In 1991 I studied music for a year, and while having the electric bass
as my main instrument I also hired an acoustic upright ('doghouse'),
which I liked playing a lot, and took some lessons on it.
Ever since that I've got this itch to one day get myself a 'doghouse',
but never got around finding, nor having a sufficient financial situation.
So in Y2K it suddenly 'hit' me, and I asked myself, "Why don't I build my own Electric Upright Bass" ?
The first thing that really got me going, was me browsing the
Guitar & Bass Buyers Guide magazine, in which I found a picture
of a Azola BugBass II, and what can I
say...
Just like a flick of a switch, I fell in love.
I knew this would be a large and time consuming project, but I just
ignored that and bought me some wood, four blocks of alder for the body
and four pieces of maple for the neck. I had no idea of where to get
hold of some ebony for the fingerboard so I e-mailed a guitar builder
and asked him, and he was more than willing to help me out.
Check out his web site Henneken
Archtops.
So he delivered me a completely finished fingerboard in ebony along
with a Dresden bridge, nut and Thomastik Infield Spirocore strings.
He recommended these strings, since I told him I was planning to install
a
magnetic pickup on the EUB, which I still haven't got around to do,
because my piezos works so damn fine.
Anyway...
When I got the parts the fingerboard had a ridge running lengthwise
thru the board just between the E- and A-strings, so if I would have
been able to play the bass, I would have been forced to press the E-string
against the ingerboard in a different angle than the rest of the strings.
So I e-mailed Markku and asked him about it, and he said that the ridge
makes the fingerboard somehow more playable, especially if your not
used to a normal board it would'nt be a great deal easier to get used
to the ridge.
I immediately thought that I'd put the planner on it, since the fingerboard
in itself, seemed to be too thick, but I decided to at least try to play the
assembled bass first.
