod cover: Test fitting. All looks fine: Then glued the neck in: After the neck was glued in I filled the pores and sprayed the primer. No pics of that sorry. Here's a pic of the Lake Placid Blue layer:

Body outline shape lookiing nice and crisp: Routed the channel for the binding: Glued in the pearloid binding. Using acetone to soften it and make it stick to the wood. I always use an old hair dryer to make it easier to do sharp bends. Routed the pickup cavities: And the neck pocket:

With the neck almost in its final shape I switched to the body. I drilled some holes for weight relief. Plus some more holes for the controls cavity: Sawed the rough outline shape prior to glueing up the matching khaya top: Glued the top on: Routed the controls cavity to its proper shape: And then routed the outline of the body along the MDF template:

After lots of rasping , scraping and sanding it started to look like a proper neck: Made the side position markers: And filled the gaps under the fret tangs with a mix of ebony saw dust and wood glue: Shaped the outline of the headstock. And sanded it to the desired thickness: Drilled ten holes for the tuners:

Drilled holes for the position markers. (I used FindFret2D to calculate the fret angles). The bass has a 35" to 32" scale. And when the position dots were in place prepared the fretboard for the frets. Pressed the frets in: And when that was one I glued the fretted fretboard onto the neck. Left to dry overnight And then started shaping the neck with a shinto rasp:

As always the build started with buying some blanks for the body and neck. I managed to sore some nice khaya mahogany pieces. Routed the neck for a carbon reïnforcement strip in the middle. Then routed two slots for the truss rods. Since it was going to be a multi scale bass I chose two different lenghts: Cut out the headstock angle with the band saw: You have to think in 3D when you cut the angle!

Get out your spandex. Tease your hair. 😉 Here's the Brooks EXB-MS-10 A multi-scale ten-string bass. SPECIFICATIONS: - Mahogany Khaya body - Laminated Mahogany Khaya set neck. Glued in - Black with Lake Placid Blue graphic finish - Pearloid binding - Ebony fretboard - Pearloid position markers - Jumbo nickel silver frets - 35-32" scale - Buffalo horn nut - Custom Brooks bass bridge set. Black Bridge base plates by [URL="http://www.paulinevandenbroek.nl"]www.paulinevandenbroek.nl[/URL] - Two double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar pickup combination - Pure Tone output. Black - Stacked Volume / tone knobs. Black - Three way pickup selector switch. Black - Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners. Black - Schaller GrandTune octave tuners. Black - Custom set d'Addario strings I'll post pics of the build process in separate posts below.

I'm afraid not. The Ubertar was provided by the customer. I don't think I would have chosen the Ubertar myself. The sliding pole-piece pickup that 13 Ghost (Thorsten Behrens) made seems much nicer to me. https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2024/12/30/bass-of-the-week-meet-the-anachronist-13-ghosts-handmade-marvel-from-germany/

Yeah I can't fathom what use all the options could have. I much prefer a simple bass myself. And I would love to build something like this again: Four strings and no controls!

I thought I was not going to make a video demo. Because I wouldn't know where to begin. 😉 But I finally succumbed and made a (very short) video demo. Showing all options woulld take up a whole week. So this will have to do...

In August 2024 I handed over the bass to the guy who always did the electronics for my builds. He was going to build the tube pre-amp and modify the Aguilar TKC compressor to fit into the effects cavity. We had already discussed this back and forth with the customer and myself. The electronics guy had also built a Frog FX1 as a test case for this project. But all this took way too long. I started to fear this bass would never see the light of day. After more than 14 months I asked the bass back. The electronics were not completely ready yet. But my patience (and faith) had run out. I brought it to a friend of mine who has a degree in electronics. He checked the electronics and cleaned up the mess. Now it is finally ready. Everything works.

Applied the lettering to the effects panel: Sprayed a couple of layers clear lacquer: Applied the logo decals: Put it all in place: Polished it: Mounted the hardware: Customer provided the Goto ST-31 Stealth tuners. Around that time these were already pretty hard to find since Gotoh had stopped making them. Not sure if the difference in buttons was an ergonomical choice? Or maybe he couldn't find two identical sets of four?

The Ubertar contraption was not height adjustable. So I had to come up with a solution. I made a pickup ring and a base plate. With a screw in each corner I could tilt the base plate to the desired height. The other pickup was my own design. So no surprises there: Then stained the top: Stained the back and sides too: And sprayed several layers of clear: