Here is the story of my first serious DIY bass.
At the age of 12 I changed from guitar to bass. Due to my constant lack of money I made my own bassguitar. The body was made of multiplex and the neck was bought at the local musicstore. The neck was a Hofner shortscale. At the age of seventeen I made a second bass for which I bought a Jazzbass-type neck (I think it was from Framus). Some years later in the mid 70's I wanted to buy a second hand bass. The choice was between a Yamaha BB1000 (which I should have bought!) and a Shergold bass. Being a huge fan of Genesis I did choose the latter, because it was the brand of Mike Rutherfords 12, 6 string and 4 string bass combiset. (Check out
Shergold Guitars - Mike Rutherford). Later I will talk about that bass too.
Then one day I had a gig, where I was able to play a '62 Fender Jazzbass. What a difference! I instantly decided to build me a new bass. I designed a body, loosly based on a Veillette-Citron model. For the body I used maple and walnut. I reused the jazz neck, but to stiffen it I made two grooves along the neck and stuffed it with carbon. The neck was glued on the body. On Ebay I could lay my hands on two original Rickenbacker pickups. A few months later I proudly played my new instument. This was back in 1994.
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Aftes some years I could compare it with a Fender Precision from the early 70's. Mine was more brilliant in tone, but I envied the deeper low-ends of the Precision. It was caused by the thickness of my body that was only 35 millimeters. So I decided to an extreme modification. On a planing machine I removed almost two/third of the backside of the body. I took 5 maple strips, joined them with carbon in between and fixed it on the center of the back.
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For the sides I fixed maple parts an walnut parts to the sides that still were there.
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The result is a much deeper tone.
There is also a drawback. With a weight of over 5 kilo the bass is pretty heavy. Despite that I enjoyed playing it many gigs, noticing several fellow bassplayers looking and wondering what the heck a kind of bass that could be! At the moment I only use it at home. These days I prefer a five-string. Another instrument that I have built.
