Basvarken

Routed the profiel for the controls cover on the back of the body Routed the neck pocket Shaped the heel of the neck to fot the neck pocket Then routed the pickup cavities

Routed the channel for the first step of the checkerboard binding. Glued in the strips of checkerboard binding. On the sharp corners it's actually done block by block. The routed away the black fiber strip in the outside. And glued in the real outer binding. I use a hairdryer to soften the binding where it has to make a sharp corner. When everything was in place I used the strips of inner bicycle tubes to keep it all clamped, while it dried and hardened. The two bodies were ready at the same time

Drilled holes for weight relief in the body blank and routed the cavities and channels for the wiring Bought a beautiful bookmatched Quilted Maple top set at my wood supplier (Masave in Zwolle The Netherlands) Glued the top op. You can never have enough clamps 😉 Let it sit for a couple of hours And then routed the body outline.

After I glued on the fretted fretboard I shape the neck profile (sorry, no pics) And I drilled the tuner holes Shaped the headstock outline Then cleaned up the front and back of the headstock. Drilled the little holes in the side of the fretboard, for the side position markers. Glued them in. And sanded them flush Filled the gaps underneath the frets with a mix of ebony saw dust and Titebond Original

As with the black twelve string bass it started with the body blank and neck blank. I had my wood supplier make them to my exact specs. A nine-ply khaya (mahogany) neck with walnut strips in between. And a two piece body blank of the same Khaya. Routed the channel for the carbon strip in the middle As well as the tapering slots for the two truss rods. Then prepared the fretboard. Drilled the holes for the inlays. Glued in the position dots. And aluminum ring for the twelfth position. Sanded it flush with the 16" radius block. Prepared the frets by cutting off the tang on the edges Hammered them in and used the arbor press to have them seated perfectly

Here's the video demo that I made

***UPDATE*** The bass was found. And delivered at Tom Petersson's address today! It appears to be undamaged. That black twelve-string bass that I built for Tom Petersson is only half the story. I built another twelve-string bass for Tom. And they were finished simultaneously. Both basses were sent off to Tom's address on June 29th. The black one was delivered four days later. But the other one (with quilted maple top) still has not been delivered. UPS has lost the package... I filed a claim for investigation on July 16. But still no sign of the bass to this day! I am gutted. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that it will show up in the UPS warehouse after all. But if you should ever see this bass for sale, please do contact me. Here are the pics that I took before I sent it off to the USA Specifications: - Mahogany body - Quilted Maple top, bookmatched - Nine ply laminated Mahogany set neck. Glued in - Lemon Burst finish. Naturel Mahogany back and sides - Checkerboard binding - Ebony fretboard - Abalone position dots. Aluminium ring in 12th position - Jumbo frets - 30 1/2" scale - Buffalo horn nut - ETS Custom made twelve string bridge set. Nickel - Two spokewheel double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Gemini Dominator in the neck position. Nickel - Gemini Devastator in the middle position. Nickel - Pure Tone output. Nickel - 3-way pickup selector toggle switch - Hipshot Ultralite Mini clover bass tuners. Nickel - Schaller GrandTune guitar tuners. Nickel, Pearloid button - d'Addario custom strings - Weight: 4.7 kg I'll post pics of the build process below.

Sent the bass to the USA three weeks ago. And lo and behold, two days ago it showed up on stage in Toronto

Finished the bass solid black. And applied the water slide decals. After lots of wet sanding I polished the bass For the pickup rings I made some black spacers. I laser cut them at the FabLab. So I'm thinking about making more of those for future use. Mounted the Gemini Thunderbird pickups (spacers underneath the nickel rings)

Routed the profile for the controls cover And cavities for the pickups And the neck pocket Shaped the neck heel (sorry no pics). And glued the neck in. Then it started to look like a bass

Tom Petersson specifically asked me to make them not too heavy. You can imagine that the Explorer body with all that hardware can be quite heavy. So I drilled some holes for weight relief. In hindsight I could have drilled even more maybe, because the bass is still almost 5 kg... When all the holes and channels were done I glued the White Lima top on. Then routed the body shape. When the body outline was ready I routed the first profile for the binding. Then glued the strips of checkerboard binding in After that first stage of the binding process was done, I route the profile for the outer binding. And glued the black binding in Binding ready

Forgot to show you a step 😉 Before I drilled the holes in the headstock I made a test headstock out of cheap MDF Because for this bass I had to used a new type of tuner for the octave strings. I had always used ultra light weight Gotoh Stealth tuners for the octave tuners. But Gotoh no longer makes them. Gotoh does make carbon plate tuners that are very light weight as well. But they are quite expensive and have to be made to order so it can take months to have them. Then I found that Schaller has a light weight tuner too in their arsenal. The GrandTune machine heads. I decided to modify them a bit by cutting off one lug. This would not only make the tuners even a bit lighter. But also would make the headstock shorter, which is a big factor in the battle against neck dive! So when I was happy with that result I drilled the holes in the real headstock (as seen in the post above).

When the fretboard and truss rod cover were ready I made a rough cut of the neck shape. And glued the fretboard on. As always I used strips of inner bicycle tubes for clamping. Then clamped the neck to my work table. And started to shape the neck profile When the neck was taking shape I drilled the holes for the tuners. Drilled holes on the side of the fretboard for the side position markers Glued the markers in Filled the little gaps under the frets with a mix of ebony sawdust and Titebond Original

It always starts with a few wood blanks. I asked my wood supplier to make a body blank of White Limba aka Korina. And a nine-ply neck blank of White Lima woith strips of mahogany in between. I routed a slot for the carbon reinforcement strip in the middle. And two tapering slots for the truss rods. Made the spokewheel part fit. And decided to cover most of that part with pieces of the same White Limba, because it was siting a bit deeper than the rest of the truss rod. Drilled hols in the ebony fretboard for the inlays And after I had hammered in the frets (sorry no pics) I made the truss rod cover.

Here's the video demo to show you how the bass sounds:

Today I can finally present a new Brooks bass guitar to you guys. The Brooks EXB-12-TP Black. As the TP in the name already gives away, it was custom built for Tom Petersson of legendary band Cheap Trick. Tom sent me an email end of november 2024. At first I thought someone was playing a joke on me. But it turned out to be real. And early january Tom ordered two twelve string bass guitars. Here's the first. (more about the second one soon...) - Korina body - Nine ply laminated Korina set neck. Glued in - Black finish. Gloss - Checkerboard binding - White 3-ply pickguard - Ebony fretboard - Abalone position dots. Aluminium ring in 12th position - Jumbo frets - 30 1/2" scale - Buffalo horn nut - ETS Custom made twelve string bridge set. Nickel - Two spokewheel double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Gemini Dominator in the neck position. Nickel - Gemini Devastator in the middle position. Nickel - Pure Tone output. Nickel - Toggle switch. Nickel, black tip - Hipshot Ultralite Mini clover bass tuners, Nickel - Schaller Grand Tune guitar tuners. Nickel, Ebony button - d'Addario custom strings - Weight: 4.9 kg ] I'll post pics of the build process below.

Looks like Marleaux maybe? That string anchor behind the bridge is typical for Marleaux.

Two brandnew Brooks bass guitars More infos soon...

Here you go: - Mahogany body wings - Nine ply Mahogany/Walnut neck. Neck through - Opaque white (blonde) high gloss finish - Abalonoid binding - Ebony fretboard - Circle position dots - Jumbo frets - 34" scale - Buffalo horn nut - Three ply black/white/black pickguard - Custom made twelve string brass bridge set - Two spokewheel double action trussrods - Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck - Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the neck position - Lace Alumitone DeathBar in the bridge position - Allparts stacked pots (volume/tone volume/tone) - Mullard capacitors - MEC on-on switch for coil split (humbucker-single coil) - Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners - Gotoh Stealth ST 31 guitar tuners - 2 xPure Tone Multi Contact jack output - d'Addario EXL 170 - 12 strings - Weight: 4.2 kg

The white twelve-string Thunderbird that I bullt 4 years ago.

I don't have a proper demo available. But here is a song that I recorded with this bass back in 2008

Took some new pictures of my Epiphone Jack Casady Signature. I modified this bass about 20(!) years ago with a Gibson lo-z humbucker from a Les Paul Bass that I had bought on Ebay at the time. I was not so impressed by the Electar element that Epiphone had developed in collaboration with Jack Casady himself. I never believed the marketing story that Casady didn't think the Gibson element of the Les Paul Signature was good enough. Knowing Gibson, they just had no idea how the original element was put together and then made a brave attempt to come up with something as close as they could to the real thing. Anyway, I took the plunge at the time and put the saw in the gold top to be able to mount the large oval Gibson humbucker in it. Thanks to CTS I managed to get hold of the right potentiometers that match the low impedance of the element. And the three-position rotary switch does not operate an impedance converter, (as with the original Epi JCS), but chooses from the three coil-taps that come out of this majestic Gibson pickup with no less than 8 wires. The head of the bass also got an overhaul. Every JCS suffers a major neck dive. So I replaced the tuners with much lighter Gotoh Res-o-lites. And I also adjusted the shape of the head slightly. Makes a huge difference I also fitted the bass with silver cap reflector potentiometer knobs. I modified the pickguard to match the shape of the chrome pickup ring. I placed a chrome bridge cover. And behind the bridge hangs a so-called Modbar to keep the double windings at the ball end of the strings away from the bridge saddles. I replaced the plastic nut with a bone nut. I've used the bass many times since. Live and in the studio.

Fanny was a great band. And so was Birtha. Another all female rock band from the early seventies.

Thank you for the suggestion. I present the bass guitars as honest as possible. No effects, no compression. Just the bass directly into Focusrite Scarlett > my iMac. But my recording equipment and skills are nothing to write home about. 😉 On the twelve string builds with two separate outputs i did demonstrate how you can blend a clean signal with a distorted one. Because that was the purpose of the separate outputs. Plus of course with the Brooks QB, I demonstrated the SansAmp and the Compressor because they are part of the actual bass itself.

Finally found the time to make a short video demo of the Brooks EB-MM-Q