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Er zijn geen vertalingen beschikbaar. Then, routing the body shape with a jig. Same with the neckpocket.     Why build your own bass? Until not so long ago, I was in a band called Zeus. You can check out some songs here. When playing loud music and having a ‘dense’ band sound, it is very important the sound quality is of a good quality. I mean, a 100 decibels of annoying sound is a lot worse to digest than a 100 db of nice sounds. Although I am sure some people would put our music in the first category, it is important for a band to make sure to sound as good as you can. You want to impress people with your music and they shouldn’t by distracted by crappy sound. On top of that, the better the sound, the better the definition of each instrument. So, it’s important to have your equipment as perfectly setup as possible in order to have the band sound as good as possible. When playing with Zeus I have used at least 4 or 5 different basses. Some more than others but I was never totally satisfied with any of them. I am talking about quality basses by Fender and Gibson. Somehow each one sounded great by itself but lacked something within the band sound. I did a lot of experimenting with adjustments and different parts but I still did not find what I was looking for. By doing all this I did feel I got a better understanding of what I might need to get the sound I wanted.
The theory behind it. Before getting into the details, I did not build the whole thing. As a matter of fact, the part that is probably the most difficult, the neck was bought. I ran into it someday, figured I would give it a try and it worked like a charm.
I wanted to achieve the following; - An instrument with a uniform sound throughout all of the frequencies. I wanted every note to have the same type of sound and the same volume when played the same way. Only the pitch should be different, not the sound or volume. - Long and even sustain. This is the way in which a note fades out. It should fade out slowly and evenly. - It should be able to handle the lowest frequencies as well as the higher ones. I used a BEAD tuning, sometimes dropped to AEAD, this is 3 or 4 notes lower than standard tuning. It is quite a common problem for basses with a low B, that it sounds significantly less pronounced than the other strings. This has to do with the way lower frequencies need more distance to ‘travel’ or ‘sound’. - And finally I wanted it to be as simple as possible. Their would be no need for it to be versatile in any way and fewer parts means less chance of anything breaking.
In order to achieve the goals above I was thinking of this; - A Mahogany body. It is known to have a nice, warm and balanced sound. - The connection between neck and body had to be as good as possible in order to make the bass vibrate as a whole. This means that in a mechanical sense, the parts of the neck and body touching in the neck pocket, need to be as flat as possible so that there is actually a lot of surface the vibrations can travel from one part to the other. The same goes for the bridge and the nut, the parts where the strings are connected to the body. All connections would receive extra attention. - For a bridge I would use a Badass 2 because of it’s high mass and the long reach of the saddles. That last part is important because… -….The B string needed to have as much length as possible behind the saddle and behind the nut. I am not sure what the exact science behind this is but I have read about this and I think I have actually experienced this myself. More string vibrating behind saddle and nut means an improvement in definition of the sound. Therefore I would install the bridge further back (closer to the edge of the body) than usual so the saddles would leave more room for string behind them. On the other end I figured a left hand Fender type neck would do the trick. When used upside down the B string has a lot of room between nut and tuner. This all makes more sense (I hope) when you see the pictures. - In order to have some more room to move the bridge and for more body mass I went with a Jazz bass body shape instead of my beloved Precision. - The pickup was going to be a Q-tuner because of it’s high output and neutral sound. I have had extensive mail contact with the company that convinced me to take this leap of faith. The first Q-tuner I ever heard was my own. A really nice bonus with these pickups is the fact they can be adjusted extremely precisely. This could come in handy when the strings turned out to have differences in volume.
Theory meets practice. Ok, let’s get to work. First I glued the Mahogany body out of quarter sawn parts with really straight grain. I’ve put quite some care and attention into the glued surfaces, making sure they we’re as straight as possible. Again, to make sure frequencies would meet as little resistance as possible when vibrating.
Then, routing the body shape with a jig. Same with the neckpocket.
Attaching the neck with very thick screws and we have a bass;
I then made the routing for the pickup. To determine where the pickup needed to go I have used a test bass in which I could slide the pickup. This way I could find the sweet spot with my playing style. This is certainly no exact science but it gives some idea of what a different position picks up regarding string vibration. Here are some pics of this ugly duckling. I am really glad I went through the trouble and think it made me choose the right spot for the pickup. By the way, the pickup in the pictures is not the Q-tuner.
Finally some black nitrocellulose paint and we have a bass that’s made to Rock! It really does exactly what it was supposed to do and then some. It plays like a dream, sound fantastic and looks great.
Drum-roll please!!;
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