Brooks EXB-12-TP Black

[Basvarken]

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'll post pics of the build process below.

Edited July 24 by Basvarken

[Basvarken]

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

 

 

[Basvarken]

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.

 

 

[Basvarken]

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

 

 

 

[Basvarken]

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).

[Basvarken]

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

 

[Basvarken]

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

 

 

[Basvarken]

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)

 

[Basvarken]

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

 

[Basvarken]

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/
 

[Hellzero]

Congratulations @Basvarken, you deserve it! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

[NancyJohnson]

I'll admit I'm fascinated with the neck construction here.  

[Joe Nation]

Loving your work. Is there any specific benefit from having two truss rods, as opposed to one truss rod and two carbon strips? Do you need the ability to fine-tune relief on the bass and treble sides independently because of the string tension?

[Basvarken]

17 minutes ago, Joe Nation said:

Loving your work. Is there any specific benefit from having two truss rods, as opposed to one truss rod and two carbon strips? Do you need the ability to fine-tune relief on the bass and treble sides independently because of the string tension?

Two carbon strips and just one truss rod would not be enough to withstand the string pull.
You really need two truss rods and one carbon strip to compensate the enormous pull of the 12 strings.

[NancyJohnson]

I am curious here and I'm asking an open question.  I currently own a Mike Lull NRT5 with an upscaled body size, photo below.

 

To be honest, it rarely sees the light of day and I have considered moving it on, BUT, I've also been hankering for another 12-string.  I've approached Spencer at Lull in an effort to (perhaps) commission a 12-string neck (understandably, he declined), so this begs the question about the feasibility of whether I could get a neck made for it - the guy at ETS seems to have a bit of a waiting list so far as the two part bridge goes, so @Basvarken is a bolt-on retrofitted neck something that is doable?

 

 

[Basvarken]

I think that should be doable, if the neck pocket is wide enough for the string spacing of the ETS bridge.