{"id":12690,"date":"2019-02-18T15:15:09","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=12690"},"modified":"2019-02-18T15:28:47","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T20:28:47","slug":"bass-of-the-week-whitehouse-type-four-12-string-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/bass-of-the-week\/bass-of-the-week-whitehouse-type-four-12-string-bass.html","title":{"rendered":"[Bass of the Week] Whitehouse Type Four 12 String Bass"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week’s Selection is from Tim. He’s got one of the sweetest 12 Strings we’ve ever seen! Here’s the lowdown…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Story of his build:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>

I liked TP’s sound and wanted to own one so I built two, both were purchased by Mark Rowe of 12stringbass.net. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The specs are:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

-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
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-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.
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-Nut = 1.95\u201d, f24 = 2.25\u201d, string spacing at bridge is about .6\u201d between the fundamentals.
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-Cocobolo over maple PH faceplate,\u00a0 maple over mahogany backstrap.
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-Ebony nut, bridge, tailpiece, PU surrounds and knobs (1V &1T).
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-Ivoroid binding + ivoroid\/black purfling on the top plate, neck and PH.
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-Unbranded tuners (root) + Taylor mini tuners for the octaves.
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-Finished with 16 coats high gloss nitro, body & neck.\u00a0
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-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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

-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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>

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.
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