# My custom-made bass from start to finish



## Guest

In January of 2014, I commissioned my own double bass from a luthier in Muskegon, MI. Generally, when a student takes on an instructor, that student also generally takes on that instructor's luthier. A luthier is, of course, a maker of stringed instruments--the root of luthier is lute (unless you're an old girlfriend I once had who, when I said that there's nothing I admire more than a good luthier, replied, "I thought you were an atheist.")

If you play a member of the violin family, you need to have a luthier because it takes someone who specializes in violins to service them. You generally cannot take your cello to the local music store for work because nobody there is likely to be qualified. They may have a guitar tech or two but a violin tech is unlikely and a double bass tech is unlikely in the sense of "totally forget it--ain't happenin'." There are a lot of violin luthiers around but you likely won't find one on your own. They seem to work on word-of-mouth. So you have to know someone who knows one and that will generally be an instructor.

The luthier in this case is Dan. I met Dan through my instructor, Rich. Rich met Dan through his instructor, Robert Gladstone, who was the principal bassist of the Detroit Symphony (or DSO) for some 36 years. Dan used to re-hair Mr. Gladstone's bows. Mr. Gladstone was an exacting teacher who demanded perfection so for him to go to Dan shows how good Dan's services are. Dan made violins then (and plays violin as well) but he did not make basses. But one day, he told Rich he was going to start making basses and Rich got the very first bass that Dan ever built and it is a thing of beauty. I've played it many times:










When I got to the point in my development that the bass I was using was no longer adequate, I began looking around for a better axe. Either it wasn't the quality I wanted or it had the quality but it was too expensive--I mean REALLY expensive. So I asked Rich about having Dan make me one. He gave me Dan's card and we talked. He laid out the price--expensive--but not impossible to afford. He asked me to come out and see him and we'd talk and gave directions.

Dan's studio has no signs, there are no ads. He works, as far as I know, strictly by word of mouth only. One gets off US31 and takes a long, long road west--almost to the shore of Lake Michigan. It gets very woody out that way--Dan is woodsy guy who likes to hunt. Then you turn down this other road and look for this little hacienda-type motel with a central office and detached cottages. The first cottage is Dan's studio. The guy who owns it rents out these cottages rather than running it as a motel. This is where Dan does all his work. Inside, it's kind of like a 17th century shop--half-finished violins hanging from the ceiling, different types of wood stacked all over the place, Bunsen burners, bunches of horsehair for bows, a wood-burning stove supplies the only heat.

We sat down and I told him what I wanted--a gamben-form body medieval European motifs. A gamben-form bass doesn't have violin corners on it. Rich's bass shown above has violin corners but a gamben-form is featureless at the corners. I just think that's a better look for a bass. After we talked, looked at some photos and examined some wood, we had it down and I went back to Detroit.

Dan began sending me photos of his progress:


















The sides of violin are called the ribs. Dan showed me a beautiful maple he said would make beautiful ribs and after examining it, I said okay.


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## Guest

Belly plate made of European spruce.









Purfling added.


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## KenOC

Good Lord, this is impressive! Can you share the economics of this undertaking?


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## Guest

Carving out the belly plate. This part requires one to be meticulous. The plate is periodically tapped by the luthier who listens for a ping at a specific pitch and it must be perfect.









F-holes carved in belly after the carving out is completed.









Belly, back and ribs glued together.









For the scroll, I wanted a knight's helmet. Dan sent me this photo and asked if I wanted a grille added to the visor. I said yes.









Grille added. Armed and ready for bass.


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## elgar's ghost

Was that thread you started about oversized basses removed?


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## Guest

Neck attached to body, fingerboard (ebony) attached to neck. Everything is clamped in place while the glue dries. The glues are strong but at certain joints, it is fairly weak. You hit it with a heat gun and can separate that joint. If you need work done or want to put on a new neck, the luthier wants a nice, easy joint to disassemble. That's why you NEVER leave a stringed instrument in a hot car--melt that glue right down!!









Purfling added to back.

KenOC, Dan's base price for a bass is $12,000--no less. But you'll pay more because that price doesn't include strings (about $140) or a pickup (good ones are several hundred dollars). Plus any added work such as the headstock cost me more than a standard scroll. Then there's the bow which is $3500. This sounds like a lot but it's actually very cheap. I've seen lesser basses in New York on sale for $125,000!!!

Now we shall see the finished product.


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## Guest

elgars ghost said:


> Was that thread you started about oversized basses removed?


I don't believe so. It's in this folder "Gigantic Basses."


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## elgar's ghost

Victor Redseal said:


> I don't believe so. It's in this folder "Gigantic Basses."


My mistake - I didn't go back far enough. This is all good stuff.


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## Guest

The bass was finished a year later--January of 2015. I drove down with Rich to pick it up. The weather was horrible and I don't know how we didn't end up in an accident. The roads were atrocious. When we got back on our side the state, we went to Rich's house and he held up the bass so I could take photos.



























During the late summer of 2014, Dan and his band went to France and he sent me photos. One showed this strange kind of cross carved on a wall. I went online and found this cool motif that used that cross so I emailed Dan back and asked if he could put that on my bass. This is called an Occitan cross--the official seal of Count Raymond V of Toulouse dating from 1165. Occitania is a region in southern Europe--mainly France. I wanted my bass to have medieval themes. I wanted it carved but he said that that would compromise the wood. He said he could inlay it but that it would be super expensive. He said he knew a lady that oil-painted on instruments which he would varnish o'er to make them permanent. So I said ok.









She thought the cross looked lonely so she added a fleur-de-lys at the top and bottom which look really nice. Plus it's in keeping with the medieval French theme. That tacked about another $500 onto the price but it was worth it.


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## Guest




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## Guest

Dan suggested he could carve the tailpiece to resemble a castle tower with battlements. I had no idea what he was talking about but said go for it because it sounded interesting. Glad I did. Cool, eh?









Dan carves his own bridges as well. I ordered a Yamahiko pickup from Japan--generally considered the best on the market--for $700 and had him install it. It's a special fit on the bridge that requires a luthier to install. I figure if I'm shelling this amount for a bass, no sense getting skimpy POS pickup. The strings are Helicore hybid lights.









I told Dan I wanted the varnish to be color of a monk's tunic. He had no idea what I was talking about so i sent him some pics. He mixed up this shade of brown that had an antique look to it. He studied how early violins were varnished. They went around the edges following the outline and used a thin coat that allowed the original color of the wood to show through. I had read that even on Strads, hairs from the brush and even small bugs are adhered to the instrument under the coat.


















Looks truly antique.


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## Guest

The camera flash really lights up that gold tint under the varnish.









Check out that crazy grain on the ribs!









The black, rectangular things are ebony bumpers. There are four of them so you can lay the bass on its side without damaging the wood. Another $500 extra but very worth it.









Before I left Muskegon, I had the artist pose with his masterpiece.









Now he's carving me a bow. It's almost done.


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## MoonlightSonata

Wow!

How does it sound?


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## Guest

It's LOUD! On my old bass, playing open E sounded like "thunk." Now it's like "BOOOOOMMMM!!!!" A whole new world!


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## JACE

This is fascinating. Thanks for sharing. :cheers:


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## Kivimees

well, I'm impressed. :tiphat:


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## elgar's ghost

Please don't let this happen...

[video]http://37.media.tumblr.com/31c120b090d260481f174a4d890c9641/tumblr_mocog4KGYf1qzr8nao1_500.gif[/video]


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## hpowders

^^^^How many of those blows can one man tolerate and still remain standing?


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## Guest

My bow is done finally:










The stick is pernambuco wood from Brazil, the top wood for bowmakers because it has the perfect action for stretching the horsehair ribbon. Only a small percentage of it can be used for bows, however, because it is so knotty. That makes it expensive. He handed me a big block of it in his shop when I first commissioned the bow. Quite heavy. He carved the stick from a piece of that block by hand.










The big black thing with the shield-shape on it is called frog. It's the part that moves back and forth to loosen or tighten the hair. This frog is made of mammoth ivory--fossilized ivory--as is the tip. The shield or eschutcheon shape is meant to go with the medieval themes of the bass.


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## Guest

The mortice is made of mother-of-pearl which is a standard on decent bows. Cheap one use ordinary plastic. The collar at end of the mortice is called a ferrule and it not only holds the horsehair but holds it spread out ribbon-like. The mortice covers up the part where the hair is attached and keeps it from dis-attaching.










The bowmaker has to do all kinds of things to the wood to bend it and it has to be tested out. It has to have perfect weight and balance. My other cheapy bow couldn't open up, unlock, the bass's true sound. You might wonder why. After all, it's just pulling a ribbon of horsehair to be drawn over the strings, what difference does the stick and frog make? I can't say for certain but it does. It most definitely does. This bow plays like a hot knife through butter and each string has separation and just sings out. Didn't the other bow do that? No. Bowmaking is a true art and you pay dearly for it--in my case, to the tune of four grand. Yes, you read that right. But, to me, it's definitely worth it.


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## Guest

I had to do it. I had to tattoo my baby on my arm. Took almost 4 hours and last two were quite painful--torture really. Just getting down the outline and the shading was quite enough. By then your skin is inflamed and tender and then he started filling in the colors and that needle is just puncturing the hell out of all that tender, swollen skin. It was especially painful over the wrist bone. By the third hour, where it first felt merely stingingly uncomfortable, it now felt like my skin was being ripped off strip-by-strip. I wanted to stop but that would have made the whole thing pointless so I just had to bear those last two hours and it was excruciating by then.

While he was tattooing me, I was reading my smartphone about tattooing and the article covered the Polynesians. Their tattooing was a test of manhood. Basically, they had this piece of springy wood with a thorn on it which they dipped in dye. They pulled back on the wood to build tension and let it pop forward driving the thorn into the flesh and sewing the drop of dye into the dermis. From the anus through the crotch, over the scrotum and p-nis, was a long continuous design. The abdomen was saved for last was even more incredibly painful then these other areas. It was not mandatory and the person could stop the tattooing at any point but an incomplete tattoo was considered disgraceful and brought shame on one's family so once it started, most guys went through with it to the end. Don't ask me how. They would have thought me a total wuss for complaining about the pain of this one little design on my arm. They covered their entire bodies with them. Our modern tattoo machines sews dozens of beads of dye in 30 seconds but in the Polynesian cultures it was one bead jabbed in at a time--hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.

In Japan, when the samurai class was abolished in the 19th century, the warriors were obliged to burn their armor which was made of heavy wood. The samurai then secretly had tattoos all over their bodies to resemble the armor they had lost. They covered them with clothing and became secret samurai known as yakuza. In many areas, the ordinary folk were more faithful to the yakuza than to the local governments. To stamp this out, the Meiji government outlawed tattooing and wove a stigma around it--it's for barbarians, crooks, prostitutes and other people of ill-repute. To have a tattoo was seen as a major character flaw and no one sporting a tattoo could work in legitimate occupations nor get hired to perform work. So they went into criminal enterprises turning the yakuza into the Japanese mob. Even today, in Japan, you see these rough-looking guys with tattoos, sometimes with missing fingers. They are yakuza and they are nobody to mess with. If a yakuza guy is giving you a hard time--leave. Don't try to play tough guy with him because he won't care what he does to you.

Tattooing is an ancient art. Even Otzi the Iceman was tattooed. In virtually all cultures, sailors and tattoos go together. I was a sailor and got my first tattoo in Philadelphia while in the Navy. So I was initiated long ago. Comes with the territory.


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