Bass Of The Week: Armenteros Les Paul 5

This week’s Bass of the Week is a Les Paul 5-string which Guillermo Armenteros (the owner) calls the “Armenteros Les Paul 5”.

Here’s the story on the bass according to the owner:

The Bass is called the Armenteros Les Paul 5 and my second 5 string commissioned build from a local luthier and friend in the Dominican Republic. Reasons for the name are pretty obvious, my last name and it’s a 5 string inspired Les Paul with some major tweaks to make it a better bass than the ones Gibson made in the early 90s.

The most notable and important feature on the bass is that it is not set neck, bolt-on, or traditional neck through design. After looking at some of Jens Ritter’s single piece of wood designs I asked my luthier to give it a try with this creation. The bass is a single piece of hand carved Dominican mahogany (minus the fret board which is macassar ebony if memory serves me right) so there are no glue joints. This gives the bass endless sustain and adds to the aesthetic of the instrument. I was lucky the piece of lumber we used for this bass was lying around at lumberyard that apparently no one wanted for its size but was perfect for this project and was really light. Also differing from the Gibson design is the bass’ 35 scale which is a must for me in my custom builds to get a nice tight B string. Like a traditional Les Paul the bass sports passive two volume two tone electronics. For the hardware, I used hipshot ultra light tuning keys and type A bridge with .728 spacing which is what I find most comfortable. The bass also sports white binding which goes nicely with the blue finish. To add the finishing touch, blue leds were installed on the front of the bass as position markers and the on/off switch was put where the traditional pickup selector switch goes in traditional Les Paul style guitars. The bass is stained blue to feature the single piece of wood design and to match the leds. I currently use it for my Led Zeppelin tribute band to play Kashmir, No Quarter and Moby Dick which are epic songs and the leds on a dark stage add to the feeling and presentation.

Here’s some more photos

What the bass looked like before the finish was applied:

Nicely done, Guillermo!

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