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Why are there no completely solid/1-piece basses?

nickpc

nickpc

Jul 23, 2012
1,962
5,923
North Carolina
#1
We have basses with attached necks (screw-on, bolt-on, set, glued, etc) and neck-through basses, but why aren't there any completely solid, or 1-piece, basses?

I can get a wood blank big enough for the whole instrument, either completely solid or make it with as many different plys as I would want, and can then machine that down to the appropriate size and shape, headstock to heel. Add the fingerboard and appropriate routing, frets, hardware and electronics, and I'd have a solid 1-piece bass.

I know it is easier to work the neck separate from the entire body (body or wings), and the body separate from the neck, so the cost would be higher (probably significantly), and the wood cost would be much higher as well (more waste, plus that size of a blank would be hard, not impossible, to get), but there are some crazy expensive boutique basses out there.

I'm thinking how gorgeous a bass could be with continuous grain patterns from the headstock to the heel.
 
#2
Ritter Roya Concept
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0916-1.jpg
 
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#5
Ritter does it. I've also seen some other examples, mostly in guitars, but I can't think of the builders' names off the top of my head... They are out there though if you look around. All of the negatives you listed above are probably why you don't see them as much. A full-bass-wide piece of curly maple is about double the bdft price compared to 7-10" wide pieces from my supplier... :)
 
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#6
Bodeanly said:
Cost. Realistically, that’s likely one bass per tree, rather than several that are pieced together.
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What's a typical bass blank width? 16" ? Speaking as a tree owner with a sawyer that does work for me, there are a lot of trees that would have zero such basses, but the ones that would have "any" would have quite a few. i.e. the 24" wide boards I have stacked are a stack of 12 planks cut at 2 inches (not 8/4 - it's a matter of not fudging for kerf/shrinkage) from a 24" square section after we sliced off the waney bits from a 30" (or so) log. So I'd expect 7 or 8 from any log that would have the 16" width, and you might get several such logs from a decent sized tree. And those are 8-16 foot logs, so several basses per plank, and more planks if you went more towards the typical 6/4 thickness more commonly used for basses.

But, grain orientation on the neck and potential neck movement - ugh.
 
#7
T_Bone_TL said:
What's a typical bass blank width? 16" ? Speaking as a tree owner with a sawyer that does work for me, there are a lot of trees that would have zero such basses, but the ones that would have "any" would have quite a few. i.e. the 24" wide boards I have stacked are a stack of 12 planks cut at 2 inches (not 8/4 - it's a matter of not fudging for kerf/shrinkage) from a 24" square section after we sliced off the waney bits from a 30" (or so) log. So I'd expect 7 or 8 from any log that would have the 16" width, and you might get several such logs from a decent sized tree. And those are 8-16 foot logs, so several basses per plank, and more planks if you went more towards the typical 6/4 thickness more commonly used for basses.

But, grain orientation on the neck and potential neck movement - ugh.
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I was just guessing. But still, cost?
 
#9
Bodeanly said:
I was just guessing. But still, cost?
Click to expand...
From the right supplier, just the cost per board foot, and then you throw away a number of those. There might be an upcharge for wide boards, or it might be "if you can find it in the stack, it costs whatever our price is based on the board feet and nothing more." Let it pass though a few resellers and become "special overpriced for luthiers" rather than "yup, that's the kiln dried maple (or whatever species) go find a board you like" at the sawmill and it would get more costly. Given the premise of "pricey boutique" not that big of a deal, but the potential quality issues on your pricey product would be a big deal, I think.
 
#11
T_Bone_TL said:
Another issue is that you are super-scrod if anything decides to move once you remove all the wood that doesn't look like a bass.
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I didn't think about that - the removed wood could easily have been holding the remaining wood in place/shape. Especially if it isn't completely dry, which would be a challenge on that big of a blank. That would be a bad surprise - you machine out the bass and the next morning the neck is completely twisted. Unless you are very lucky there is probably no way to fix that.
 
#12
Thank you for all of the feedback on this - there were definitely a few things I have forgotten about working with wood that make this a really challenging idea. But it is being done - very cool to know that there are basses like that out there.

You could remachine any basses where the neck got funky (in a bad way) into bolt-on bodies, but that's an expensive way to make bodies. Probably not a sustainable business model, plus the frustration factor would have to add up over time!

Maybe the answer is to do the machining very slowly, especially as you get closer to a finished unit. This build could become the life work of someone with a nice set of whittling knives. Bad enough that Ritter doesn't publish prices, even on their finished pieces ("If you have to ask you can't afford it"??), that would set the prices as astronomical!
 
#13
nickpc said:
Bad enough that Ritter doesn't publish prices, even on their finished pieces ("If you have to ask you can't afford it"??), that would set the prices as astronomical!
Click to expand...

Used non-unibody Ritters sell used in the $4-12k range online, so I'd imagine that one would easily be well into the 5 figures new.
 
#14
That's one hell of a lot of wasted wood! That's definitely going to be what drives the cost. Even at what I can buy regular-width, boring-figure hard maple for ... 10-11 BF @ $5/BF ... Ash at around $4/BF. And I would probably have to pay a premium for boards wide enough for a single piece bass ...

On top of all that, you would really want to get a board as close to quarter sawn as you could to avoid issues with movement.
 
#17
1. It's easier, and much cheaper, to glue together smaller pieces than to find one piece big and straight enough, without knots or other flaws, to make a bass. The larger the board is, the more likely there will be flaws.
2. One big piece is more likely to warp. That's why 3/4" 4'x8' plywood is more stable than a long, wide, thin board.
3. It's easier to find smaller pieces of wood to glue together.

In short, you can do it, but it would be much more expensive, and there would be a lot fewer basses.
 
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