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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Fretboard Radius Blocks

I make all my fretboards 12 inches, guitar or bass, fretted or fretless. I just like that, and also, it doesn't matter that much as long as you stay away from the extremes. 12-inches is a nice comfortable curve for chording on, and also doesn't require as much work and mess to carve as a smaller radius. I find it is a good compromise overall. I can make a 12-inch radius from flat pretty successfully with just a sanding block. StewMac's pre-radiused boards are 16-inches and are quick and easy to re-radius to 12. Although I made tooling for everything from 7 to 16, I don't use any of it. Luckily, I made extra tooling for 12 inches before I broke down the manufacturing plant.

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