{"id":8904,"date":"2016-05-18T11:32:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-18T16:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=8904"},"modified":"2017-05-05T10:06:22","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T15:06:22","slug":"bass-of-the-week-harper-0105","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/bass-of-the-week\/bass-of-the-week-harper-0105.html","title":{"rendered":"[Bass of the Week] Harper 01\/05"},"content":{"rendered":"

See the business listing for this bass builder here<\/a><\/p>\n

The feature bass this week comes from Newcastle, Australia.<\/p>\n

Builder Rod Harper writes:<\/p>\n

\n

This bass is the last of 8 that I built over the 3 year period up to mid 2001, six of which I sold to professional bassists, the other I kept, is similar to this one but with frets.<\/p>\n

This fretless I use mostly at the moment for jazz and originally I fitted it with with an EMG40DC pickup but I was always looking for a bit more body to the tone. I took the advice given by BBG tech Chris Hull and bought a Bartolini 72M45C<\/a>-T from BBG. The instrument now has a lovely warm satisfying fretless purr to it.<\/p>\n

The body wings are made from 3 Australian timbers note for their useful tone quality:<\/p>\n

Front – Tasmanian Myrtle or Cherry Laurel
Middle – Australian Red Cedar
Back – Queensland Maple
 
The neck is laminated from tapered pieces of Rock Maple and Mahogany and has a finger board (I guess that’s what you call it with no frets?) made from an extremely hard and dense timber called Casuarina or She Oak and is edged with ebony. I decided to make it reach up to 24 frets and on the top couple of strings took it a bit further (2 frets?) enabling a high “A” (for the more ambitious of players!) I make my own truss rods out of steel rod about 5mm round and slot them into a rout that gets deeper towards the middle of the length of the neck. A fillet of timber pushes the rod into a curve in that rout. As you tighten the rod it wants to make the most direct path between it’s 2 end anchor points thus putting a stress on the neck that opposes the strings. I know that this may not be anything new and that there are a few ways of achieving this, but this method is easy, requires very little tension and has never let me down. <\/p>\n

In addition to the truss rod I have included 2 routs that accommodate 2 thin (2 mm) strips of steel tapering from 10 mm down to 2 mm at the nut end of the neck glued into place with epoxy and I added a further 2 routs 10 mm x 10 mm that are filled with carbon fiber stippled into place with resin. This neck is extremely rigid and when you first fit it with strings, the neck and strings settle in very quickly plus it appears to have made for an amazing sustain.<\/p>\n

I got a bit carried away with this one and decided to include LED’s in the position markers for those occasions when stage lighting or the lack of it messes with your view. The LED’s and the wiring was fitted into a rout on the underside of the fingerboard rather than in the top face of the neck itself. They are operated from a rotary switch that gives 4 levels of brightness, the brightest being the least economical with the 4 x AA batteries (6 volts) that are devoted to the lights alone.<\/p>\n

The EMG-BQC electronics are powered by 6 x AA batteries (9 volts) and the covers to them and the batteries are made from a Western Australian hardwood called Jarrah.<\/p>\n

The 2 battery compartments have lids with a slight taper over their length and a beveled edge that dovetails into place (similar to the lids on the old school pencil boxes) so a single screw holds them firmly in place. <\/p>\n

The strap buttons are turned from False Sandalwood.<\/p>\n

Both the mini tuning machines and the bridge are made by Gotoh.<\/p>\n

The bridge is made from bone.<\/p>\n

I have recently started using D’Addario XL ETB92-5 Nylon Tapewound strings and I am very happy with them. They feel nice to play, sound great and are so kind to the fingerboard.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

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\"img_7350\"<\/p>\n

\"img_7355\"<\/p>\n

\"img_7354\"<\/p>\n

\"img_7347\"<\/p>\n

Well done!<\/p>\n

Want YOUR<\/i> bass to be featured for Bass of the Week?
Submit yours now using our easy web form<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

See the business listing for this bass builder here The feature bass this week comes from Newcastle, Australia. Builder Rod Harper writes: This bass is the last of 8 that I built over the 3 year period up to mid 2001, six of which I sold to professional bassists, the other I kept, is similar … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":8898,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[19],"tags":[28,56],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8904"}],"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=8904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8904\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}