This will be an electric upright bass made from leftover bamboo flooring.
The material choice is inspired by recent mentions of bamboo in various threads including Hypothetical Luthiery, combined with me cleaning out my barn and stumbling across some material left over from the floor of my house. And a certain amount of contrariness. But if the bamboo doesn’t work out, I can always fall back to something more traditional.
Why an EUB? Partly the novelty. Partly because I’d like to play upright with my blues band, but most of the stages we play are so small that there’s just no room for the real thing. Partly because I have three traditional acoustic uprights that are all out of commission with various neck issues, so making the neck for the EUB will serve as a bit of a test run for fixing the grownup basses (or maybe deciding not to do them myself, depending on how it goes.) Part of the credit should also go to Videojunkie’s Homemade EUB build thread which I have been following.
The neck will be fairly traditional, aside from the material. It will be mostly based on that of my old King Mortone, but I may mess with the scroll design and the neck-to-body joint. The body will be pretty narrow and minimal, somewhat like an Ergo or NS, but full length with a normal-ish upright bass tailpiece. That will allow using conventional upright bass strings and give me an excuse to make the tailpiece. I chickened out and bought a pre-made ebony fingerboard off eBay, which I may come to regret. (Beyond the already regrettable fact that one corner got broken off in shipping.)
The bridge will be an off-the-shelf upright bridge with adjusters which I originally bought for one of my other basses. That will allow using a Vic’s Pickups Model D upright bass pickup which I also already had, so I don’t have to put too much thought into the electronics.
Renewal/rebirth theme: Some bamboo that would otherwise have gone to the landfill and some leftover parts will be reborn into an instrument. And the last time I built an instrument from scratch was in a year that started with a 1, so this will be a kind of personal renewal.
I think the scratch build category allows for a purchased fingerboard, but if not then I’m happy to call it a partial build.
Parts and wood piles. Dig those steampunk tuners.
The material choice is inspired by recent mentions of bamboo in various threads including Hypothetical Luthiery, combined with me cleaning out my barn and stumbling across some material left over from the floor of my house. And a certain amount of contrariness. But if the bamboo doesn’t work out, I can always fall back to something more traditional.
Why an EUB? Partly the novelty. Partly because I’d like to play upright with my blues band, but most of the stages we play are so small that there’s just no room for the real thing. Partly because I have three traditional acoustic uprights that are all out of commission with various neck issues, so making the neck for the EUB will serve as a bit of a test run for fixing the grownup basses (or maybe deciding not to do them myself, depending on how it goes.) Part of the credit should also go to Videojunkie’s Homemade EUB build thread which I have been following.
The neck will be fairly traditional, aside from the material. It will be mostly based on that of my old King Mortone, but I may mess with the scroll design and the neck-to-body joint. The body will be pretty narrow and minimal, somewhat like an Ergo or NS, but full length with a normal-ish upright bass tailpiece. That will allow using conventional upright bass strings and give me an excuse to make the tailpiece. I chickened out and bought a pre-made ebony fingerboard off eBay, which I may come to regret. (Beyond the already regrettable fact that one corner got broken off in shipping.)
The bridge will be an off-the-shelf upright bridge with adjusters which I originally bought for one of my other basses. That will allow using a Vic’s Pickups Model D upright bass pickup which I also already had, so I don’t have to put too much thought into the electronics.
Renewal/rebirth theme: Some bamboo that would otherwise have gone to the landfill and some leftover parts will be reborn into an instrument. And the last time I built an instrument from scratch was in a year that started with a 1, so this will be a kind of personal renewal.
I think the scratch build category allows for a purchased fingerboard, but if not then I’m happy to call it a partial build.
Parts and wood piles. Dig those steampunk tuners.
