{"id":13180,"date":"2019-09-14T21:11:33","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T02:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=13180"},"modified":"2019-10-09T12:36:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T17:36:22","slug":"bass-of-the-week-candia-bass-altessa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/bass-of-the-week\/bass-of-the-week-candia-bass-altessa.html","title":{"rendered":"[Bass of the Week]: Candia Bass Altessa"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week’s bass build was a custom piece submitted by Rudy Candia. Here is what Rudy had to say about the bass build:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Altessa Bass guitar is a 34\u201d scale bass that has an oiled walnut body and a five piece laminate neck made of walnut with two Purple Heart stringers. The fretboard is also purple heart with only side dot markers. Because purple heart is such a hard wood this bass has a very snappy, punch feel and sound to it.

The headstock has a 12 degree tilt back with a scarf joint that is barely noticable because the headstock is made of the same neck blank material as the neck itself. I left a substantial volute on the back of the neck, opposite the zero fret to further strengthen neck\/head stock joint. I don\u2019t want to have the \u201cauthentic\u201d problem of the headstock breaking off which is very common with one piece necks with a tilted headstock.

The front of the headstock has a 1\/8\u201d thick cap of walnut, which was pore filled, painted black and finished off with the Candia logo and lacquer.

The strings on this bass run in a straight line from the bridge to the tuner so there is no need for a nut. I used a zero fret instead and extended the fretboard 3\/4\u201d beyond the zero fret. I also filed some notches in the edge of the fretboard to hold the strings in place in case someone with crazy strong fingers does some aggressive string bending.

I used medium fret wire to keep the action very low and fast; the only exception is the zero fret which is a jumbo fret. One thing I did differently on this bass is I did not radius the fretboard. I personally prefer the feel of all of the strings being flat rather than radiused because it feels easier for my right hand to quickly move across the strings.

The hardware on this bass consists of a Kick Ass bridge<\/a> and Gotoh tuners<\/a>. The electronics are a pair of Bartolini single coil pick ups<\/a> running through an Aguilar OBP1 preamp<\/a>. The control set up is master volume, pickup blend, high, two band mid and low.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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