Doing Things Wrong

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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These are the two main templates I used to build all the Audiovoxen. The image is straight from the camera, simply save it and print it out at the proper scale. The dimensions of the body template are 17" long and 11-1/2" wide. The overall length of the headstock template is 10-7/8". The neck pocket is Fender-standard.

This is my own original design, it is inspired by the old Audiovox, but not copied from it. My original design was an accurate copy, and it didn't work very well. Therefore, nothing needs to be exact if you want to build one of these, there are no official factory specifications.