Haha! Yea, I was waiting for tort to pop up, lol! This bass will be nekkid
, however. I generally despise pickguards. I tend to buy pretty basses, either with figured caps/tops or nice paint/colors... I hate having a $5 sheet of plastic covering up expensive and pretty workmanship and/or nature's beauty, haha! Whenever possible I buy/have my basses made with rear control routes.Thank you on Pat's behalf for the workmanship in the paint. It wasn't cheap, but it looks great in these pictures and that's what I'm after. I'm hoping it will arrive tomorrow. It's only coming from about 70 miles away.
Yea, I debated internally about getting the headstock painted and decided not to do it, both for the expense and the hassle of shipping, etc. I'm ok with the body being the visual star and the neck/headstock the afterthought. I also really like the Charvel San Dimas basses, and this will kinda be like that with the roasted maple neck and flake paint (mostly), and instead of cream pickup - white. The pink around the rims also has a blue pearlescent shot over it, so it has a bit of shimmer and movement of its own as well.
When I started dreaming about this almost a year ago I heard about and read up on Marty, and was about to contact him for it and then read about his upcoming retirement. I started thinking about having Pat Wilkins do it, as he is the one who did the finish on my custom LowEnd build (see my profile pic) but I never got around to it. I know he's crazy busy with his own stuff and the new LowEnd/Wilkins basses that he and Brian are putting out.
I was talking to my buddy Jeff Marple at Corner Music in Nashville around that time, and he was the one that turned me on to Pat Sims. I checked out his site and was really impressed by his work, so I sent over an email and he called me right back. This has taken a bit longer than promised/expected, but I will say that Pat has gone above and beyond. I asked him for some pretty crazy stuff and to his credit he tried it, but he wasn't happy with the result and didn't think I would be either - even though technically the work order would have been filled per our agreement. He actually painted this whole thing twice. This isn't exactly what I had in my head at the start of all this, but I think I actually like it better than what I first envisioned!
Pat is a standup guy (so far, again... I haven't actually received the bass yet, so I can't 100% confirm awesomeness.... but I'm 99% sure) and with the way everything is these days, a little longer waiting doesn't bother me. I fully realize a wacky custom painted bass to join my dozen or so others is NOT a necessity, lol! This is pure foolishness and not an emergency on anyone's part, haha!
I'll post up some more closeups and stuff here when the body arrives.
