My custom-made bass from start to finish

[Speare-shaker]

In January of 2014, I commissioned a custom double bass from a luthier in Muskegon, MI (I'm from Detroit). It took a full year to complete. I picked it up on January 3rd of 2015. He sent me pix to let me see the progress. I share them here with you.

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The sides are made of these beautiful pieces of maple he showed me back in 2014. They had a gorgeous grain.

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The belly is made of European spruce.

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The inside of the belly has to be carved out and tapped until it emits a clear tone.

[Speare-shaker]

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F-holes cut into belly.

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Belly sides and back assembled.

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I told him I wanted medieval themes for the bass. So for the scroll I wanted a knight's helmet. He carved this and sent me the pic asking we should put a grille in the visor. I said absolutely. No visor is complete without a grille.

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Grille added. Knight armed and ready for bass!

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Neck attached to body. Fingerboard (ebony) attached to neck.

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Purfling added to back.

[Speare-shaker]

And now for the finished product!

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/f6/c6/6e/f6c66e7ac8d8f3723a33ec1937e6c2e1.jpg
Whoops, not that!

This:

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That's my friend and bass instructor, Rich, holding it up for me so I could take photos.

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My luthier, Dan, went to France late last summer with his folk band. He sent me photos of his trip. One photo showed a type of cross carved on a wall. I asked if he could put that cross on my bass. This is called an Occitan cross--the official seal of Count Raymond V of Toulouse dating from 1165. Occitania is a region in southern Europe--mainly southern France and all of Monaco. I looked it up on the internet and found this particular motif that used the cross and thought that looked really medieval and cool. I sent it to Dan and asked if he could carve in on the bass. He said no because it would compromise the wood. He said he could inlay it but that would be expensive. He said he knows a lady who oil paints on instruments which he could varnish over to make them permanent. I said ok.

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She thought that the cross by itself looked kind of blank so she embellished the top and bottom with the fleur-de-lys which looks just wonderful.

[Speare-shaker]

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Dan said he could carve the tailpiece to resemble a castle tower with battlements so I said go for it. Nice, eh?

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Dan carves his own bridges--that's his name stamped on it. I had it fitted with a Yamahiko pickup which is considered the best bass pickup on the market. Very expensive and have to be ordered from Japan but I figure I may as well pull out the stops and go all the way. No sense having this gorgeous bass fitted with some mediocre piece of crap pickup.

[Speare-shaker]

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Dan studied the way the early violins were varnished and applied those techniques to this bass. Most modern violins have a thick, uniform, seamless coat of varnish. But the earliest violins had the varnish applied sparingly. A thin coat that lets the original color of the wood shine through it. As Dan says, you can see the "tooling marks" around the edges which modern violins cover up but early violins did not. I know that even the great Strads had thin coats of varnish where sometimes hairs from the brush and even small bugs are embedded in the varnish.

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In the camera flash, the natural blondeness in the wood shines through making this beautiful, golden glow.

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The varnish around the f-hole. Inside you can see the sound post. It's a spruce dowel that all violins have. It's held in by string tension and precisely fitted. It transmits the sound even between the belly and the back.

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There are four ebony "bumpers" on the treble side of the bass. Two are shown here. That way I can rest the bass on that side flat on the floor without damaging the wood. They are expensive but worth it.

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As I said, the sides (or ribs, as they are called) are maple with a beautiful grain.

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[Speare-shaker]

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Before leaving, I had the artist pose with his masterpiece.

[Sputnik]

Wow, that is quite beautiful. I agree with you about the thinner varnish, it really highlights the wood grain beautifully.

What will you use this bass for, do you play professionally? Jazz/classical?

Thanks for sharing!

Bill

[Speare-shaker]

Bill,
I don't play professionally although I have made some money gigging around but not enough to live on. I would love to do it professionally someday. I am primarily a jazz player. I've never played in a classical combo although I have played classical material and am classically trained. You have to be classically trained to play jazz nowadays--all the techniques are the same. In fact, when I walk bass I use my classical lesson manuals:

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https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/c1/3b/64/c13b64791c9609ef1097b0c83b0ab6e4.jpg

The exercises contained in these I often use for bass solos in jazz pieces and many of the pieces I often swipe and use as bass walks. These are classical pieces meant to be bowed but they work perfectly well for pizzicato walks and solos in jazz. I remember a guy thinking I was joking when he asked where I learned to play the bass for a rendition my old band did of "Mack the Knife." I said, "A Bach Etude." I just modified it a bit. He thought I was joking and I was dead serious. Everything you need to know in music is in classical.

[Sputnik]

Cool. Well, that's certainly a nice bass and I was curious how it would be used. I hope it gives you a lifetime of pleasure!

Bill

[trurl]

OMG- that thing is BADASS!! I love it!

[Sean]

That's the most beautiful bass I think I have seen! Kudos on making your vision a reality! I bet it sounds as great as it looks!

[Speare-shaker]

It do! He's now making me a bow to match!

[Dean Watson]

Nice!

[Supersonic Scientist]

That's the most beautiful bass I think I have seen! Kudos on making your vision a reality! I bet it sounds as great as it looks!

I'll 2nd Sean's comments....It looks STUNNING. I especially love the oil-painted crest on the back...a thing a beauty.

[Speare-shaker]

Ok, folks, my bow is finally finished:

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The stick is made of pernambuco wood from Brazil, by far, the preferred wood of bowmakers since Francois Tourte who discovered the properties of this particular wood. The trouble is, to make a bow requires perfect, unknotted wood and pernambuco is notoriously knotty so one must wade through dozens of feet of this wood to find one section of it suitable for bows. This makes it expensive.

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The frog is made from mammoth ivory aka fossilized ivory. The mortice is mother-of-pearl which is standard on all good bows. Cheapie bows use plastic.

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This bow has really unlocked the sound of this bass and really reveals the depths of its bassness.

[Speare-shaker]

I Had to do it. I had to get my baby tattooed on my arm so I'll always have her with me. It took four hours and was sheer torture the last two hours.

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I have other tats--I am an old sailor, after all--but this was my most ambitious. It's fascinating to watch the artist work. He has these little cups of bright red, blue, black, brown and white dye and how he mixes them to get just the right hues is beyond me but he has no trouble with it.

The first two hours was easy except for the shading around the bass--that hurt. But after the outlines and shading was done, the skin inflames and becomes reddish and tender and when he started coloring over that tender, swollen flesh--lawdgoddamighty--that really started to hurt! Whereas earlier it was just an uncomfortable stinging, it now felt like my flesh was being ripped out strip by strip. Especially going over the wrist bone. That was torture! But he did a great job. In a month I have to go back to get touch-up work done if it's needed. Right now, I need a break. I am sore!

[hippypants]

NICE, I love the photos and process. Enjoy playing it.

[wideopenears]

Amazing instrument, man. Very cool. Are those other uprights in the pics yours as well?

[WytchCrypt]

Absolutely beautiful :up

[Speare-shaker]

Amazing instrument, man. Very cool. Are those other uprights in the pics yours as well?

No. The photos were taken at my bass instructor's house. He had gone with me to pick it up so when we got back, we took it in so he could hold it up while I snapped photos. Those are all his basses. I do have one other bass but he has several because he's a teacher.

[Sunlight Caller]

Beautiful, a work of art. I thought the new bow might fire arrows as well, in keeping with the theme :)

[Speare-shaker]

Well, that IS the origin of the musical bow--it came from the archery bow which tribes used to make music. Eventually, the bows used for music became more specialized for that purpose and were no longer suitable for hunting. In fact, if you look at pictures of early violin bows and rebec bows, they do indeed resemble archery bows. Sometimes the bow was attached to a gourd or coconut with a fish or snakeskin stretched over it to vibrate and amplify the sound. In all cultures that had bowed instruments, in every single case I know of, the bow hair is horsehair. So that would indicate that the makers of bowed instruments were horsemen--people with a very close relationship with horses--and these horses were trained for hunting and warfare. The morin khuur, the national instrument of Mongolia, is a bowed instrument with a horse's head where the scroll would be. In fact, the very name means "Fiddle with a horse's head." So these people would have been nomads--raiders and traders--and the only people that fit the bill are the Central Asians--the Mongolians, Turkomen, the Saami (Laplanders), Kazakhs, the Arabs, etc. The Chinese fiddle called the "er-hu" means "two-stringed barbarian instrument." Not surprisingly, the true masters of the violin in Europe were traveling caravans of Gypsies and Jews. The bridges of violins resemble a horse and, in Central Asia, the native words for this bridge all in some way or other refer to the horse. In leather pouch that holds the bow that is attached to a double bass is called a quiver. So there you go.