Matthew Kents Custom Built Bass
The body was made of two laminated pieces of African mahogany. The neck and fretboard are made from some sweet wenge (though it's quite a mother to work with), all of the same piece of wood with the fretboard just a 1/4" slab sliced off for the fretboard. I overlaid the headstock with a thin piece of padauk. Coincidentally, all of the wood is african...go figure. I got all the wood at a specialty wood store in Calgary, AB. I spent a couple of hours just looking through a store full of wood and that's what I came away with. My friend specially requested wenge, though, so I made sure to grab some of that. The wood cost about $80 U.S., which I thought was pretty good.

For the design stage, professor Jensen and I just bought a big piece of paper and drew out some schematics of the whole thing. What we already knew we wanted was a five-string bass, music man p.u., and a fat bridge (which later became a bit slimmer accidentally). The body and headstock shape were just made up, though the headstock looks Yamaha-like and the body somewhat Warwick like. I remembered seeing a Warmoth Gecko bass with the angled neck-body joint and I said " That makes so much more sense than doing it the traditional way..." So I did.

I got most of the hardware from Warmoth, some from Luthiers mercantile Inc., and the bridge from Custom Shop Parts in Florida. The parts totaled about $300, which was pretty good.

I cut the body out with a jig saw...oh yes, a jig saw...and sanded it to shape with a sanding drum in a drill press. All the planing and such was done using some other guys tools, which was sweet. In any event, I cut a slab off the neck for the fretboard and put in a two-way adjustable truss rod and two steel stiffening rods. For the headstock I attached it (as shown) under the fretboard, as opposed to under the neck piece, which improves strength and stability. I also overlaid the headstock with the padauk before attaching it. I cut the neck out with, again, a jig saw and sanded to shape.

I had no experience routing, so when I routed the neck pocket, it was a bit too big and had to be filled in on the one side. But it still fits awesome. For fretting, I just taped the board and marked off a 35" scale and cut the slots with a $7 saw I got at a hobby store. I hammered the frets in with a shot filled rubber hammer and used some average glue for extra stability. I don't have any awesome fret-files so I hand dressed all the frets using various grades of wet/dry sandpaper...that took frickn' hours!!! But they turned out awesomely.

I routed all the cavities out and did the remaining bits: drilled holes for tuners, put side dots in, nut work, etc. It took two tries to get the bridge position correct as the first time was a bit too close. Where the bridge is located, the body's actually routed down and curved down to produce a cool visual effect and strings that are quite close to the body. This wasn't intentional, but it just ended up that way after a series of events to get the best action possible. I think it's kind of cool, but I don't know if I'll repeat it a lot...?

For finishing I used Danish oil and beeswax and just coated everything. Oh, baby did that make it look really awesome. Oh, and the truss rod cover was a small piece of mahogany treated in the same fashion. And I just stuck some padauk on the control cavity for the cover just because it looked cool.

And there you have it...more or less...Oh, and for my "Viking" logo, I played around with some different designs and burned it into the headstock using a really hot soldering iron. Presto!

Matthew