NBD 2 DIMs (DIYs) Show and Tell
 

NBD. Two builds, DIMs (did it myself). It's a hobby. It's a love. Show and tell and thank-you TBers for your inspiration, ideas, expertise and for looking at my efforts.

Warmoth Jazz Bass body, one piece ash, 4 lbs 8 oz, stained black with 6 coats of Birchwood Casey Gun Stock Oil. Purposely left open grain. Allparts P neck @ 1 & 5/8" nut. One ply, .06 white guard. This J was built in the spirit of Eric Clapton's "Blackie" Strat. Passive with Fender '75 reissue pickups (I highly recommend!).

A somewhat light weight bass @ low 9 to high 8 pounds. TI flats and sounds wonderful!

Telecaster Bass. Warmoth 2 piece ash body @ 4lbs. 3 oz. Same finish as the J but with only 4 coats of Birchwood. Open grain again. Allparts neck. MIK alnico 3.5k ohm bridge pickup and MIJ neck p/u. Dual concentric controls. NOS Gotoh 3 mount tuners. Below 9 lbs in weight. Rolling off the neck p/u a wee bit produces a very Stingray type of sound. A yours truly custom cut one ply .06 pickguard which was pretty much copied from a P pickguard by cutting and splicing a template for a shorter length.

Both basses were low effort builds with quality parts. I didn't even bother to sand the bodies and just went with what Warmoth did. I did a very, very light wet sanding with mineral spirits and #1000 paper. Just enough to smooth out the finish a bit and buffed with Novus #2 and then Birchwood Casey Gun Stock Wax.

It was a lot of fun to build these! Thank-you for looking!

These are breathtaking. I love the jazz especially, with the white neck pickup.

Besides ease of finishing, what would be the benefit of leaving the grain open?

It lets the wood breathe. FWIW.

Thanks for looking and as for your question. I doubt if there is any benefit with an open grain finish. Although, the finish on both basses is extermely thin and this might allow for the wood to respond better than it might with a thick poly finish.

Nitro shrinks with age and many old nitro finishes reveal the grain pattern. So, perhaps in a way, the kind of finish on my basses resembles an old nitro finish but I've seen black open grain furniture and I think that it looks kind of cool and so that's really what I did here.

It also kind of has a "ruff and rugged" look to it that I like but it's strictly a personal choice for me.

Thanks again for looking and your comments, Kawai-chang.