Finally, my 5-string bass, which was interrupted by any number of other projects and that greatest interrupter of all, work.
This is the completed bass. It's a semi-hollow body, with top and back of maple, maple center core, bent wenge sides, mahogany kerfing. The neck is maple and wenge, with an ebony fretboard. It has two two-way truss rods inside carbon fiber U-channels from LMI. An additional piece of carbon fiber reinforces the headstock. It starts under the center veneer of wenge and tapers down to nothing just beyond the second fret. It's very stiff and rather heavy--nine lb.
The pickups are Carvin HB-5 and HN50 (stacked humbucker), and the controls are vol-blend-tone. The pickups are physically modified for mounting in the hollow part of the body instead of in a routed cavity in a solid body. All of the electronics went in through the bridge pickup cavity; there's no access port on the back. The bridge is Schaller.
As with my first bass,
The body is angled,
so that it's narrower at the edges than the middle,
giving many of the comforts of a carved bass, but with a hollow body. This
design makes the body thicker where it rests on your leg, thinner where your
arm goes over it. The treble side of the bass has less angle than the bass
side, which accentuates the asymmetry. The bridge sits in a machined flat
spot.
Here's the back
of the bass. I didn't get a good angle to show the figuring in the wood, but
it's large, and looks like ribs. The bass is finished with Tru-Oil on the
body and headstock, which are quite glossy. I didn't like the way Tru-Oil
felt on the neck, however, so I sanded it off and refinished it with Minwax
Antique Oil Finish. The neck now has a very satiny, non-sticky feel; no drag
at all. The neck has four barrel nuts embedded in the CF U-channels, and
1/4"-20 knockdown bolts holding it to the body.
If you want to go inside the hollow body or see more details on the neck, truss rods and CF reinforcement, click the appropriate links below: