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Comment by Tom Lauten on March 16, 2018 at 12:29am

The strings are standard Ubass strings but I ended up fitted a different set that are a bit stiffer. The ones I ultimately ended up with are “Thunder Gut Reds”.

Comment by Tom Lauten on March 16, 2018 at 12:26am

The body is spalted Beech. The fretboard is Wenge I think, the neck Sapele. The fret markers are plastic tubing filled with liquid resin which I cut up and glued in when set...really catch the eye. 

The pick up is an Artec bass rod piezo, that goes through a volume pot and a built in boost circuit. The brass thumb pads are connected internally to provide an earthing for the whole circuit as the the strings are elastomer and there is little metal in the build at all...gotta keep her quiet!

Everything else was made from hardwood, brass, aluminium etc. I made my own Ubass tuners using standard cheap bass tuners and added some motorcycle paddock stand bobbins to better support the elastomer strings...no way I was gonna pay silly prices for “official” ubass tuners when that’s basically all they did!

I also made a detachable piece which allows be to fix a leg to the bass for either sitting or standing height as I wanted this to be an upright bass. I also added a little widget I made to help deaden the strings just enough to give them that classic blues “thump” to the string sound. With a little eq to balance the various bass notes it is a LOT of fun to play!

Comment by David Bowes on March 15, 2018 at 1:01pm

Very nice, what have you used for strings? More information please.