See the business listing for this bass builder here The feature bass this week proves that if at first you don’t succeed, try again. This builder did and the second time was a charm. Bass builder Roger Blake writes: I call this instrument The V2 Bass because it is the second version. The neck of … Read more
In this first part of this build step, we shape some more using a combination of both hand and power sanding with the goal of finalizing the overall shape. (Note: Since this step is split into parts, the tools shown will be shown over a series of articles.) Below: The body with rasp sitting on … Read more
What you see above is a photo of Tom Ambrose, owner of what looks like an ordinary Jazz Bass from a quick glance. But it’s anything but ordinary. Now before we get into the instrument you see above, there are a lot of Jazz Bass owners who love the idea of stuffing a preamp into … Read more
See the business listing for this bass builder here The feature bass this week features exotic woods and some great hardware. Builder Ademir Coelho de Souza writes: The name of the bass model is a tribute to my three year old daughter “Barbara Maria”. Body: Brazilian Cedar Top: Sandwich of amapá/purple heart/amapá with Imbuia root … Read more
You may have noticed in our bass build series of articles that when drawing is required, a mechanical pencil is used. But why? Why bother spending extra money on mechanical pencils when regular wood pencils are cheap and readily available? There are actually a few good reasons why the mechanical pencil is a requirement. 1. … Read more
For this step, there are basically two ways of getting it done. The first way is by hand, and the second way is using what’s known as a roundover bit. What will be shown here is how it’s done using the latter. Below: This is where we left off last time. All the body edges … Read more
One of the larger groups of customers we have at Best Bass Gear are men and women who play bass in church. Make no mistake, there are some seriously talented individuals who play in houses of worship. Some think of worship music as being nothing but big orchestral musical pieces using large pipe organs, many … Read more
Stabilized buckeye can make for a wild looking bass. Special note: There is a video below from the owner of this instrument that further explains how this wild look is achieved. Owner Micah Terry writes: This is my second build with Shawn. Back in 2015, I started researching Luthiers to possibly build me a custom … Read more
It’s one thing to hear an isolated Rush studio track played by Geddy Lee, but totally another to hear the raw live sound. Below is Rush playing The Spirit of Radio live with Geddy’s bass isolated. You hear all the string buzzing, all the fret clacking, all finger dragging across the strings, all the string … Read more
Max Kay’s nephew Jeremy Kay makes an appearance in a Reverb video (seen below) describing how to get that beloved Motown bass tone played by bass great James Jamerson. Something very important to note in the video is that Motown did not use amplifiers for studio recordings. What they used was their version of a … Read more
