Bass gear Magazine review Bass

[Georynn]

I think Tom and the guys did a great job with the reviews of the instruments in the first issue of Bass Gear Magazine. But, as a regular reader and fan of some of the builders basses, I was curious, with the many get-togethers, and gatherings, has anyone played Tom's ACG bass (y'know the one that got reviewed in Bass gear magazine).

Of course I get the impression that Alan (Skelf here on TB) did a bang up job on the build, judging from Toms ( and more so Phil's) review. So anybody got any pics?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Skelf]

HI
There are only two people with the build progress pics myself and Tom. The build was not made public in order to have a bass not seen by everyone prior to the review. So I have been in touch with Tom and I will get the ball rolling.


It was Tom's suggestion to try and combine the two shapes,the front horn from the Skelf single cut and the rest from the Recurve single cut. I did some drawings then made up a template for the bass and sent this of to Tom.



We also toyed with the idea of an inverted headstock.






With the shape decided on we moved on to finding some woods to build with. Larry came good as usual and we got an unuseual top and back and one of his Acrylic spalted maple boards.

Front.



Back.



Core.


Finger board.


Neck. (sycamore)



At this point I got my friend (Sugden on TB) to make up a render to let Tom see the woods in some kind of context.

[Georynn]

Man that looks great, seems like there is just enough contrast between the layers to make the shape really "POP".

Who chose the woods?


Is that all Tom's scotch in the article... y'know they have treatment for that these days...J/k...

[Skelf]

Following several mails and conversations I put forward some suggestions that I thought would be of interest and we worked from there but all final choices were Tom's. As the customer he is the man in charge which was not a hardship as Tom is an easy man to get along with.
About the scotch I don't know, certainly his idea.

[Georynn]

Well, reading some of Tom's post, scotch is the cheapest of his habits.

Great job on the bass, Alan...

[bassmanhamilton]

+1 Beautiful Bass!

[tombowlus]

Originally Posted by Georynn

Is that all Tom's scotch in the article... y'know they have treatment for that these days...J/k...

No, that's not all my scotch. I have a good bit more.

[tombowlus]

Originally Posted by Georynn

Who chose the woods?

This was a really fun part of the process of ordering this bass. Alan and I bounced lots of ideas back and forth, and I must say, I was impressed at how well he was able to connect with what I was after and offer appropriate options. This is an important part of being a high-end custom luthier, IMHO.

As to the specifics of the woods, I was pretty much set on a spanish cedar body core (in light of all the laminations), and I was really stoked about the spalted/flamed maple fingerboard on that 6-string headless that Alan made, so I asked him to find something similar.

Other than that, I told Alan that I liked interesting figuring, I wanted an 'organic' look, and I wanted the top/back to match the fingerboard in (visual) tone, but to have some contrast. I think he nailed it!

Tom.