Gumbo!

What do you get when you cross:

with:

Give up? The Gumbo bass!

As a surprise, I thought I'd put my newly acquired hand skills to work and build a new instrument for my lady. Over the course of the last 4 months, I quietly squeezed in a few minutes here and there to finish what I'm calling the Gumbo bass: a 30" short scale bass version of Bo Diddley's "Jupiter Thunderbird" guitar. It's finished in a Gumby-esque candy apple green and outfitted with a hotrod style single volume pot to jack setup. My goal was to make a simple, compact and killer looking bass. Christmas came too soon for this project so I just gave it to Carolyn Thursday night. There was much rejoicing.

I took some photos of the build process here and there. Let's start with a look at the current "Billy-Bo Jupiter Thunderbird" guitar currently made by Gretsch:

My Lady Bass has long been a fan of this space age shape. It makes me think of something from a Flash Gordon serial. It's futuristic and vintage at the same time. I wanted to make this thing as light weight and resonant as possible so I chambered the body, removing pockets of wood from the mahogany body blank before gluing on a 1/4" maple top. Below, a photo of the chambered body (left) and the chamber template I made (right):

I left the center solid to mount the pickup and bridge and create a solid line of wood from the nut to the saddle. The chambered body close up:

The top glued up:

The body cut out, top glued on and edges rounded over:

Another angle:

Close up of the "G" headstock inlay:

The neck glued up to the body:

I did a pre-finish mock up to make sure all the parts fit. The unusual pickup is made by Hammon Engineering. It's a copy of the Hagstrom single coil bass pickup from the '60s. The thing sounds fat and juicy and looks dynamite. Heck, it's larger than the bridge! The mock up:

The candy apple green finish was the toughest part of this project. To achieve the iridescent look, I sprayed a layer of gold and then a layer of green on top. This was a technique Fender borrowed from the auto industry in the late '50s. Photos don't do the deep green justice but here's a shot of the newly minted bass in the middle of the lacquering process:

After a couple weeks of curing time, the bass was ready for final buff and assembly. I surprised Carolyn with it the other night. Now THAT was fun! Here she is opening the case:

Playing it for the first time:

Some outdoor glamor shots:

I built this with a string-through-the-body design a la Fender's Telecaster. It's kind of small but you can just make out the string ferrules on the back on the bass. The bass features a 30" scale length as opposed to the standard 34" for ease of playing with small hands. The string-through design counter acts some of the 'flubby' tone you might get with a short scale length. The best of both worlds! View of the back:

In the case:

On to the next one!

NAMM '10

Well dang, what a weekend!

Finally made it to a NAMM show and what a spectacle it was. NAMM is held annually at the Anaheim Convention Center in LA. It runs for 4 days and comprises virtually all of the mid to major level music merchants in the US. There are so many exhibits you can walk around for 4 days and not see everything. Unbelievable in size and scope, tons of new products available and the people watching was insane. Aside from trying to take in all the musical gear, I saw many a celebrity rocker (and some not so much), met Duane Eddy, Kedzie Matthews & Slash, hobnobbed with some of the guitar world's cognoscenti and finally made it to one of Deke Dickerson's Guitar Geek Festivals. A solid weekend! Some highlights:

Outside the convention center:

A wall of Fender's new La Carbonita model: (a super simple Telecaster style guitar with one TV Jones/Gretsch pickup model built in the Custom Shop... so it's mega expensive, around $5K.) You gotta hand it to Fender for knowing how to make money. Granted, these look like pretty sweet machines.

Tele man Jim Campilongo shows off his new signature model: a copy of his '59 top loader. A feather light instrument! Wish I had actually heard him play it:

Across the way at the Gretsch booth, the new Eddie Cochran 6120 model was in glass along with a host of goodies that come with uber collectible guitar:

Bob Brozman was hanging out and noodling at the National Reso-Phonic booth. He's an amazing musician, entertainer and ethnomusicologist. He literally wrote the book on the history of the National resonator guitar. He'd start a tune on a Style 1 roundneck:

and mid-song would switch to a square neck without missing a beat. Amazing:

Adam West's Batmobile was at the Hallmark booth!

Hallmark/Batmobile Guitar Hero controller:

Below, Martin's new bartione acoustic. I have a soft spot for baritone guitars. Martin's sounded beautiful! Note the side port:

Gross: double neck acoustic Flying V with 12/6 string necks. So staggering was this tasteless feat of idiocy that I failed to notice the acoustic Explorer to the left:

Dean Zelinksky is known for building pointy, hair-band-style guitars. He had a cool new design at the show though, a sort of Gibson ES-335 style electric. The edges of the guitar were tapered down to a super thin 1/4 inch or so, thickening up in the center of the body where the pickups and hardware were mounted. Kinda like one of a single pack Advil: skinny on the edges with a plump center, if you follow.

Zelinsky knows how to make a splash. Check out the real attention grabber at his booth:

More novelty time: triangle shaped guitar speaker cabinets?

Pretty cool looking I guess. Problem is, what if you want just one? Do you just lean the head on the side of it or something? Sheesh...

Onwards then to Stevie Vai frozen in carbonite:

Silly.

Celebrity highlight #1: My pal, Tommy Rockstar, who is an old friend of Mr Brownstone, waited on line with me to meet Slash. I credit Slash with getting me started on the guitar. The first song I learned to play was "Don't Cry" by Guns n' Roses. I was thirteen and it changed everything! Pretty cool to finally meet the guy. Tommy was even more exited though. He had Slash autograph his arm:

...and then promptly had the autograph tattooed!!

wow... that's some real GnR love.

So then I was off to Deke's 7th Annual Guitar Geek Festival:

I couldn't possibly document the whole thing but if you're interested, check out Tim aka Proteus' coverage here at the Gretsch Pages. I'll just include a couple cool shots. Below is the crude home made double neck lap steel that Speedy West played before getting his Bigsby steel guitar... talk about moving on up! The sign says "do not touch." I touched... I had to! Sorry, Deke.

Terry N. McArthur built Deke's iconic double neck guitar in 1958 when he was just seventeen. With some help from none other than Semie Moseley, Terry went about copying the guitars played by his idols, Joe Maphis and Larry Collins. Terry recently got back into guitar building after retiring from a career as a cabinet builder. Here are a few of his wonderfully over the top instruments:

Terry playing a guitar made by Larry Collins in the '50s:

Another highlight from Deke's guitar museum, Scotty Moore's Echosonic amp! This was the amp that was there to record Elvis' early hits on Sun Records. WOW!!! It has a built in tape delay, THE requisite sound effect for rockabilly tone. Chet Atkins also used one of these amplifiers to record his hit version of, "Mr Sandman." Leave it to Deke to come into possession of this historic piece of music history.

Saving the best for last, I was lucky enough to chat with Mr TONE, Duane Eddy for a couple minutes. The fella got up and played an incredible set of his instrumental hits. It was jaw dropping. Duane Eddy: Twang's the Thang! ~House of Twang~ itself is named as a tip of the cap to Duane. It was truly one of the great guitar extravaganzas that I've ever witnessed. Good to see him back playing a Gretsch 6120 DSV... and you wonder why I'm so obsessed by these guitars. He was plugged into a couple early '60s Fender Dual Showman amps. (Guitar Geek side note: Tim/Proteus, who covered the Deke show as well as the Gretsch booth at NAMM, has a side business crafting replacement bridges for the modern Gretsch fleet. His "Tru-Arc" bridges accurately match the fingerboard radius of the various models currently made by Gretsch. Until now, some of the Gretsch guitars suffered from minor intonation issues since they were outfitted with a standard radius bridge that may or may not have matched the fingerboard radius. The Tru-Arc solves these tuning problems as they are available in a variety of radii depending on the model at hand. The Tru-Arc has been getting rave reviews but has yet to have a celebrity endorsement, until now: Duane had one outfitted on his 6120 that night! What more convincing could you need? Sold! Congrats to Tim for reaching milestone. Exhaustive coverage of Duane's set here.)

Duane Eddy, his Gretsch and me:

Deke backing up Duane:

After all that, you'd think I'd be done with my guitar geeking a good while.

Fear not, readers!

Much more to come...

Acoustic Neck Glue Up

With just three weeks to go before graduating RV, we have a LOT to do! This last week was spent buffing the acoustic and final fitting the neck to the body. I left the neck to glue up over the weekend so tomorrow morning, I'll have a guitar!

Well... almost.

I still have to fret the neck, make and install the bridge, cut a nut and saddle, make the pickguard and tweak the final setup. With guitar repair guru, Frank Ford, coming by school for a two day lecture this week and the NAMM show next weekend, time is on short supply. (Guitar Geeks will also love Frank's website, FRETS.com and the store he runs, Gryphon Strings.)

Here's a shot of the wedge on the butt of the acoustic: Indian rosewood back and sides with matching rosewood binding. The light strip is maple purfling which, with the matched rosewood binding/back & sides, gives the guitar a sharp pinstriped look. Below, an early photo of fitting the wedge followed by a shot of the final product, lacquered and buffed to a mirror sheen:

Below are two shots of the neck gluing up to the body. The heel bolts to the neck block with two 2" bolts accessed through the sound hole. Glue is only used to adhere the fingerboard to the top of the guitar. Future serviceability is the name of the game with this style neck joint, as opposed to a traditional dovetail joint. Most guitars will inevitably need a neck reset at some point in their lives. A reset entails completely removing the neck from the body and reassessing the neck angle. With a dovetail joint, you have a ton of glue to deal with which means a more involved process of steaming off the neck. The process goes much smoother if you only have glue beneath the fingerboard to deal with.