I finished building the Karlov SB about a week or so ago. It is a mockup using pine left in the rafters of my garage from the previous owners. Although I was going to electrify it I've decided to leave it acoustic. My intention was to create a large-bodied bass with a short neck—something close to the total length of an acoustic guitar with the scale length of a bass. The total length of the Karlov SB is 40.25" and the scale length is 32." It has two strings tuned to D & A and is intended to be played with a slide. I tried some new processes (for me) with this and discovered a few things—overall it was a really helpful build. Here is what I learned from this experiment:
• The neck meets the body at the 9th position. So yes, even with the cutaway it's annoying to play above the 9th position. This could be remedied by completely cutting away the cutaway (instead of the half-cutaway I have at the moment)
• There is absolutely no bowing of the neck, which really surprises me since this is slab sawn pine with no truss rod or other support.
• Acoustically this is really loud and lively sounding—I get why conifers are the preferred wood for soundboards on violins, acoustic guitars and other acoustic instruments.
• I tried some new finishing mediums. Not new to me is tung oil, which I used on the neck, however I tried a new application process which really worked well—initially using thinned coats of tung oil so it penetrates the wood. For the orange I used General Finishes water-based dye and its wonderful and easy to work with. I also used shellac for the first time and loved it.
• Tuners: using sandpaper and then scotchbrite pads I took a bit of the shine off the chrome, making them satin finished.
Pine is really satisfying to work with, I think I'll stick with it for a while.
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