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Custom J-Bass (i know, another custom bass thread)

phatbass30

phatbass30

Dec 24, 2006
1,083
208
Bangkok, Thailand
Disclosures
Groove is in the heart!!!
#1
well, first of, i have been wanting to have a custom bass made specially for me for a very long time now. i read a lot of great things about most of the custom owners here at TB and the great luthiers here as well. unfortunately, ordering a custom bass from the best luthiers here at TB will cost a lot of money for me. i live in Thailand and just the shipping and the customs tax will be almost the same price as the custom bass. :( so all these times all i can do is read and drool over these great basses that's been made to these lucky guys here at TB.

until last november when i bought my first Sadowsky MS5. i had replaced the Bridge with a Badass V. and i was recommended by a local bass player here (i'm from Philippines by the way) to a local guitar shop to get my bridge done. turned out that this guy is a great and unknown luthier. maybe unknown in the world but here in Thailand he has quite a reputation already. i saw his works, guitars and basses, its amazing! i would have thought that they are imported basses from US or Europe or Japan, but this guy made them! all by himself. he also made some guitars and basses for some popular artists here in Thailand.

so after almost a year of thinking, i made up my mind and ask this guy to build me my Custom Killer J-bass 5 strings.

here's the specs:

Swamp ash Maple body with Spalted Maple top
Quartersawn maple neck with Bird's eye maple fingerboard.
Matching headstock and Blue LED inlays
34' or 35' scale (not sure yet) with 24 frets
Nordstrand Big Singles 70's position
Aguilar OBP-3 with passive and mid switch (18V)
Hipshot A bridge (black)
Hipshot Ultralites tuners
Neutrik locking Output Jack
Hipshot string tree

i will be posting pics of the development of the bass, my luthier will send me a step by step photos of the bass in progress. the body and neck woods are here, just waiting for the top wood to come in few days and then the building will begin.

special thanks to Nino Valenti and most specially to Brian Ristola for helping me out with this one. i got a lot of advice from Brian and he helped me a lot on deciding with some really crucial factor that i wanted to happen with my bass. i also bought almost every hardwares i have from him, great guy and very very fast shipping!!!

for now i will post the pics of the hardwares i have.

sorry for the long post and thanks for looking!!!

more to come soon!!!

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P.S.

any questions, inputs or advice are welcome!!!

thanks again!!!
 
#2
hey guys!

to those who has a 35' scale bass, i need your advice.

how do you find its playability? is it a big difference with the 34' scale? and how does it affect the tone? specially the low B.

any input or advice will be appreciated. i'm still choosing between 34 or 35.

thanks!!!
 
#3
I have never been that picky about what scale my basses are. I have both 34, 35 and 36" 5-string basses.

However, I did try a 34" Fender 5-string once that had a very weak sounding B-string.

On the other hand, my Atelier Z 5-string, which is also 34", has a very nice B-string. And the Sadowskys I have tried also had great sounding B-strings and a 34" scale.

Both my 35 and 36" basses are Celinders, and they all (I have 3) have a great B-string. I have not noticed any significant differenence between 35/36 regarding the tightness and sound of the B-string.

I have no idea why some 34" basses have great B-strings while others have poor B-strings??? To play it safe, I would go for a 35" bass.

When it comes to playability, I don't care whether it's 34, 35 or 36.
 
#7
I've had a couple 35" scale basses in the past. Both had great B strings, FWIW. But, as others have stated I've found great "B"'s on both 34 & 35 inch scale basses. Personally, I don't think it's an issue adjusting to the extra scale length. However, it will put you at the mercy of current string manufactures that make a 35" scale string. D'Addario has extra & super long sets, but not everyone does. Maybe not a big deal to you if your favorite string brand already offers the right scale length, but just sayin'...
 
#8
thanks for the replies guys. and one thing about the strings. hmm, i am going for a string thru body set up. do you guys think that it will be too much? i mean 35" and string thru? is the standard string set could have enough length for this kind of set up? for example, a Sadowsky or Ernieball strings?

thanks!
 
#9
I have both 35" scale (Ken Lawrence, Lakland, and MTD Heir) and 34" (Alleva Coppolo's and Warmoth) and the scale does not matter to me. The width of the neck at the nut/bridge spacing and the profile of the neck affect my playing a lot more than the scale length.

Just my experience, YMMV.

Dan K.
 
#10
phatbass30 said:
hey guys!

to those who has a 35' scale bass, i need your advice.

how do you find its playability? is it a big difference with the 34' scale? and how does it affect the tone? specially the low B.

any input or advice will be appreciated. i'm still choosing between 34 or 35.

thanks!!!
Click to expand...

I've got two of them here and find the 'B' string a little floppy, the open 'E' sounds great, but the rest of the instrument sounds "flat" IMHO...

I prefer 34" scales...
 
#11
hey Dan, does you Lakland has string thru body set up? what strings do you use? is it difficult to find the strings for 35's?

and LowBSix, i heard some stories from my luthier that some guys prefer the 34 he built for them instead of 35. so i'm a little confuse now. some says, it has tight low B and bigger sound and some prefer just 34 and says that the low B is a bit floppy.

this is getting harder now. hmm...
 
#15
so far, according to what i heard and read from some people's experiences about the 35's, i think playability won't be an issue for me now.

my main concern now are strings. like i mentioned, i wanted a string thru body set up with the 35's. is there a lot of strings available with this kind of length? to you guys who use 35's, what brand of strings do you use and do you strung your bass thru body or just by the bridge?

thanks again!
 
#16
I understand it doesn't take a lot to get used to a 35" scale.

When Marcus Miller was in the store, last Saturday, we talked about this issue and we both agreed the "sacrifice" of some overall character of the instrument out-weigh the "benefit" of the 35" scale.

IMHO, Stay with 34" scale, you are already comfortable with it and will have adjustments to anynew instrument...

.
 
#18
Would still personally go for 34" with through-body stringing, which would give you many more stringing options. As already on my 34" 4-string (with through body), the 'tapering' on my Elixir 'E' string begins before the nut (over the 1st fret area) and as the strings stretch later on, the the string gradually raises as it reaches the thicker part of the string (hope this makes sense). This basically means your action will change on the E and possibly B strings as the strings are on and tuned for longer using standard scale strings.

All of this is probably not important for most people but is good for you to know.

This would all instantly get rectified by using Extra-long scale strings, but then would result in the following issues:
1) Strings are more expensive to buy (special offer prices tend to be only given for most popular/mass bought strings).
2) Very few shops stock the XLong (at least in Europe) unless it's a very specialist or internet store.
3) As someone mentioned in an earlier post, you'll have lees options on brands.

Soooooooo, then if you go for 35" AND through-body I can only imagine the problem increasing.

Sorry for all the Blah, Blah but sometimes it's better to keep things a little simpler for that rare 'I'm on tour in the middle of the desert, have broken a string, have no spares with me and can't wait for internet shipping as I'm on-stage with Led Zeppelin in 20 minutes' kind of situation ;)
 
#19
Andy Will said:
As already on my 34" 4-string (with through body), the 'tapering' on my Elixir 'E' string begins before the nut (over the 1st fret area) and as the strings stretch later on, the the string gradually raises as it reaches the thicker part of the string (hope this makes sense). This basically means your action will change on the E and possibly B strings as the strings are on and tuned for longer using standard scale strings.
Click to expand...

hey Andy, this all makes sense at all! wow i haven't thought of that!

now time to search for the right strings before i jump into something that might cause some problems for me in the future.

35's with string thru body? now let me think again...

any guys there who has this set up? 34's and 35's string thru body? what strings do you use?

hey thanks Andy!
 
#20
If you wanna string through the body; SL = Super Long scale and allows for the extra length needed which will usually cove 35"...

I still say 34" makes for balanced tone all over the instrument and a tighter 'B' string, which it flops you will be discouraged ....
 

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