Bass In Spalted Maple & Padauk
Wednesday, December 21st, 2005Made by Art Abraham of Artavox Guitars
This bass features a 31″ scale, 1″ thick spalted maple top, padauk back and fretboard, maple/padauk neck. It’s been contoured extensively.
The electronics are active Mighty Mite soapbars with the matching preamp/eq curcuit. The cavity cover has been grain matched. It’s a small instrument, very comfortable but very heavy for it’s size. Very fast for the fingers. I designed it for guitar players.
The head decor is not actually inlaid, but laminated shell glued-on then brought up to level with epoxy/silica. Gold MOP and abalone heart. This head is a bit too small an my later instruments have a slightly larger one that avoids that kink in the E. (this is my first fretted effort).
The fretboard is padauk. I call the inlay pattern “Roman crop circles”. The dots are 3mm MOP, 5mm paua and 7mm black MOP. The lines are birch banding strips on their side glued into fret-sawn kerfs. If you substitute a white MOP dot for an I, a paua dot for a V and the black MOP for an X you’ll see the pattern spells out each marker’s position in roman numerals and the banding eliminates the need for additional side markers! It’s also very simple to do, all you need is a fret-saw and three drill bits!
I build at least two at a time – you never have to wait for glue to dry! I’m now doing some unusual things with neck-through variations and scale length etc.
To check out some more pics of Art’s cool bass, click here.
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