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The 4 String Bass
The four string version seen in the majority of videos is basically a
custom jazz bass. When chatting through the design with Jon, I was
basically after a jazz bass with plenty of grunt!
The construction is a classic swamp ash body, but the capping wood is a piece of rotten maple. It looked terrible when we pulled it out of the wood pile, but he back fills all of the holes with ebony dust, hence the beautiful dark pattern that you can see.
The neck is a bolt on 5 piece laminate of maple and wenge with a Birdseye maple fingerboard. The profile shape is based on an early 70's jazz.
In terms of pickups I chose EMG's and spacing is classic 70's jazz.
In particular these are the extended range series with a DC model in the neck and a CS model in the bridge.
Both basically have two individual single coils under the plastic and
help to give the bass a hearty growl in the bridge, yet when soloed to
the neck pickup the bass sounds smooth and buttery.
One thing
that really pointed me towards Jon as a luthier is that he designs his
own preamps and this is what's installed in this bass.
Jon
is a real advocate on making a transparent sounding preamp that allows
the natural sound and combination of pickups and wood choice to speak
out.
It's
too common nowadays for instruments to use lovely choices of wood and
then have a preamp that allows you to boost the bass by 18db!!!
The 5 String Bass
If you'd like to see more of Jon's work then please visit his website:
