This week’s Selection is from Tim. He’s got one of the sweetest 12 Strings we’ve ever seen! Here’s the lowdown…
Story of his build:
I’ve been building since 2000. I’m a fan of bassist Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick, and I was friends with Jol Dantzig in high school during the late ’60’s, who was one of the developers/builders of Petersson’s first 12 string – Hamer.
I liked TP’s sound and wanted to own one so I built two, both were purchased by Mark Rowe of 12stringbass.net.
The specs are:
-Chambered sapele body, tummy carve on the back side (bass side).
Maple cap with a little quilt stained black & sanded back for a trans black
-31 inch scale, 5 piece set neck: 3 maple + 2 cocobolo splines, middle maple spline is a graduated wedge that produces the neck widths, peghead volute, 24 jumbo frets, cocobolo fretboard, MOP dot inlays.
-Nut = 1.95”, f24 = 2.25”, string spacing at bridge is about .6” between the fundamentals.
-Cocobolo over maple PH faceplate, maple over mahogany backstrap.
-Ebony nut, bridge, tailpiece, PU surrounds and knobs (1V &1T).
-Ivoroid binding + ivoroid/black purfling on the top plate, neck and PH.
-Unbranded tuners (root) + Taylor mini tuners for the octaves.
-Finished with 16 coats high gloss nitro, body & neck.
-Electronics are 2 Taylor mini humbuckers, designed for 6 string electrics. Taylor’s 5-way switch which comes in a package (discontinued) with their mini humbucker package, already wired on a printed circuit with a cool little fuse that will blow in case of a ground fault (replaceable, of course). The pickups are passive, and have real bite – very chimey or overdriven depending on the switch position.
-The bridge is modeled after archtop guitars (Hofner Beatle basses) – a slotted piece of shaped wood – but not adjustable: the height (bridge thickness) was made during initial setup, and it’s a floating bridge. If any height adjustments are necessary as the bass ages the bridge will have to be sanded manually to remove material. The saddles are short pieces of fretwire.
It took me one year to build both basses, approximately 200 hours for each one, this one weighed about 9 lbs. I only has one dual action trussrod. It worked very well but just looks goofy. My design fell short with the tailpiece which ended up being a very large and unwieldy looking thing that anchored the strings.
The short scale was great for ease of reaching notes but the string courses were so wide it was difficult to press all three strings down and get a clean tone unless playing very simple lines – no fast runs were possible, at least for me though I am admittedly not a great bassist. String spacing was about .6″ at the bridge, narrower than most standard size basses, but I still found it challenging to play.
Well done!
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Beautiful piece of work!
String up I mean! Damn predictive text!
Fixed Bridge…
I sometimes play bass but went for this idea when renovating my archtop mando.
Was an interesting job to execute and ended up with the third attempt being more or less OK, such that the bottom courses are now so loud that I’m looking at adding a bass cut control (still waiting for the pots … long order delay…).
As advised we used maple which had to be sourced specially (I’m on the W coast of S America).
The idea of a fixed bridge is to get much better sound transmission which I think is achievable, but there is a lot lot lot of adjustment (sanding) and if you go too far YUCK! have to start again. Of course the adjustment also includes the string breaks .. and the slots … Not For Everbody.
Lovely looking instrument btw.
Beautiful instrument. I especially like the neck and I love, love, love the headstock. Excellent workmanship. I’ll bet it plays as good as it looks.
Fearless build, totally custom set of dimensions, scale and hardware.
Beautiful work.
That volute is a work of art just by itself! Great build.
Great job of building and a very stylish look. I was interested in the gauge of the strings used.
Bravo!!!!
Yes to all those positive comments. Really outstanding design and execution. And the string anchor cover looks fine. What tuning and string gauge ?..
Sincerely , Barry Kerr, founder Woodtoneguitars, Australia
Hi Barry, the tuning is EADG, and string gauges are
Fundamentals: G .040, D .060, A .075, E .095 Octaves: G .020, D .025, A .035, E .045.
Man – I got a glimpse of your work on your site, Holy Cow! Nice work, Barry.
Best regards,
Tim W
Hello
interesting bass!
I was wandering are those 4 strings on the two lower/bass side positions? It seems the bass has in total 4+4+3+3 = 14 strings.
It is obvious both in the bridge and the nut. Or is it an illusion?
Thanks!
It has 12 strings – that’s probably a “lens flare” or some other trick of the light that makes it look like it has 2 extra strings.
Both of Tim’s 12-string basses play and sound good, in fact I play one of them regularly. The necks are slightly narrower at the nut than the USA-made Hamer necks, so if you’re a fan of small necks, these are perfect.
Thanks again, Tim!