{"id":9276,"date":"2016-07-20T11:45:15","date_gmt":"2016-07-20T16:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/?p=9276"},"modified":"2017-05-05T10:28:23","modified_gmt":"2017-05-05T15:28:23","slug":"bass-of-the-week-darby-home-bass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bestbassgear.com\/ebass\/bass-of-the-week\/bass-of-the-week-darby-home-bass.html","title":{"rendered":"[Bass of the Week] Darby Home Bass"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The feature bass this week is a 32-inch scale fretless with a nice selection of woods and gold hardware.<\/p>\n

(Note: There is a video demo below so you can hear this bass.)<\/p>\n

Builder Rob Darby<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

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Twenty years back, I bought two blocks of maple and a slab of ebony and, after reading a number of books on guitar building,  fashioned them into a somewhat crude bass that would not come to its full bloom until 2016. This was the year of radically reshaping the neck, giving the fingerboard a 10″ radius,  and taking care of other design errors. From the beginning, I had several specifics in mind, all of which are found on the finalized project.  First, I wanted a 32″ (medium) scale fretless. This scale length reduces the finger stretch, increase the harmonic richness (at least to my ears), and it isn’t so short that intonation becomes difficult. I also wanted narrow string spacing–similar to the spacing on my former Aria 5-string. The end result is a 1.5″nut with 1 1\/8″ string spacing and 2″ string spacing at the bridge. As the neck is rather narrow, it needed to be a bit thicker front-to-back, making for a somewhat different, but very comfortable feel. Much serious pondering led me to EMG active pickups<\/a>, with a J-style in the middle position and a Humbucker at the bridge. I refinished the bass this year, giving it a two-tone wood grain look–a sort of homage to the Arias and Alembic basses of the late 70’s\/early 80’s. Then I topped it off in clear polyurethane. Gold hardware made a nice compliment to the wood grain  and brought closure to my project. This instrument is as imperfect as its builder, but if feels great, and it has a sound very similar to a Warwick at a small fraction of the price.  This is likely to be a one-of-a-kind bass because, if I were to start on a new one today, it probably wouldn’t get finished until I was in my 70’s!  Still, it was a great experience, and I’ve gained great respect for the professionals.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Video<\/h3>\n