Material cost of a bass

[Dave Irwin]

Assuming an independent luthier building a $9-10,000 bass, anyone have an idea of the cost of materials?

Thx,
Dave

[Rickett Customs]

Originally Posted by Dave Irwin

Assuming an independent luthier building a $9-10,000 bass, anyone have an idea of the cost of materials?

Thx,
Dave

I'm sure it won't be as much as the labor

[reedo35]

Are you counting tools in with materials, or just the wood, varnish etc.?

[Ed Fuqua]

SEARCH James Condino's posts, I'm pretty sure he did this already....

[mikeyswood]

$400-$800

[Ed Fuqua]

Mikey, you lost?

This is from James' thread -

I know that when a lot of folks start looking into a project like this and price out materials, things can skyrocket pretty fast depending upon where you buy from. I typically have some tye of active conversation related to buying wood from an individual or supplier about three days a week, every week of the year. Sometimes it is initiated by me; others they contact me. I probably only get out my wallet and buy wood 4 or 5 days a year. The rest is part of the endless search. You could pay a lot more, but here are the results of about 2 1/2 years of thrifty searching, sometimes involving buying a lot more that just the individual board so that the price of the actual piece dropped.

Here are my totals so far:

back set: $650
ribs: 50
Top: 175
ebony: 125 bought twice as much as needed ( 8'long, 1.5" thick, 4.5" wide) and sold other half on ebay for the cost of whole board plus some $0 cost
neck: 100
tuning
machines: 350
strings: 200 new E , A used gut D,G
2 books: 100 Chandler and Traeger- both of which I read, took a few notes on, and then sold on ebay- $0 in the end

misc: 50 shellac, everclear....
shop time: 50 resaw, thickness sander, and 20" jointer

That puts my total investment at about $1600, even with the fancy KC machines; the same price I regularly pay for a busted up old Kay prior to restoration around here. Pretty manageable, especially when you consider that you don't really need to buy it all at once. I think I could have dropped the price substantially by using simple figured maple, but I could have also paid about three times that amount if I'd gone to an expensive retailer who charged me much more. As it was, I was patient and contacted all of the wood suppliers directly. Most were excited to sell me the wood, offered several different options, and all wanted to make sure that I got well seasoned material since they were so large.

If I was building one for a comission, I'd likely have more than twice the cost, as I would want to have a double set of everything. With boards this large, the risk of running into a knot or inclusion is fairly high and you don't really want to have to call up a customer and tell them, "Sorry, but I need a couple of more years to track down your materials and let them season...." I could only afford one back set, but I got a couple of tops from the same tree.

The biggest challenge was simply finding the materials cut in such a large size. Every time I'd talk with a supplier, they would all say something to the effect that they don't keep bass woods on hand.....they could sell 25 violin tops fast, but a bass top might take 6 months or a year to sell, so everything got cut smaller, especially into the guitar sizes.

Power tool use was minimal. Most of my shop is setup for mandolins and guitar sized cuts, not double basses. I called around to a few local well outfitted cabinet shops and mills to see what they had. The first reaction was fairly unfriendly, but when I showed up in person and pulled out a $50 from my wallet, I was like a long lost friend and had full access to the $25K resaw machine, 20" joiner, and 42" wide timesaver sander.

I was pretty lucky in that I already had most of the hand tools. I borrowed a couple of planes that I didn't have to see if they fit my hands and use before I bought them. Some worked well and I later added them, and some didn't work so well for me.

[Uncletoad]

Originally Posted by mikeyswood

$400-$800

That's not even close. $800 could buy you a back and sides set with that but not a top set. Then what? Lots more to buy. You can spend a bunch of money on good wood, especially top wood. Even if you buy well and make your own sets, wood isn't cheap that comes big enough to do a bass and has decent tone.

Then you have to buy all the little stuff like Tuning Keys that can be $200-$500 or more, and bridge blanks that can be $100, and endpins and varnish. Then there is tools. Bandsaw, drill press, thickness sander etc. Planes scrapers, screwdrivers, coffee pots....and space to work, and the heat and cooling and water and insurance for that space...and your business liability insurance and...It's a lot of bread for an independent luthier to build a bass.

Notice I didn't even mention the cost of one's labor.

If you can find someone to build you a double bass for $10K they are probably still working on being good or they don't live in the states.

[Ed Fuqua]

I think mikey's talking plank.

[Rickett Customs]

Even @ 1,600... Depending on your location -/+ that... Big wood is hard to get in some places.

[mikeyswood]

I harvest my own trees and have friends with the species that I do not have. An Ebony fb is the only "expensive" piece of wood for me. I will freely admit that I am still in the planning stages of my first upright build. Once the forms are constructed my expectation is that $400-800 for the acoustic bass without any micing.

[Uncletoad]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

I think mikey's talking plank.

Tough to make a decent plank for $800 in parts either. Lot more than that in the bunches I've made.

[Uncletoad]

Originally Posted by mikeyswood

I harvest my own trees and have friends with the species that I do not have. An Ebony fb is the only "expensive" piece of wood for me. I will freely admit that I am still in the planning stages of my first upright build. Once the forms are constructed my expectation is that $400-800 for the acoustic bass without any micing.

Then your "special case" doesn't really ring true to the OP question then does it.

[GerardSamija]

I'd say closer to $2,500 before the ebony, for interesting and decently aged knot and crack-free maple and spruce and a carved back blank, not flat. If it's to be a flat back then considerably less. And $2,500 would be a bare minimum, easily going up to $5,000 for premium woods.

[Dave Irwin]

Thanks everybody. For my purposes, I'll go with $2500 to $5000

[james condino]

The low end should be plenty of rupees...

Feel free to give me a call at the shop and I'll point you in the right direction. Why does everyone here make it out like ebony is such a scarce and incredibly expensive commodity? I can regularly buy a 4' long x 4" wide x1-1.5" thick board of nice grade ebony for $150 that will usually cover the fingerboard and tailpiece. I bought a nice one for $72 last week on Epay- no hidden secret there. Some fellow was advertising that he had a lot of ebony he bought ten years ago, so I just called him up and asked if he had any in my size requirements. Nice fellow; it showed up three days later as advertised. You can carve it into a nice fingerboard completely by hand. It is not that difficult- I've done it several times- it take me about 3-4 hours. Actually, it is a great workout; I never feel like I need to head to the gym after work on those days. You just need to know how to sharpen a tool very well and keep a fine sharpening stone close by and use it often to keep the edge working well.

Almost all of the tonewood suppliers I deal with are selling nice figured back and rib sets right now for around $750- half or less for plain sets, and you can get a nice sitka top for about $300- a heck of a lot less if you just call around and ask for a seasoned 15" wide board from the timber folks. I just sold off all of my surplus tops to members here earlier this year. Buy from the timber folks, not retailers who spend a lot of money on advertising and double the prices from thier suppliers. Start out with Bruce Harvey from Orcas Island tonewoods- he's one of the nicest and most fair fellows in the business- twice the grade for half the price.

If you live anywhere near the west coast, you can fill up your pickup truck with fine giant sitka spruce for the price of a $20 forest service firewood permit. Great Engleman can be found in the Rockies. I'll be filling mine up with fantastic local Appalachian red spruce later this week for the same price; I probably won't find it in bass sizes- the trees around here are not quite that large, but a three piece top will come out fine, and it is fantastic for smaller instruments like guitars and mandolins. Once you paint it brown and scuff it up a little, nobody will even care...Nice maple can be found all over the world and is a reasonably common wood. Since I do all of my carving by hand, I tend to like western bigleaf for the mid price and because it carves quite nice- not like some of the granite hard eastern varieties. If I lived in Europe, I'd probably stick with European tonewoods; I don't, so I generally try to use the domestic varieties. We have a luxury of an huge variety of materials avaiable to us here- you can find exactly the tone and material handling qualities you need from them. Some folks will try to tell you that you need master grade materials from some far away exotic place; a poor build out of exotic materials will still sound like a poor build....with a great build, nobody will care what it is made of, they'll just keep smiling and playing away...

If you're going to spend several thousand dollars in materials, take a couple of weeks off and go on a "wood expedition". In the drive from Southern Oregon up to Vancouver Island, you will be able to visit several dozen wood suppliers (or more) in person and look through hundreds or thousands of sets in person and then hand select your favorite for half the price some folks in NYC will charge you ( no offense to the "city folk" around here...., they just buy it from the same folks and resell it for a lot more). You'll also learn a lot, get in some great surf along the way, sample an unbelievable microbrewed beer selection, laugh a lot, and have a great time. If you find something you really like, buy two sets, that way you'll have a spare and not have to search so hard the next time you need more. Most sellers will even package it up and ship everything back home to you for a very low price, so you won't even need to put it in the car.


j.

[Dave Irwin]

Thanks, I was asking because I was offered a bass at a certain amount over material cost so I was just wanting a ballpark figure on what I might be getting into. In the end the bass in question wasn't what I wanted but it was interesting to learn a little about it.

[moles]

Originally Posted by james condino

Why does everyone here make it out like ebony is such a scarce and incredibly expensive commodity?

Probably it's yokels like me that walk into a shop, and get quoted $800 as material cost for a fingerboard replacement.