Wow, excellent responses!! Thank you. Yeah, I hadn't had a chance to get stuck in properly here. I put the thread up late one night and hadn't really had a chance to get past the first few responses before I had to hit the sack. Then it kinda blew up.
Alright, so, the build itself. Definitely a partscaster of sorts, so the body will be made from scratch, and modeled on about three different bass approaches on the macro-level: Billy Sheehan's, Cliff Burton's, and something I devised in my arrogant youth.
I'm calling it the "Billy Burton" build, or mod, or however you want to refer to it.
To wit: it's basically a Billy Sheehan Wife Build with some of the elements from Cliff Burton's set-up, like the J-Bass pickup and the strat pickup hidden in the well of the Ric 4001 bridge where the mute went, which Cliff regarded as his "secret weapon". That idea was very appealing to me and something I wanted to explore. I'm also a huge fan of what Doug Irwin did with Jerry Garcia's guitars, so this would be Jerrified with high end electronics and preamps, battery boxes, multiple outputs (going back to Billy's two jack approach), high end woods, and so on. And then the piece de resistance: a 5"x9" Tiger model oval medallion on the back which acts as a removable cover-plate that hides all of the preamps and electronics and also channels for routing pickup wires and so on.
So, to amend the above, a
Jerrified Billy Sheehan Wife Build with Cliff Burton elements brought in. Billy on top, Burton on the bottom . . . (saying that out loud, that totally did not sound right
).
So, to that end:
* P-Bass body with a strat-styled modified lower horn to give higher string access
* All access neck joint similar to the Fender Ultra joint on their Ultra Strat
* curved neck plate, plus two angled neck bolts, a la Billy's Attitude Bass III
* Scallops on the top 4-5 frets (full scallops across, cuz doing them halfway like on Billy's bass is a royal pain)
* Ultra small fret wire like on Lee Sklar's basses (next size up from mandolin wire)
* Various preamps and what not. Still working on which ones I want to use where.
* Three different pickup systems:
- EB0 or EB1 style subwoofer pickup deep into the neck, like on Billy's
- PJ set-up in the middle (more on this in a moment)
- Strat style pickup butted right up against the bridge
* 3-4 output jacks. a) subwoofer pickup, b) PJ combo, c) tba, d) strat pickup. The idea is that in addition to the set-up Billy has, I was pipe the strat pickup to a Fender Bassman or Bassman clone. c) option would be for a possible direct out option in a studio setting. Still sorting that out.
* specially designed jack plate designed to take 4 jacks, which would be mounted on the side.
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* adjustment to the classic p-bass silhouette with an extension on the lower right bout to allow for the jack-plate extension, like on a conklin sidewider or some of the alembics.
* Hipshot Bass Xtender
* Schaller 3D-5 5-string bridge in chrome
* 4 string P-Bass neck converted to a 5-string (had this forever since I was 20, so now three decades)
* Bass ramps: the subwoofer pickup will act as one bass ramp, and the neck position p-bass pickup will be incorporated into the second.
* (cont from above) Hidden J-bass neck pickup incorporated into the aforementioned ramp, right next to the P-bass pickup
* asymmetrical neck profile for comfort.
* currently Schaller BM chrome tuners (the elephant ears ones with the smaller footprint), but might go smaller/lighter
* quilt maple top on a swamp ash core, with an ebony and quilt maple oval medallion
* custom white pearloid pickguard on top of a beautiful 3-tone sunburst (along with the maple one piece neck, definitely my favorite color scheme)
* debating doing a natural masked binding
* thinking about doing a thick top of quilt maple on the left side so that I can do a custom carve on the elbow contour, making it rounder and more crescent shaped, vs having to build a steam box to steam the quilt top and bend it to do a drop top.
* possible chambering where applicable to adjust for weight
* a specially designed thumb-rest on the side of the neck in the upper bout similar to a popular add-on one for Ric 4001's
* two, possibly three, battery boxes. right now I'm routed for two, but I might fit in a third. one of those battery boxes is a double.
* instead of strap locks, I'll be bolting in a Sheehan style custom strap
* spoke wheel truss rod if I can swing it
* glow in the dark dots on the fret markers ($10 bottle of glow in the dark paint! or custom fret marker material)
* possible piezo pickups in sweet spots so I can dial in some woody richness without necessarily going completely down the piezo trail.
* various hum cancelling technologies which I'm just now exploring, like dummy coils
* various pearl inlay motifs still in development
* all custom pickups given the tight five string spacing
* multiple amp system incorporating SVT's, B15's, and the aforementioned Fender Bassman
This is all that comes to mind at the moment.
Basically, at first glance it would like a pretty P-bass with the addition of an EB1, but then take a closer look and a lot more is going on with it.
Chesh
