Luthiery Laboratories

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Audiovox Electric Upright Bass (1/9)

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.

This bass has a 5-string magnetic pickup and dual bridge-mounted guitar piezos with a powered impedance buffer. The floating bridge is fully adjustable by 1/4-20 knurled wheels. The strings are Rotosound TruBass RS88, which give a good imitation of an acoustic bass.

The saddle and string nut are clear acrylic, the string anchor is a drawer pull, and the rest of the parts are from scrap, matching the neck. The veneer is bees-wing eucalyptus, stained dark and finished in UV-cure polyurethane. The long cello-style endpin retracts all the way into the neck pocket. It stands 5'7" fully extended.

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All Built, Audiovox, Basses, Body - Built, Body - Masonite/Plywood, Body - Solid, Body - Tolex Binding, Electronics - Active, Electronics - Piezo, Neck - Built, Neck - Fretless, Projects, X-Long-Scale Basses,

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Finishing

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Black Polyurethane body. This is during the polishing process, you can see it is not even clean. The front came out like black glass. I smoothed the orange-peel with 1500 grit wet, then 2000 and 3000. Then I switched to the random orbital with a red sponge cutting pad and Turtle Wax rubbing compound that claims to remove 1200 scratches. Shouldn't be any 1200 scratches, since I started with 1500. That came out shiny, but with swirl marks in the light. Then I switched to another red cutting pad with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound, and finally a softer yellow pad with the same Meguiar's. At that point, it was pretty much a factory finish. I didn't work as hard on the back, it is nice, but will soon enough encounter a zipper or belt buckle, so the effort would be wasted.

More: Finishing ...

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