Brooks EXB-4-SA

[Basvarken]

Today saw the birth of a new bass:
The Brooks EXB-4-SA

 

A semi-acoustic Explorer shaped bass with 4 strings.
- Mahogany body. Two large tone chambers
- Quilted Maple top, bookmatched
- Three piece Mahogany set neck. Glued in
- Cherry Burst finish. Dark Mahogany back and sides
- Pearloid binding
- Ebony fretboard
- Pearl position dots. Aluminium ring in 12th position
- Jumbo frets
- 34" scale
- Buffalo horn nut
- Babicz FCH-4 bridge. Gold plated
- Spokewheel double action trussrod. Titanium
- Lace Alumitone Bass Bars 3.5
- Pure Tone output
- On-on Toggle switch
- Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners, Gold plated
- La Bella Flatwound Low Tension strings
- Weight: 3.2 kg (!)

 

I'll post pics of the build process in separate posts below

Edited yesterday at 15:52 by Basvarken

[Basvarken]

The build started  with finding some slabs of very light weight Khaya.
For the neck I made a three piece blank. And for the body a two piece blank. Plus a nice bookmatched set if quilted maple.
 

I routed the truss rod slot.

 

I tried something new for the spokewheel truss rod. Normally the choice of spokewheel truss rods is very limited.
On a Spanish website I found a separate spokewheel part with a hex pin. Instead of a female hex that you see most of the time.
And this opens up a wide choice of regular truss rods that you adjust witha hex key.

As you may now I build quite a lot of 12-string bass guitars and the truss rods really are a big part of the weight of the neck.
Which is always a challenge in the battle against neck dive.

With this new spoke wheel part I suddenly had the opportunity to use titanium double action truss rods. These are substantially lighter than regular truss rods.

So I bought a couple of titanium truss rods. And some blue shrink tube.
And made my own titanium spokewheel truss rods.

The new (4-string) bass that I was going to build would be the first to get this new truss rod.

 

 

[Basvarken]

As with most of my builds I made a ring ilays for the 12th position.
Cut of part off an aluminum tube and put a 6mm black position dot inside

 

Drilled the holes in the fretboard for the position markers

 

Glued the ring in and the mother of pearl dots for the other markers

 

Sanded it flush with the fretboard using the 16" radius block

 

Prepared the frets for their slots. And the slots for the frets 😉

 

 

And hammered (and pressed) them in.

 

[Basvarken]

At the end of the fretboard I made the truss rod acces slot.
Plus the matching ebony cover.

 

[Basvarken]

Before I glued the fretboard on, I cut the headstock angle and planed it nice and smooth.

 

Then cut out the rough outline of the neck

 

And glued the fretboard in place.
Using tied together strips of inner bicycle tubes for even pressure clamping.

 

The result

 

As you can see I left quite a bit of wood at the end of the neck.
Which is really handy when you want to clamp the neck down to the work bench to work on the neck profile 😉

 

The headstock surface and angle had not been fine tuned yet. And you can see it still had a slight tilt
I got rid of the tilt by scraping the headstock face. Always checking the two straight edges till they were parallel.

 

After that hurdle had been taken I gave the headstock its outline shape

 

 

The drilled the tuner holes.
I never drill all the way through. But drill till the pointy bit in the middle comes out the back. And then flip the headstock and drill from he back with a smaller drill.

 

Next I drilled the holes for the side markers

 

Glued the side markers in.

 

And sanded them flush

 

[Basvarken]

Filled the gaps underneath the fret ends with a mix of ebony saw dust and wood glue.

 

The shifted my attention to the body.

Routed the tone chambers.

 

And routed the controls cavity

 

Routed the profile for the cover

 

The bookmatched set of quilted maple was thickness to the desired thickness  of  4mm by my wood supplier.
And when that was done, I sawed the triangular "F"-holes.

Ready to clamp the top down onto the chambered body

 

And when that was done I cut out the outline shape and routed it along the template (sorry no pics)

 

[Basvarken]

Routed the profile for the binding

 

Glued the binding in. I seldom use glue. But I use acetone instead. This softens/dissolves the binding, so it adheres to the wood without leaving glue spill. This is essential because I use waterbased stain. And watyerbased stain does not work on glue...

 

 

 

 

When the binding was done I routed the neck pocket

 

Shaped the neck heel. Always checking the alignment. See the blue line on the purple tape.

 

Routed the pickup cavities

 

Drilled the holes for the potentiometers and switch

 

And the output hole on the side of the body

 

[Basvarken]

And after endless checking an fine tuning of the neck fit, I glued it in

 

All of a sudden it looks like a bass...

 

Fine tuned the pickup cavities

 

 

 

I stained the top.
Yellow first

 

And red for the burst effect

 

After many coats of clear and sanding in between, I applied the decals

 

Shielded the controls cavity.

 

[Basvarken]

And of course I made the mandatory video demo of the newborn bass 😉
 

All kidding aside: With the Laballa Low Tension Flatwound Strings the bass sounds very round and even all across the board.
 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 15:51 by Basvarken

[Joe Nation]

Edited 9 hours ago by Joe Nation

[itu]

Again you make the building process look like it was easy. All details are thought through, like fret ends! Can you give an approximate building time of this beauty? 

 

If this was the fifth bass this year, how many are you planning to do by the end of 2025? 

[Basvarken]

2 hours ago, itu said:

Again you make the building process look like it was easy. All details are thought through, like fret ends! Can you give an approximate building time of this beauty? 

 

If this was the fifth bass this year, how many are you planning to do by the end of 2025? 

The actual build of this bass (together with one other bass) was done during my summer vacation of 4 weeks.
But the finishing process (of endless building up and sanding) took another 4 weeks.
So all in all 8 weeks.

I have three more bass guitars planned to build this year.
And I am working on the finish of the other bass that I built this summer. I hope to close that off in two weeks from now.
 

[itu]

Oh dear, 8 weeks! But the quality is outstanding. Very nice to see so many phases of your work.

[Basvarken]

27 minutes ago, itu said:

Oh dear, 8 weeks! But the quality is outstanding. Very nice to see so many phases of your work.

Normally when I'm working my day job, it takes between 2 and 3 months. Since I have to do the lutherie in the evenings and weekends.
And my little tool shed is a limiting factor too. I can't saw and sand while I'm in the middle of the lacquer process. 😉

Edited 1 hour ago by Basvarken

[Si600]

I want someone to buy one of these for me!

Edited 23 minutes ago by Si600