Thursday, October 01, 2009
And one to rule them all....
I had played 4-string basses almost all my musical life. I had never (to this point) found any real reason to play anything else. This was true for some 2 decades, except for a brief interlude when I played a "borrowed" fretless Precision in an original band. As discussed earlier, my very second bass (the one that started me down the road to my many GAS attacks) was a MIM 5-string Fender Jazz. Early on, I acquired a couple of MIJ fretless Fender Jazz's, and the fretless 'P' neck grafted onto the '76 'P' body.
The logical progression would now seem to be towards a 5-string fretless bass. I looked all over (well, mostly on the 'Web) to see what was available. After all that searching, there wasn't much I really liked, and what I did like turned out to be expensive. After seeing all the variations and permutations, I felt like I knew what I wanted, and I decided I would "design" and build it myself.
My first criteria were that it would be a Jazz-type body, and have the 5-in-line tuners. After those choices, it was only a matter of deciding on the pickups. I went with the DiMarzio Ultra-Jazz 5's. They are hotter than normal and hum-cancelling as well. For the wood, I went to (yet one more time) Tommy at USA Custom Guitars. I sent him the dimensions of the pickups and let him do the rest. He chose the wood, routed out the holes for the pickups, and matched up a neck. I had him leave the headstock blank, as I would be the one to do the drilling and fitting of the tuners.
I found a set of tuners that looked right, but even with their smaller backing plates, they would not sit in-line next to each other, and fit properly behind the headstock. I spent the better part of a week with a bench grinder, shaving the tuners' backing plates so that they would snug up to each other and leave no overhang visible from the front. I was quite fortunate and managed to find a nice 5-string bridge with the spacing I wanted, one that would position the strings properly over the pickups' pole pieces. I drilled the holes for that, installed it, and fastened the neck to the body. And now for the scariest part of the whole process...
I had purchased a drill press on sale a while back, and it had already paid for itself when I upgraded the tuners on another bass (I put Hipshot Ultra Lites on my MIM Jazz-5). It's easy to enlarge existing holes, but now it was time for the big league: drilling new holes and getting everything properly aligned. I closely followed the old adage "Measure twice, cut once". Well actually, I modified it to be, "Measure eight times, drill once". I spend most of an afternoon with masking tape, pencil and straight-edge, getting the geometry just right and being extremely certain that the bridge saddles, nut slots and tuner posts were all in perfect alignment. Five careful, well-considered drill-holes later, and with the bushings dropped in, and tuners fastened, I looked at a job to be proud of, and well worth the time and effort, not to mention the anxiety.
Other than getting a local luthier to cut a bone nut for me, I did all the work, the finishing, the assembly, the drilling, the wiring, and even filing down the nut to get the action just right. I loaded it up with a set of flatwounds, and it didn't take a lot of work to get the action the way I like it (It's not difficult with fretlesses, I find). I take it to a lot of gigs. If I feel good, I use it right away in the first set; otherwise, I'll warm up with a fretted (usually another five-string), then take that one out. I find that a light touch works best, and despite the flats, I can get a fairly bright sound out of it. Good looking, great sounding, I'm extremely happy to have gone down that road.
The logical progression would now seem to be towards a 5-string fretless bass. I looked all over (well, mostly on the 'Web) to see what was available. After all that searching, there wasn't much I really liked, and what I did like turned out to be expensive. After seeing all the variations and permutations, I felt like I knew what I wanted, and I decided I would "design" and build it myself.
My first criteria were that it would be a Jazz-type body, and have the 5-in-line tuners. After those choices, it was only a matter of deciding on the pickups. I went with the DiMarzio Ultra-Jazz 5's. They are hotter than normal and hum-cancelling as well. For the wood, I went to (yet one more time) Tommy at USA Custom Guitars. I sent him the dimensions of the pickups and let him do the rest. He chose the wood, routed out the holes for the pickups, and matched up a neck. I had him leave the headstock blank, as I would be the one to do the drilling and fitting of the tuners.
I found a set of tuners that looked right, but even with their smaller backing plates, they would not sit in-line next to each other, and fit properly behind the headstock. I spent the better part of a week with a bench grinder, shaving the tuners' backing plates so that they would snug up to each other and leave no overhang visible from the front. I was quite fortunate and managed to find a nice 5-string bridge with the spacing I wanted, one that would position the strings properly over the pickups' pole pieces. I drilled the holes for that, installed it, and fastened the neck to the body. And now for the scariest part of the whole process...
I had purchased a drill press on sale a while back, and it had already paid for itself when I upgraded the tuners on another bass (I put Hipshot Ultra Lites on my MIM Jazz-5). It's easy to enlarge existing holes, but now it was time for the big league: drilling new holes and getting everything properly aligned. I closely followed the old adage "Measure twice, cut once". Well actually, I modified it to be, "Measure eight times, drill once". I spend most of an afternoon with masking tape, pencil and straight-edge, getting the geometry just right and being extremely certain that the bridge saddles, nut slots and tuner posts were all in perfect alignment. Five careful, well-considered drill-holes later, and with the bushings dropped in, and tuners fastened, I looked at a job to be proud of, and well worth the time and effort, not to mention the anxiety.
Other than getting a local luthier to cut a bone nut for me, I did all the work, the finishing, the assembly, the drilling, the wiring, and even filing down the nut to get the action just right. I loaded it up with a set of flatwounds, and it didn't take a lot of work to get the action the way I like it (It's not difficult with fretlesses, I find). I take it to a lot of gigs. If I feel good, I use it right away in the first set; otherwise, I'll warm up with a fretted (usually another five-string), then take that one out. I find that a light touch works best, and despite the flats, I can get a fairly bright sound out of it. Good looking, great sounding, I'm extremely happy to have gone down that road.
