Double Bass I hate to ask - DIY EUB?

[Mudfuzz]

Really nice, love that maple top and the body shape. I agree with Marcus, MIMF needs more DB and EUB posters.

 

[fingerandpick]

Maybe a strange though, but would it be possible to construct a stick eub by taking a single piece of wood and essentially carving it into shape so it is all one piece of wood?

 

[Downunderwonder]

You can try but I doubt success. Fingerboard needs quality wood, prohibitively expensive.

Typical EUB screws neck to body per OP. The thing is you need a very nice large piece of lumber to gain a stable neck/body unit after shaping. Better to follow the path of least resistance with 3 pieces.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

Have a look at the stick from Ergoinstruments (Ergo EUB). It is made from one piece of wood.
But you need to play it on a tripod.

 

[fingerandpick]

Does it have a truss rod?/ would it need one?

 

[scojack]

Heres a build diary i did a few years ago now ..

http://www.talkbass.com/threads/eub-blondie.675672/

 

[Jack Clark]

There are so many ways to build an EUB. E.g., I built an EUG (Electric Upright Guitarron) with hand tools on my deck. I play an upright guitarron, so I built an EUG to the same scale and other specs so I could practice with a headphone amp during travel. Worked great for that, but then I began using it with the band, too. These can be really fun projects.

 

[subsonic87]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I had a few thoughts about a DIY EUB—well, a "luthier-assisted" EUB. From what I see, it looks like most EUBs (especially low-cost ones) have some main design drawbacks:

• Lack of true double bass neck (especially with the Stagg), which means neck angle is not correct, etc
• Lack of real bridge (again, problem with the Stagg—the tight string spacing makes arco hard)
• Lack of resonance or complex tone, caused by solid bodies
• Poorly designed electronics

So I was thinking of getting a Stagg, and maybe modifying it like Erik does on his site. That would include shimming the neck pocket, replacing the bridge, etc. But I got to thinking… if I'm going to get a $700 instrument and spend all this money modifying it, why not start from scratch and make something?

Maybe I'm crazy. But if I got a pre-made DB neck (like so), and had a luthier attach it to a body, with a real DB bridge, and maybe like a David Gage Realist, wouldn't that feel and sound pretty good? Especially if I had some sort of hollow body for resonance. I was thinking something like a cajon with F-holes cut in it, or—hell, maybe even an [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] as the body or part of the body (would it support the tension?).

Edit: maybe have a bolted removable neck, as long as I'm pie-in-the-skying.

Is this insane? Would a luthier even consider something as hare-brained as this?

 

[subsonic87]

Like the [Invalid or Expired Link Removed]! I knew I couldn't have been the first one to think this way.

Edit: also, this thread is relevant. From the research I've been doing, it looks like a cello body is actually stronger than an archtop guitar body:

• Cello strings with ~130lbs of tension.
• Guitar strings ~100lbs of tension.

Given that Helicore mediums exert about 267lbs of pressure, that'd have to be a lot of reinforcing.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but I had a few thoughts about a DIY EUB—well, a "luthier-assisted" EUB. From what I see, it looks like most EUBs (especially low-cost ones) have some main design drawbacks:

• Lack of true double bass neck (especially with the Stagg), which means neck angle is not correct, etc
• Lack of real bridge (again, problem with the Stagg—the tight string spacing makes arco hard)
• Lack of resonance or complex tone, caused by solid bodies
• Poorly designed electronics

So I was thinking of getting a Stagg, and maybe modifying it like Erik does on his site. That would include shimming the neck pocket, replacing the bridge, etc. But I got to thinking… if I'm going to get a $700 instrument and spend all this money modifying it, why not start from scratch and make something?

Maybe I'm crazy. But if I got a pre-made DB neck (like so), and had a luthier attach it to a body, with a real DB bridge, and maybe like a David Gage Realist, wouldn't that feel and sound pretty good? Especially if I had some sort of hollow body for resonance. I was thinking something like a cajon with F-holes cut in it, or—hell, maybe even an [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] as the body or part of the body (would it support the tension?).

Edit: maybe have a bolted removable neck, as long as I'm pie-in-the-skying.

Is this insane? Would a luthier even consider something as hare-brained as this?

You identified a lot of problems, but when I read your posting, I doubt that you have enough knowledge to build a hollow body bass. The curved top, the bass bar and the soundpost are very important to hold against the pressure of the strings on the top. I'm afraid you would not only build one instrument but two or three avoiding errors in the next build until you got what you want.
The Stagg is not so bad. The bridge is not good, but useable, the neck is a bit thick for my taste, the electronics are acceptable, only the hollow body is impossible. Changing the neck angle is done in minutes. New grooves in the bridge don't look nice but are easy to accomplish.

The biggest problem I had with my Staggs (I have three, but got them extremely cheap because they all had some damages) is the camber of the fingerboard. There is a trussrod but it wouldn't change anything. With the rosewood fingerboard it is possible to scrape the camber in and it looks nice after applying some oil to the naked wood. Probably not so nice with the epoxy covered simpler necks.