Basses (1/3) ~ Luthiery Laboratories

Basses (1/3)

Audiovox 736 Replica Bass

Audiovox Gibson-style Bass

Audiovox Ukulele Bass

Audiovox Fretless Bass

Audiovox Danelectro-style Bass

Audiovox Electric Upright Bass

BC Rich "Osprey" Bass

Brownsville Violin Bass

Cowbell Bass

Danelectro Silvertone 1443 Bass

Danelectro Pro-1 Bass

Gibson Fenderbird Bass 1

Gibson Fenderbird Bass 2

Gibson Reverse Fenderbird Bass

Kubicki Bass

Mosrite Bass

Rickenbacker 325 Bass 1

Rickenbacker 325 Bass 2

Rickenbacker 325 Bass 3

Rickenbacker 4001 Bass 1

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Audiovox 736 Bass

This was my first Audiovox project. Below is the original walnut body, fairly true to the original. My goal was to build the closest possible reproduction of the original Tutmarc Audiovox with modern parts. The ergonomics were very bad, much like a Steinberger. The headstock geometry is also not great, you can see how two of the tuners are reversed to make it work. These are expensive Gotoh tuners that are tight enough to work in reverse; I wouldn't try this with Chinese cheapies.

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Audiovox Danelectro-Style Bass

This one is a body-twin to the 12-string, but with a 30" bass neck. Everything about it is Danelectro - lipstick pickups wired in series, stacked controls, masonite pickguard, Danelectro bridge. The body is masonite over chambered plywood, oil-based poly over pearl paint.

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Audiovox Electric Upright Bass

This is the biggest of the Audiovoxes, weighing in at a full 12 pounds, with a 36" scale. The neck is a Brazilian Cherry (Jatoba) floorboard over maple, with a straight cutout headstock. There are over 100 marker dots. The body is veneered masonite over solid plywood, with Danelectro-style Tolex binding. There are also strap buttons, this instrument can be played vertically or horizontally.

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Audiovox Fretless Bass

This one is almost identical in construction to the Danelectro-style - masonite over chambered plywood body, masonite pickguard. The neck is purpleheart over maple, with plastic fret lines. The soundhole merely serves as a pickup mount, and the pickup was just insurance against never getting the intended piezo system to work. Eventually, I did get it to work, the piezo is incorporated in a modified bridge, and sounds great. 30" scale.

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Audiovox Solid-Body Bass

Together with the guitar, this was the first of my modified Audiovox design to be completed. Solid poplar bodies, stained to look like walnut, with single bindings. Each pickguard used an entire sheet of material; only these two got the pearl treatment, the rest got much less expensive masonite pickguards.

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Audiovox Uke Bass

This bass is a 21" scale, with a piezo saddle mounted in an adjustable bridge. The soundhole is just for looks. The strings are metal-wound Kalas. The fretboard is cut out of the ugliest piece of wood I ever received. For such a small neck, I managed to cut around most of the ugly, and the result isn't half bad.

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Brownsville Violin Bass

This is probably the cheapest violin bass on earth, and I got a discount on top of that because it had a persistent buzz that turned out to be a bad string. "Brownsville" is a house brand for Sam Ash, where I bought it on a whim. The scale is about 30.5". It's a beauty, isn't it?

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Cherry Fenderbird

For those of you who thought my Stratocaster bass was an abomination, feast your eyes on this. The MusicmanBird. ThunderJazzRay. FenderManBird. I just call it FenderBird #2.

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Cowbell Bass Guitar

Built as a testbed for a number of ideas:

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Danelectro Longhorn Bass

This is an Evets '90s-vintage original reissue, made in Korea. These reissues are actually much better instruments than the originals from the 1960s. While a copper-burst would be more authentic, I like the sky blue better. The newer reissues are even more true to the originals.

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Basses

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May 20, 2026

WordPress 7.0

May 20, 2026

I cringe whenever I see a new major version number of WordPress - what did they break this time? But you can't hold back the tide, so with some trepidation I installed it on a test site, and to my surprise, I found nothing wrong. The changes are all on the back-end, and completely unnecessary, like animated menus. The people in charge must be six-year-olds in need of entertainment.

Then I tested the editor, and not at all to my surprise I found they had broken it in a way that shows just how little they test things or care. Fortunately I was able to fix it with a little more of my own code. That is the risk you take when you use a platform like WordPress. Someday they may break something I can't fix.

Of course, they also added support for AI. At least that is disabled by default, and it is going to stay that way. I am not even curious, crusty old curmudgeon that I am.