THE DYNAMO BASS: Version One

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.

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.

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 multitudes of 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.

When it comes to the shorter scales, medium and proper short there are plenty of options, but you’ll have to settle with one width at the string nut. This feels a little narrow for me at medium scale, but somehow feels pretty good at short scale.

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. It’s also worth noting that the Warmoth bodies for the shorter scales are smaller. So while the body looks like a P-Bass it’s considerably smaller in width and height.

My plan was to finish this as something that looked like it could be a part 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.

It was quite luxurious to simply open a box, see that all the hard parts were done and start on the fun stuff. However, I made a couple of things in a walnut pickguard (seemed like it needed something), a brass string nut while also removing a chunk of the headstock. I really like the simplicity of the Fender’s first precision bass headstock — kind of Telecaster adjacent.

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.

It lived like this for a while, but I felt like it needed another element. It just didn’t feel quite finished. Since this has the feeling of a precision bass jr., I based the pickguard design on a Les Paul Jr. It’s made from walnut, which I’ve 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 when you can take a close, detailed look.

That was the Dynamo Bass version one. 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.