First I made some scetches, on paper.
These are the dimensions of the bass. I copied most of them from my acoustic double bass. Please do not email asking for the dimensions or detailed plans, as I don’t have them anymore and have not planned to make them. For acoustic double bass measurements, you can use this site as a resource.
I decided to buy a new, partly prefabricated neck from Lucas Suringar. Carving a scroll can be very time consuming and I wanted the scroll the be perfect. Lucas also attached an Iroko fingerboard to the neck with bone glue (which means that the fingerboard can be removed later on, if necessary).
The fingerboard is wide enough to support 5 strings and the string spacing is just a bit smaller than a regular four-string bass.
By the way, the photos are shot with a crappy Logitech webcam. Later on, we’re switching to Canon Powershot, but this was all I had at the time. I hope everything is clear enough…
Here I am modifying the neck into the right shape.
This neck is a standard double bass neck with a relatively small head. The block on the lower side of the neck is kept as large as possible to make a solid connection with the body, so this block is larger than with a standard bass neck. This is because the neck is not as deeply attached to the bass as you would be able to do with an acoustic bass.
The shape is getting better…
And that will be it, for now…
A made a drawing of the body on paper…
And a bass is born…
This is the old piece of teak, aka the-piece-of-wood-formerly-known-as-parents’-kitchen-sink.
Why on earth would anyone have the idea to make a bass out of an old piece of the worktop of a kitchen sink? Well, when I was fifteen my parents bought a new kitchen. I locked myself in the barn for three days and came out with the bass of the picture below.Cute…
Although the playability of the instrument left something to be desired, the sound was really appealing. As I already knew the characteristics of this wood, I thought this type of wood would be ideal for a deep tone with a long sustain [Click to listen to a sample of the sustain].
The result for now, the shaped neck. If you look closely, you see a small bump near the thumbstop. This was removed later.