Benavente 7 string fretless custom build pics!

Okay guys and gals, I am beyond excitement. I finally scrounged together enough money to get a custom benavente 7 string single cut.

I'm lucky enough to live in the same town as Benavente so I'll be posting progress pics as my monstrosity is being built.

I know this is a bass that I will have for many years to come so I decided to look for the top woods myself.

Essentially this will be a bass that's tuned exactly the same as a 7 string guitar,only in the bass register.

After countless hours of online searching I found my dream piece of wood. An amazing piece of Maple burl that was big enough to have otherwise been made into a coffee table.



Here's a pic of the edges being chopped off



These little end pieces will make awesome pickup covers




This wood is freakin' amazing


Here she is bookmatched


He has some cutout stencils at his shop so you can get a good idea of what your wood will look like before its built




I ordered a piece of pale moon ebony for the fretboard. It hasn't arrived yet, but he had a small piece laying around so we could get the idea of what it would look like.



Thanks for checking out the pictures and look forward to more in the coming weeks!

 

Will do! The fretboard arrives this weekend

 

Do you guys think I sxhould get pickup covers or no?

 

Its not quite strong enough wood to handle the tension of a 7 string bass. It will have a mahogany body, with the maple burl on the front and back, so it will have the same effect, just be more stable

 

I believe its 3/4 spacing

 

I've never used pickup covers before. Do you guys have any experience with the pickup being less responsive because it has to be slightly further away from the strings?

 

I'm not worried about the wood interfering, but depending on the thickness, the pickups will have to be lowered further away from the strings

 

Good to hear from a fellow 7 stringer!

It's going to be a 34 inch scale. My main bass right now is already tuned as a 6 string guitar (down 1 step to D). For my high two strings I use a 28 and an unwound 18.

I'm not too worried about the high string being "meaty" I generally only use it for melodic diads. so it ends up being kind of a replacement for a droning keyboard note or something.

 

Yeah I didn't quite understand that...