Ergonomics, strap on a bassguitar and stay happy!

Most guitarists complain about the strain it gives to play their guitar all night long.
Complaints range from muscle-ache to severe chronic tendenitis. A good guitar design takes this in to account by reducing the weight, balancing it and by placing knobs and tuners so you can reach and turn them easily. Have a look at the grandfather of bassguitars, the Fender JB and you'll notice at least one flaw quickly: tuner knobs are placed in such a way that it is very hard on the shoulder to turn them in that angle. My Tune solves this partially by placing the tuner knobs angled back. Because I designed my headstock slotted I am now able to place the tuners in a zero degree angle for quick and easy tuning. Inspiration for this choice is the double bass headstock. Later on I discovered the site of the Bolin NS5 bassguitar, so I am not the first to do this. Anyway this blog is not about me as an inventor...

Shaping the body

My body

Well.....not mine but the guitars body, really! One piece to get optimal soundwave resonance. Big manufacturers often use more pieces to counteract the wood working. It is a lot cheaper aswell to use small common pieces instead of one single cut piece. But by creating "fault lines" transmision of soundwaves is dispersed and resonance energy of high frequencies will be absorbed.
So I am taking a calculated risk buying a nice flat sawn piece from a renowned woodmill, "the arnhemse fijnhout handel". It has been with me since september and it is still running straight. Thumbs up!! I chose honduran mahogany because it is one of the best tonewoods if you are looking for a full-bodied sound. Cutting the piece and shaping it is a real challenge. It constantly scares me to ruin it by sanding away to much. Has not happened though: very small steps and taking all the time you need is the secret here. I'll post a picture or two soon.

Here you see the mahogany with the 210 array, for which I have built a transmissionline cabinet.
Another project I'll show you later.

here it is freshly sawn in front of my other (tune) bass

start

Actually started in september buying a wonderfull piece of mahogany to start building a bassguitar. The goal is to end up with the best instrument I can get.

The best neck..

Sustain is nice but who holds down a note for 5 minutes in any song? So, above all, you need TONE and ATTACK. This means bolted, not neck through. No dead spots or warped neck. This means carbon trussrod. Maple neck and rosewood fretboard. 5 string sounds better when you get a longer 35" scale. Angled back +-12 degrees supports a better tone/sustain aswell. But it makes the glued peghead a weakpoint mechanically. My design solves this. And makes tuning a lot easier as I will explain later.
If you want a neck like this VOX HUMANA, holland is the place to be! They have developed their own fabrication of the carbon rods and they are fine, skillfull guitarbuilders. Furthermore, they can build one offs like my design. To get a good soundtransfer between neck and body I opt for a multiple screw (6-8) extra large connecting surface.

New idea, new problem!

So I was going to save heaps of money! Should be easy to connect a stick, board and some strings together forming the boutique instrument I was dreaming about. Not true! You need help with these kind of things. In my case I turned to a book by Martin Koch, 'building electric guitars'. I decided make the body myself and leave the building of the neck to a specialist.

The story

I decided to get a new bass and wanted a 5-string. It had to be really good. Turned out those things do not come cheap. I found out Jens Ritter, a gifted luthier builds not only beautiful basses but totally out of my league as well. Others like Pedulla or De Gier don't come far behind pricewise. Well, if you can't buy it, make it!