aBig A Bass Guitar!

I was asked to build an Acoustic Bass for a great local musician and Bass player. He plays an electric bass as well as guitar and piano and maybe more I don't know about. I built him a 00 size nylon classical a year ago, the Ishpingo shown in an earlier post. So now an acoustic bass was needed maybe just for playing around the house, or we could call it a "couch bass".

All of my research led me to believe that a nice sounding "guitar size" acoustic bass was difficult to find, largely because we can't get the same air volume as a standup double bass. This air Se we decided to to go for it anyway and chose a large body shape and as thick as we could still fit in readily available cases. It is about 5.5 inches thick and so needed rolled edges for arm, ribs, high frets, and knee. We chose Zircote for back and sides and alaskan spruce for the top.

the scale is 32 inches with a Macassar Ebony fingerboard.

an interesting twist is the neck fitment to the body. This is a flame maple neck with a 4 bolt attachment to the body, similar to an electric bass bolt neck attachment. The bolts are accessible through the sound hole.

So, we had to make it look good since we were not sure how it would voice! The voice is not a standup, but in some ways perhaps it is better. It has plenty of volume, tone, and sustain making it fun to play. There is currently no pickup in it, but perhaps the artist will decide he wants that as well.

We enjoy a challenge for sure, and this was certainly a challenge, and the result was beyond our expectations. It was a pleasure and lots of challenging fun to build this instrument! That is what we like to do.