Walnut top basses

[Peter Wilcox]

Just finished a couple of basses. The tops are single piece walnut I cut out years ago from a milling offcut. Everything on these is from stuff on hand, except the black tuners and neck plate I bought to fit with the color scheme. Bodies are chambered, alder with walnut strips, as are the necks - fret boards are cocobolo. Stacked pots for tone and volume, strat type jacks, pickups and hardware from China. One top had a knot hole in the middle, so I enlarged it and inlaid a Mexican 5 peso coin. Lots of small defects in much of the wood but that's OK by me - consistent with my abilities.

[Karl Wicklund]

You call it a defect, I call it character.
The coin is cool. Do I remember you posting another coin inlay?

[Peter Wilcox]

Do I remember you posting another coin inlay?

I've inlaid coins, mostly Mexican but 2 Indian head pennies, in all the instruments I've made the last several years, mostly in the headstock. Easy to do once I matched drill bits with coin diameters.

[Philip Donovan]

Love that Walnut, looks beautiful as does both basses as a whole.

My first and only guitar build was an all Walnut body but, not with the burly complexity that yours has.

One of our Engineering managers here is also a good wood worker who upon my report of making a shameful router mistake told me that a mistake can be transformed into a design element. And it appears you did very well with that tactic. My router leaned over while doing a 1/4" round over and made a horrible gully in the side of the body. So, I forstner bitted a 1/2" half round bisecting the body's edge and glued in a walnut plug, routed and sanded it back down to the body. I still see a mistake cover up but everyone else will see an interesting wood/art feature.

Very nice basses indeed.

Best,
Phil D.

[Peter Wilcox]

Thanks for the kind words, Philip. I am a physician (now retired) and along those same lines, I was taught (semi-jokingly) that when doing a procedure on an awake patient, and a mistake is made, you forcefully say "There!", instead of "oops."