[Bass of the Week] JP Custom 0713

See the business listing for this bass builder here

The feature bass for this week is an exotic lefty from South Africa!

Builder James Pickering writes:

I am naturally right-handed, but I learnt to play guitar from my brother who is left-handed. I have, as a result, had to make my own basses since left-handed guitars are quite hard to come by in South Africa.

I began this project when I bought a second-hand 5-string Ibanez about a year ago. The idea was to use the parts from it and simply make a new body. However, as I stripped it down, I realised that the electronics were very poor quality and would need to be replaced. I settled on a Seymour Duncan STC-3a preamp. I also replaced the bridge with single string bridges and made a brass nut (chrome plated) to make grounding the strings that much easier. At this point, I figured that if I was going to spend so much on the electronics and other parts, I should make some effort on the body.

I bought some Cocobolo from Nicaragua, Santos Rosewood and curly Olive Ash veneer from the UK. The body is a combination of the Cocobolo, Olive Ash, Walnut and Maple, with the headstock finished in the Santos Rosewood. I attempted a French polish finish using Blond shellac, and though it is far from perfect, I am quite happy with the result.

I wanted to make a very versatile instrument and so I added several features to the standard preamp. I started by putting in two batteries and a switch to allow me to select between 9v (in parallel) and 18v (in series), as well as a passive bypass. I then wired in a passive tone pot after the preamp so that it could be used whether in active or passive mode.

There is some tweaking necessary to get the sound just right, but I hope to get a local luthier to set it up properly for me. I have ordered abalone side dots and will add those in the next few weeks.