Hello again and welcome to another installment of Luthier's Corner. This month, I want to discuss my most recent build, for a couple reasons. One, because as a luthier, the most satisfying aspect is taking raw wood and creating a musical instrument with it. And two, it happens to be a 5 string fretless bass, and I don’t often spend enough time discussing bass building as I do guitar building and restoration.

OK so here we have a project that originally I started in 2008, at least the body, for a client. But that fell through after I had already cut out the body. So the body sat on a shelf until a couple weeks ago when I decided to build it into my dream 5 string fretless. Since I had already cut out the main shape of the body, I knew it would not take long to complete the build. I constructed the body itself out of a number of choice woods. The center core is 5 strips or wood- 1/2" teak in the center, with 7/8" mahogany on each side, and 3/8" walnut completing the width. The body wings are 1" walnut with mahogany veneer top and back, and then 1/4" purpleheart on top and back. The control cavity cover is 1/8" padauk. The neck itself is hard rock maple, as is the fingerboard. The slotted headstock is built up with 1/8" padauk on top, and 1/4" red oak on the back with the grain perpendicular to that of the rest of the neck for strength and stability.

The bridge is red oak and purpleheart, and it is a string through body design for superb sustain. The electronics consist of a Music Man style humbucker with big pole pieces, 500k volume and 250k tone. You'll notice that the design of this bass incorporates some of my favorite bass designs, past and present, including the upper cutaway shape of a Rickenbacker, lower cutaway shape of the old 80's Ibanez Musician, Carl Thompson style bridge, maple fingerboard of the classic 70's Fender fretless basses, and slotted headstock of the Ampeg Baby Bass, albeit without the scroll, and of course, the bottom is a modified version of my Fin model. I strung her with a set of D'Addario Half Round 45-105 strings. She weighs 8.5 lbs, which is just right. The balance is perfect.

The tone is huge and versatile- she can go from smooth jazz tones to heavy growl depending on player dynamics. And of course, she has that requisite "muah" sound that you expect from a fretless. I absolutely love this bass. To really get a good idea of what it took to go from raw timber to playable instrument, check out the following pictures. Picture A shows the body woods being glued together. Picture B shows the body basically cut out. Picture C shows me shaping the slotted headstock of the neck on my drum sander. Picture D shows the neck being glued into the body. Picture E shows me carving the arm carve on the top of the body using my spokeshave. Picture F shows the first coat of Danish Oil Stain applied to the bass, after all the woodworking was completed. And Picture G shows a close up of the body of the completed bass.

To really get an a more in depth look at this bass, that I affectionately call “The Beast,” click on the following link to see a fully detailed picture album