Basvarken Posted July 24 Posted July 24 (edited) 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. Edited July 24 by Basvarken 4 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 Here's the video demo to show you how the bass sounds: 3 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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. 2 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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 3 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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). 3 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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 2 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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 3 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 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) 3 Quote
Basvarken Posted July 24 Author Posted July 24 Sent the bass to the USA three weeks ago. And lo and behold, two days ago it showed up on stage in Toronto 6 Quote
Basvarken Posted 8 hours ago Author Posted 8 hours ago Wow! The Black EXB-12-TP that I built for Tom Petersson is Bass Of The Week @ NoTreble! Check it out: https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2025/09/08/bass-of-the-week-tom-peterssons-custom-12-string-bass-from-brooks-bass-guitars/ 1 Quote
Hellzero Posted 6 hours ago Posted 6 hours ago Congratulations @Basvarken, you deserve it! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 1 Quote
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