2022 brought with it a flurry of bass building and modding. A gluttonously troubling amount. It began innocently enough with wanting to build a bass specific to The Dynamo Theorem, but would eventually turn into an 18-month frenzy.
The Dynamo Theorem's first show back after almost 20 years (July of 2023).
LET'S CALL IT P-BASS COMPATIBLE
The plan was to build a precision bass — well, P-Bass compatible. It didn’t make much sense to try to reinvent that wheel. Despite feeling like I was cheating, I decided to order my pieces and parts through Warmoth. Warmoth is a custom shop in Washington that makes guitar and bass necks and bodies. The sky is the limit, but not the stratosphere. If you’re looking to have complete control you’ll have to learn how to build your own stuff.The Dynamo Bass had two incarnations, but started at medium scale. I ordered an all maple neck along with a two-piece mahogany body with sitka top.
As a hobbyist, building an instrument can be stressful. I mean people go to school for this kind of thing. After a couple of decades of doing this, I’ve realized that my favorite part is the finishing. That’s “finishing” in the woodworking sense, not the weird way to say “being done” sense.
FINISHING SEMANTICS
My plan was to finish this as something that looked like it could be a member of the violin family — more of an aging or antiquing finish than a relic job. I found a terrific resource for this process in Chet Bishops’ bullfiddle.com (which doesn't seem to be active anymore). Coffee, tea, oil paint, danish oil and shellac all found their way into this process.
I had so much fun working on this finish. In the first iteration I took it pretty far into what I would consider a typical violin look. After assembling parts and looking at it for a bit, I decided it was too much. It could have worked with an ebony fingerboard, but felt wrong with an all maple neck. So, I backed off the finish.
DONE FOR NOW
It lived like this for a while, but I felt like it needed another element. It just didn’t feel quite finished (in the done sense). Since this has the feeling of a precision bass jr. (it’s worth noting that the Warmoth bodies for the shorter scales are smaller in width and height), I based the pickguard design on a Les Paul Jr. It’s made from walnut, which I ebonized. After letting a steel wool pad dissolve in vinegar, that concoction will react with the tannins in the wood, turning them black. With some light wire brushing you can also pull out the original wood color in the softer grain. It makes for a pretty beautiful finish.
That was the Dynamo Bass version one. It was quite luxurious to simply open a box, see that all the hard parts were done and start on the fun stuff. After a year of playing, it underwent some mods and has remained the same since. How I got there involves a couple of other basses… to be discussed at a later date.
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