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Custom single cut 5 str for Chris Clemente

wilser

wilser

May 4, 2004
4,789
53
Northern Virginia
www.ramirezbass.com
#1
I just got the go ahead on this bass. This is for Chicago bassist Chris Clemente. It's gonna sport a fretted wenge fingerboard and neck, swamp ash body and quilted redwood top. MM/Singlecoil pickups, Aguilar pre (I'm trying to convince him to go with Audere).

It'll be a 5 string version of this design:
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Very excited about working with Chris.
 
#5
wilser - great design, great woods. that'll turn out nice.

when making a neck out of wenge, any reason to do a 2- or 3-piece neck? Do you think 5 string would be ok with a 1 piece wenge neck with 1 truss rod? ...just wondering.

btw i love redwood. that + wenge will look sick.
 
#6
Dean N said:
wilser - great design, great woods. that'll turn out nice.

when making a neck out of wenge, any reason to do a 2- or 3-piece neck? Do you think 5 string would be ok with a 1 piece wenge neck with 1 truss rod? ...just wondering.

btw i love redwood. that + wenge will look sick.
Click to expand...

If you have some nice old wenge, you can make it completely out of one piece (fretboard and neck) and rout a truss rod from the back.. It will sound awesome!
 
#8
Dean N said:
wilser - great design, great woods. that'll turn out nice.

when making a neck out of wenge, any reason to do a 2- or 3-piece neck? Do you think 5 string would be ok with a 1 piece wenge neck with 1 truss rod? ...just wondering.

btw i love redwood. that + wenge will look sick.
Click to expand...

My own personal opinion that's just mine by myself and nobody else, alone, is that there is no real structural gain from making a multilaminate neck on a 5 string bass if your wood selection is good. Of course, multi lams look real good! and you always sound like a real expert when you say 'I decided to make this neck out of 11 pieces of purpleheart, wenge,bubinga, maple, ebony, whatever and 4 truss rods to ensure the strong neck will never bow' ....come on! the neck will always move, no matter how many pieces ...especially when you live in an area where weather goes up and down through the year. But hey! that's just my opinion! I think that a 1 piece neck out of good straight grained maple, wenge or other similar woods with 1 truss rod is a good choice for a 5 string.

I think I've told this story a lot of times, but my first bass was a 6 string with 35" with a 5 piece ipe with jatoba stringers neck. The neck was so stiff that the truss rod snapped when I tried to introduce a bit of forward bow ...when building it I made sure the neck was nice and straight, but the string tension failed to introduce the amount of relief I was expecting ...learned a lot from that first experience.

Bryanjenkins, I totally agree!
 
#14
Wow, thanks for the nice comments guys. I too am very excited about this bass and working with Chris.

Although I'm kind of taking an ego hit with all of you liking this design. The original design was very different than this one and I always ask for feedback from my wife Maria, who's got a very good eye for ergonomics (she used to help me out with layout and colors when I was doing freelance web app development about 5 years ago). When I asked her what she thought about the shape her answer was "This looks just like everything else you've built!!! ...move this line here, make this curve more pronouced, do this, do that" and BAM! what you see here today is actually my wife's design. I know she would be glad to know that you all like it.
 
#15
Ego hit? Don't think of it that way--think of it as a collaborative effort to enhance your original idea. :D

Seriously, I think part of what most of us like is that it looks really good, but is also different from what most of us would have come up with (which is a tribute to bring in someone who spends less time looking at basses all day than we do :D ).

Mike
 

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