Notice the Bees Wax on the end of the planks. This is to prevent warping at the woodyard when in storage.

Bass 4

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Wood Choice

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While on holiday I bought enough wood to start on my 5 String Fretless Piezo bass project. I have dumped the 35" scale in favour for the easier to find 34" fingerboard, which is Cocobolo and has a singing tap tone.

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I wanted a light coloured body wood, ash was top of my list, especially after using it so successfully on the 5 string headless bass, but Craft Supplies didn't have any in stock and said that they were having problems obtaining it. So I had to settle for Maple. The blanks I chose had a nice grain pattern with a subtle flame. Not wanting the maple to sonically dominate too much making this bass bright toned, I moved away from having a maple neck and settled for Walnut with a little ½" maple stripe (for strength and colour). When I have seen most other basses of this type (Rick Turner's Renaisence, Godin's A4 and Rob Allen's MB2) I have noticed that they were all bolt on designs. I want to go my own way and build it with a neck though or set/glued in construction.

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I also bought a lovely Redwood Burl head plate and a spectacular AAAA flamed maple book-matched ¼" body top. I will cap the body and neck so I can make the most use of this wood. In other words, you won't see the through neck construction from the front. This creates some tricky construction problems, but I think I can pull it off. I still have a lot of black veneer left over from the Headless bass, so I hope to put a few coach lines here and there.

34"Scale slotted Cocobolo fingerboard 2x 21"x14"x ¼"

Flamed AAAA Grade Maple Body top

2x 21"x14"x2" Flamed A Grade Maple Body Blanks

2x 48"x2"x1" Walnut Neck Laminates

48"x2"x ½" Maple Neck Laminate

4"x8"x ¼" Redwood AAA Burl headstock plate