5 years of dreaming and 3 years of saving, researching and building and she is finally done!
when i first learned about G&L i went on the website to check out what they had to offer. the JB picture they had is in baby blue with a vintage looking neck and i fell in love with the combination. I did A LOT of research on different brands and decided that no one made the bass that i wanted. I love the look if the tele headstock and the sleekness of the j-body but once i played and almost purchased a Lakland Daryl Jones i learned that i like a bit smaller of a j body than standard. It was definitely looking like i would have to build my own instrument to satisfy my wants. I found Warmoth while doing a google search for custom basses then came on here to see what ppl had to say. I found only good reviews of their products so i decided that Warmoth would be the company to go with.
Of course over the years i have dreamed of other colors and schemes... it is hard not to with all the options they have. But i always found myself going back to the daphne blue and vintage tint neck.
At first i did not like the Marcus Miller neck with the pearl block inlays on the maple neck but over time i came to LOVE the look. i love how the inlays are very subtle and in the right light they POP! I have had a couple basses with binding and i have never really liked it so i decided to save the money and not get it.
The pickups and electronics took some research. I spent weeks researching on the net looking for what would be best. i knew i loved the sound of a PJ setup but i have had 3 basses with that setup and was ready for a change. I toyed with the idea of doing a MM pichup in the sweet spot but new i was not going to do a preamp and had concerns about the low end and overall tone (not the hugest fan of MM basses but love the look of the pickup) I had emailed nordstrand about their MM pickups trying to find out what the mm sounds like with no pre and they suggested the big splits for what i said i liked. I made a final trip to GC to try out all the pickup types and configurations i could. they had an Ibanez with big singles so i set the active eq to flat and messed around a bit. i knew that the big splits and wood and everything would sound totally different than what i would get but it was the closest i had. I hate making big decisions without seeing or hearing the thing first but i pulled the trigger on the nordstrand and ordered the bass body with the big split routing.
Now for the neck... I like the look of flame maple on the neck but if i do it i would not want block inlays to take away from the wood and i knew i wanted the pearl block so i emailed Warmoth to see if it was possible to get a neck with slight flaming... not enough to call it flamed but more than non. they said i would have to order flamed so i gave up hope on that idea. I ordered the neck january of 2012 and got it in 7 weeks (the amount of time they said it would take) and guess what... it has slight flaming! i am sure this is a coincidence but i am as happy as i could be!
I had never seen daphne blue in real life and when i would do a search for the color on google it would come up with all sorts of different shades. I knew i wanted something more blue than sonic and lighter than Lake Placid so i figured daphne woulf be the closest to the baby blue i loved so much. The color could not be closer to what i wanted. it is perfect and the finish is flawless!
here are the specks!
Neck
maple/maple
pearl block inlays
vintage tint finish
tele headstock
hipshot ultralite tuners
string tree from the UK (it is the only one i could fond that did 3 strings and would fit in that position on the tele headstock)
slim taper profile
steel rods
Graph Tech TUSQ nut in white
Body
Dinky Jazz body
Daphne blue
rear rout
badass III string through bridge rout
Fender high mass vintage bridge (i dont like the badass bridges)
Fender 62 RI control plate
black pickguard
Nordstrand big split pickups
the controls were thought up by me but i do not have the knowladge to make it happen so i posed on here asking for a schematic and line6man was kind enough to make me a drawing
it is master volume, bridge volume, series/parallel switch
I will never have only the bridge volume on and i do a lot of fading in and out in my band so i needed one master volume but i hate blend pots so this is what i came up with
Obviously it is GORGEOUS! as for the sound... i could not imagine a closer sound to what i wanted. the s/p switch and bridge volume makes it possible to go from a cool smooth articulate tone to a p-bass to a grindy growly monster! I will have ordered an tech 21 bddi deluxe peddle so that i dont have to change the eq on the amp to get my sounds i will just press a button.
there is a link to by my band a couple weeks ago with me on the new ax! you cant see me much but you can hear the bass!
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=...type=2&theater
I look forward to your comments and questions!!!
