Subscribe using RSS!
This bass is one I made in 2000 while I was working at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Phoenix. The top and back are redwood and the sides are madrone. The body is around 5 1/2″ deep and it’s 19″ wide. Offsetting the soundhole does two things - it makes better use of the top’s surface area to make the bass louder, and it makes it easier for the player to hear himself.
Some special things I did on this one include graphite/balsa sandwich bracing and a central graphite spar that connects the neck and tailblocks. This, combined with the Fender-style bolt-on neck pocket, means never having to do a neck reset as the instrument ages.
On the drawing board now is a 6-string version. It will use honeycomb sandwich bracing for the top and a large removeable soundhole port tube. Besides looking cool, the port tube will allow fine-tuning of the main air resonance and provide easy access for string and battery changes.
-
Recent Posts
-
Categories
- About Me (3)
- Acoustic Bass Guitars (15)
- Instruments (13)
- Luthierie/Guitar Building (17)
- Meta (2)
- Warmoth (2)
- Workshop (5)
-
ABG Wiki Updates -
Contact
My Picasa Web Photos
-
-
3 Responses to “Big Red Acoustic Bass Guitar”
[…] In the Big Red ABG, I used braces with a sandwich of graphite and balsa (at far right in the picture above). This design was very stiff and light, but because I used standard 1/2″ square balsa struts, with the grain running lengthwise, they were prone to splitting top-to-bottom and required quite a bit of reinforcement at the ends. More recently I tried end-grain balsa sandwiched between layers of phenolic laminate. This was light and resistant to splitting, but not quite as stiff as I wanted. […]
[…] I only stopped playing it when I graduated from RV and became a “serious” luthier. It was working at RV that I built my Big Red ABG. Fast forward to last year. From Roberto-Venn I had gotten a job as in-house programmer/designer/luthier at Warmoth Guitar Products, and one day got an email at work from Brian Ritchie! He had just ordered a bass from us and saw a post of mine about him on Talkbass. He asked how his bass was coming along and if he could stop by the shop when the band was in Seattle. I offered to give him a tour, and he offered to let me play bass on “Gone Daddy Gone” at their show! So far, it has been the highlight of my career! […]
Something to say?
[…] In the Big Red ABG, I used braces with a sandwich of graphite and balsa (at far right in the picture above). This design was very stiff and light, but because I used standard 1/2″ square balsa struts, with the grain running lengthwise, they were prone to splitting top-to-bottom and required quite a bit of reinforcement at the ends. More recently I tried end-grain balsa sandwiched between layers of phenolic laminate. This was light and resistant to splitting, but not quite as stiff as I wanted. […]
Left by BW Basses » Blog Archive » Composite Sandwich Braces - Custom Electric and Acoustic Bass Guitars on July 3rd, 2006