This week’s selection is from John Isch. He built this bass himself. Here’s the story in his own words:
I am in the habit of building “one off” basses, with a preference toward fretless. In most of my builds I like having two pickups and a preamp for maximum sonic possibilities.
This time I wanted to build something simpler:
– 35″ scale five string fretless with 2 octave range
– through neck
– semi-hollow body
– pickup: Bartolini Deep Tone Quad Coil
– Gotoh tuners
I was going after a specific tone — deep with an acoustic flavor to complement the way the instrument looks.
I had a nice piece of flamed redwood that would be the focal point of the build for both the body and the front of the headstock. The back of the body is two piece cherry with a walnut accent strip sandwiched in the middle. Except for the main neck beam the body is hollow. The neck is mahogany with a wenge strip down the middle. I put an F hole on the front to reinforce the acoustic look. It has a raw Macassar Ebony fingerboard with side dots and fret markers.
I used a Bartolini Deep Tone Quad Coil pickup with passive tone and volume controls. While the shape of the pickup doesn’t impact the sound, I think the M4 size looks really good.
Continuing with the acoustic theme I made a wenge tailpiece and floating custom bridge with a removable ebony string saddle. The knobs are custom made from wenge with maple lines on them. I finished it all off with D’Addario flatwounds. Because of the positioning on the tailpiece I had to get extra long strings.
It sounds great with a very organic, deep sound that you would expect from a bass that looks like this.
You can read more about this beauty on TB here: https://www.talkbass.com/threads/singlecut-semi-hollow-body.1392819/#post-22422580
Beautiful beautiful instrument. Love the elec cavity cover!
A 5 fretless semi is my dream one day ..
Could not judge the sound as my puter spkrs muddied it a bit and my taste (old ears) needs a bit more of the harmonics to bite.
But yes a lovely box.
Ah bub that there is a beauty!!!!!
Sounds awesome!!!
Thanks!
Shoot…I want this one but, I’d like you to have a better one! . Beautiful instrument you’ve got there. I admire someone with so much patience to build something of this quality! What is the weight?
Do you have a name for it? It’s got to have a ‘good – strong’ name.
My first bass I ever owned was a hollow body. I abandoned it in 1969 for a new Precision with a neck similar to a Jazz. Been playing solid bodies ever since. But, now, they ARE SO HEAVY, I’m gonna have to get my old Kay hollow body fixed up so it won’t weigh me down!
Have fun playing it!
Beautiful bass, beautiful sound!
I don’t have a scale but it’s very light, one the lightest basses in my stable. Thanks for the kind words!
Very nice work!
Thanks!
OMG! Perfection!
Thanks!
Wow! Beautiful instrument. Sounds great as well (I’m not a fretless player myself, but looking at the pictures and hearing the samples, maybe it’s time to think of my next bass as fretless 🙂 )
great work.
That Bass is beautiful and sexy! I really like the tone it puts out.
What amp were you running it through?
How long did it take you to build this beautiful piece of art?
I use D’Addario flatwounds, but I get the nylon tapewounds on all my basses.
You did a wonderful job.
Good Luck
The recordings are direct into an audio interface into GarageBand. Obviously I have some delay and reverb on one of the tracks, but mostly it’s just dry signal in, it’s what the bass sounds like.
I really wanted to put tapewounds on this one, but I couldn’t find any that were long enough, the design using the tailpiece means I need extra long strings.