What's dead is dead. It was a bit like pulling teeth trying to finish my write-up for the P-Bass-Man. Once I finish a project I'm not super interested in rehashing it. As a result, part four is a bit weak on the information. To rectify this situation (as my friend's college guidance counselor liked to say) I've decided to keep a live journal… er—blog of my current build: The Flattop Bass. The Flattop is a Carlo Robelli (Sam Ash house brand) acoustic bass guitar. I traded in my Hamer Slammer (guitar) for it back in '00 or '01 making it my oldest bass.
As I see it, the acoustic bass guitar is the true bastard of the bass world. The solid body electric bass is the portable solution to the double bass and the acoustic bass guitar essentially takes an electric and makes it difficult to play. Keeping the long scale neck, but increasing the body in size and depth sets it pretty far away from you. You basically have to be a giant to comfortably play it. The only acoustic bass guitar player I can think of is Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes …and he's a giant. I felt like I was trying to play a tugboat, hence the below version of the Carlo Robelli: The Tugboat.
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| Eastwood Classic 4, The Tugboat Bass, and the P-Bass. (late winter 2011) |
My thought was to chop and channel the bass in order to bring it closer to the player's center mass while wearing it standing up. First, channel it—making the body thinner allowing it to sit closer to the player.
Second, chop it—moving the body up to the 12th fret.
However, as I considered moving the neck I began to realize this would be a bad idea. I think adding more wood to the neck in order to brace it would render the truss rod useless. So, I've decided to skip the chopping. However I have an idea on how to make this work, I just need an acoustic guitar…
The first step is stripping the original black enamel. At this stage in the project I constantly think: I've made a terrible mistake…
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