Bass Porn

joergkutter · December 5, 2020, 9:13pm

That you, Adam??

I like it - great wood combination for the body and the fingerboard!

Maybe you could tell us a bit more about how you built it? That would certainly be informative for many of us. There should also be an appropriate thread for that somewhere in here

Neely · December 5, 2020, 9:36pm

I’m not an Adam. Sorry to disappoint .

Thank you! The fret board color was actually a symptom of the Mineral oil that I used to seal it. Seems like the Maple darkens a lot with it.

I picked up a kit from here:
https://thefretwire.com/collections/diy-bass-guitar-kits

I like that they use Ash wood for the body. It’s a couple pounds lighter than my Sterling Music Man. The finishing method is called Sho Sugi Ban. That technique is a fun way to spend a fair sum of money on wood and risk a Home Insurance deductible. I wouldn’t suggest it if you don’t good fire suppression equipment.

Here’s a brief summary of the process:

I do not have very many process pictures in general. But I would say the trickiest thing to work on was staining the Neck, which I did not torch. That required a small amount of very carefully placed painters tape. If you would like I could start a board for builds, and try to go into more details on the “Hows” for several steps.

joergkutter · December 5, 2020, 9:43pm

Sorry, my bad… I tried to be funny… Since you play bass, I thought you had heard about Adam Neely…

Thanks for the details! I am not good enough in crafts to actually venture into building my own basses, but there are a couple of people in here who are much more into these kinds of things, and I guess for them it would be very interesting if you could share your experiences.

As mentioned, there should already be some “build”-related threads in here. Or, of course, you could start a new one for your build.

Mac · December 6, 2020, 12:32am

Welcome to the forums @Neely
That’s a mighty fine looking bass especially for a first build.

howard · December 6, 2020, 2:09am

Yeah especially a yellow one

eric.kiser · December 6, 2020, 6:37am

@Neely Welcome to the BassBuzz forum!

When you have time, join us on the Introduce Yourself thread.

Yes. Yes I do. It’s beautiful.
What did you use to stain a maple fretboard to get it so dark?

howard · December 6, 2020, 6:39am

You got the maple looking almost like ebony in that shot. Very interesting staining and I think it looks killer.

Nice Ibanez-like look to the whole bass. Well done!

Neely · December 6, 2020, 4:12pm

@howard & @eric.kiser, the fret board, actually is not stained. I sealed it with Mineral Oil. I was concerned that getting a plastic based sealer on the fret might mess with the overall sound, and I didn’t want to overly harden the fret board. So … the color was more of an accident.

Thanks everybody for the compliments.

Fahri · December 9, 2020, 1:09pm

I had my radar on the Used Fretless Basses on an Italian website and this just dropped in…

1980 MUSIC MAN STINGRAY PRE ERNIEBALL FRETLESS EBONY

There does not seem to be any signature on it but 2500€ is times over my budget…

joergkutter · December 9, 2020, 1:29pm

That and perhaps the fact that it has no line markers on the fretboard would also make me hesitate very much

Unless, of course, you have played an unmarked fretless before and feel very confident on it!?!

Fahri · December 9, 2020, 1:54pm

Oh there is an easy fix for that!

joergkutter · December 9, 2020, 1:57pm

Yeah, looks classy as hell on a 3000 Euro bass

itsratso · December 9, 2020, 7:35pm

It has side dots

joergkutter · December 9, 2020, 7:38pm

Haha, yeah, at least… still, I wouldn’t want to learn fretless on a bass without any fret lines - that could potentially be de-motivating as it is just too hard!