{"id":1594,"date":"2012-07-11T10:21:40","date_gmt":"2012-07-11T10:21:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=1594"},"modified":"2012-07-19T15:16:15","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T15:16:15","slug":"a-twist-on-bass-design","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/repair\/a-twist-on-bass-design.html","title":{"rendered":"A Twist on Bass Design"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jerome Little designs guitars at Little Guitar Works<\/a>. He\u00a0received a grant from the Lemelson Foundation for Invention, Innovation, and Creativity, which supported the research, design, and construction of the first Torzal ergonomic electric bass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>If you haven’t heard of the Torzal twist before, it’s something I’ve been quietly working on for the last 15 years or so.<\/p>\n

The idea came about as a way to address the potentially disastrous consequences of repetitive strain injuries, which typically manifest as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome or Tendonitis.<\/p>\n

The twist is designed to alleviate flexion (bending) in the wrists.\u00a0 It’s the bent wrists which put undo strain on the tendons, and when the tendons become inflamed in the carpal tunnel of the wrist, it pinches the Median Nerve, which is a big bummer for a bass player.<\/p>\n

I know that we’ve all come to believe that a twisted neck is bad, and if it wasn’t design to be twisted in the first place, then it usually is.\u00a0 But the Torzal works.<\/p>\n

If you’re having trouble picturing how it works try a quick model, like holding four pencils together in the same plane, then rotating the ends together but in opposite directions to create a twist.\u00a0 This is what the strings are doing, and the fretboard follows that geometry such that the playing action is the same as a regular bass, and the relief is adjustable with a truss rod, just as on a regular bass.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, for the first time, this particular bass was taken a step further by adding the multi-scale “fanned frets” to the equation.\u00a0 This adds the benefit of a longer scale for the bass strings and a short scale for the treble strings.<\/p>\n

Ralph Novak patented the fanned fret concept in 1989 (the patent has expired), and although I’ve been a fan (no pun intended) of his work and Sheldon Dingwall and others who’ve employed the concept, I had never done it myself.\u00a0 I came up with a method for cutting the fret slots using my existing fret slot templates and a pair of saw guides which index on the templates.<\/p>\n

In the “old days” I cut the twist in the neck blank using a machine I built which consisted of carriage with a jointer cutter head powered by a skill saw motor which traversed on rails set to the desired twist and in proportion to the taper of the string spacing.\u00a0 The neck blank sat on a table which could be raised incrementally for successive passes of the cutter.\u00a0These days I have a buddy with a vertical mill CNC machine which creates the perfect geometry with much less labor than my old fixture.<\/p>\n

Once the neck blank is cut, I route and install the truss rod, profile the neck, and glue on the fingerboard in two laminated pieces (so it will bend more easily).\u00a0 The rest of the construction is fairly typical, however, most of my basses have a radiused body, kind of like a lot of Warwick and Spector basses.\u00a0 This radiusing on the top and back is done with a router and fixture.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/div>\n

This fanned fret 4-string is based on my Torzal “Standard” model, which is a neck-through construction with a 35\u00b0 twist in the neck.\u00a0 From the “zero” plane of the body, that total twist consists of 20\u00b0 downward rotation at the nut and 15\u00b0 upward rotation at the bridge.<\/p>\n

On this bass,the neck is wenge and flame maple, with a killer zircote fingerboard.\u00a0 The customer specifically requested some of the lighter sap wood edge of the board to be used, which goes well with the exotic figure of the maple top.\u00a0 To keep the weight down and add some roundness and punch to the tone, it has a light weight spalted maple core, and a thin flamed maple back.<\/p>\n

For hardware, it features one of the first production sets of the new Toone & Townsend individual string bridges (I helped beta test the prototypes), Hipshot Ultralight tuners<\/a>, Nordstrand Fat Stack pickups<\/a> and an Audere preamp with individual coil tap switches for each pickup.\u00a0 The Audere also comes with an LED battery indicator, which is a welcomed feature.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jerome Little earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in music and acoustics from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In November 1996, Jerome displayed the Torzal at the Smithsonian Institute\u2019s Museum of American History.<\/em><\/p>\n

Jerome has worked for Parker Guitars, Collings Guitars and luthiers Luke Wilson and Lance McCollum. Check out more of his work at Little Guitar Works<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Want to share your bass work, custom builds, or tips and tricks with the eBass community? We are looking for guest blog posts. If you’re interested, contact Justin at justin@bestbassgear.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you haven’t heard of the Torzal twist before, it’s something I’ve been quietly working on for the last 15 years or so. The idea came about as a way to address the potentially disastrous consequences of repetitive strain injuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,13,24,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}