Truly - bass, and everything about it has been such a rabbit hole to fall down. But having a blast, and learning from everyone here! Only downside is I haven’t made much progress in B2B the past 2 weeks because I keep getting super sidetracked. But all good.
“LOL, I’m an INTP. I can’t hear a problem and not try to come up with a solution.”
I wonder what Myers-Briggs types bass players and enthusiasts are, or if a few types predominate? INTJ here. It seems like bass players are a different set than, say, guitar players, but who knows…
Well, this is more long-term aspiration, really. The 304 is fine for a long long time. My next bass will actually probably be a short or medium scale P/J.
I have to put this in here - at shows, people hear 75% with their eyes. If your bass looks pretty, it will come across. People will love it. Take the plunge!!
I don’t play very well to begin with and if you heard this sound coming out of a Strat or Les Paul you’d say it sucks. But if I take this git to the park people will listen while they stand and stare.
Build #28??? So, you got at least 28 of your own creations??
You really should consider sharing your work with the rest of the world in book form, with nice photographs of your builds and a short story behind the design and the building process for each one of them. Or, at least, a blog where you then also could include sound bites!
And, yes, +1 on the appearance thing - that’s also how I buy cars
Thanks @joergkutter, I’m working on #34 right now, and I’m quite proud of the fact that it and two of my other instruments, one being a 3-string bass, will be going on display at the National Blues Museum. But I’m a relative newcomer to the modern cigar box guitar revival, it was started in the mid 90’s by Shane Speal and has grown into a community of thousands of builders worldwide.
If you Google cigar box guitar you’ll find an amazing amount of information. And if you want to see and hear some more of my instruments you can check out Pigasus Instruments on Facebook.
This is killer for lots of reasons.
But I can’t get past the rainbow-confetti of what look like marker tips on the desk. Are those markers? Are you an illustrator?
This is maybe a separate thread, but as an artsy person myself, I couldn’t help but be curious about what looks like a world-class collection.
My wife is an artist and those are her alcohol markers, mostly Touchnew and Spectrum Noir brands. I use them occasionally myself in my instrument building for everything from burst finishes to putting a relic look on hardware. I’ve also found that they can be an effective form of temporary birth control if you borrow one and destroy the felt tip.
As I am new to string instruments, there is obviously so much (sub)culture out there that I didn’t even know existed, @Korrigan. When I was young, I would play drums on whatever surface and resonant body was around, and I also tried once to build my own “synthesizer”… I got the electronics to produce sound, but to realize the mechanical actions of keys proved to be way beyond my skills.
Must be really satisfying to be able to play not just an instrument, but one you built yourself!!
Unfortunately, I can’t check out your FaceBook page as I have actively chosen NOT to be on FB (for a number of reasons). Maybe you could start a little thread in here (akin to “Show us your bases”) focused on home-made instruments, heavy mods, or other DIY hybrids!?!
No worries on the FB thing, I was temped to drop it myself until I discovered my instrument building groups, which are much like this forum, i.e. informative, supportive and most of all civil.
You can check out my page at Cigar Box Nation, it’s kind of a cluncky old-school platform, but all of my pics and vids are there.
A homemade instrument thread is a good idea but I think I may be the only builder here. I would definitely encourage anybody interested to give it a try though, it’s not as hard as you might think and you’re right, it’s satisfying to play an instrument you made yourself but it’s ten times more satisfying to see the joy on someone else’s face when they play an instrument you built.
I know we’d spoken a little about the T-bird neck dive issue, but at that time I hadn’t seen the price of a Gibson. I paid about £300 ($380) for my Epiphone Thunderbird. The new Gibson Thunderbird is currently around £1,000 ($1,250) more. An older one (+/-2010) would still be more than double the price of mine. For a guitar that has a known design flaw that means you need an extremely stable strap and/or an adjusted playing technique, I’d say that was a bit crap. If (ok, when) I eventually blow a grand or so on a bass, I’m gonna be real careful to get one that does the job.
Unless I win the lottery and then I’ll buy a vintage T-bird just so people can look at me and my ‘cool’ bass.
