Breather Bass

BigJay

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The images you are about to see may be shocking to some of you! :D What we have here is a bass I made for my brother, it features a body made from a 50's Cadillac air breather, drawer pull tailpiece, skeleton key tuners, brass watch cog fretboard inlays and fret position markers, and a neck carved from a 100+ yr old pine 2x4 from a remodel job I did. Since the pictures I have added a tone monster dual piezo pickup w/ preamp, and am working on closing in the back and cutting f holes in the top to make it louder acousticly. I was really pleased with the sound of this thing when plugged in to an amp. I had a lot of fun making it and now I've decided I want to make more instruments, both unique and more traditional.

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Now that takes some imagination, fascinating. I only did a simple conversion of an Epiphone Les Paul Express 22" scale guitar to a bass by just changing the nut, strings, bridge and drilling string-through holes.

(Suggestion, to have your photos not break up the text, add two carriage returns after the last word and period: "traditional. CR CR images")
 
This is really cool looking, and has a very retro-mechanical steampunk look to it, without being overtly or unnecessarily ornate.

How did you get the skeleton keys as tuner buttons? (or can you buy ones already made like that?)
 
Beyond cool! Hope you shared this with Cigar Box Nation
 
Thanks guys.

Booli I made the tuner buttons by cutting off some repro keys, then drilling and filing them out to fit the tuner shaft, then secured with a little ca glue. I also popped off the back cover on the tuners leaving the gears exposed for easy servicing should one of the string posts ever break.

Phil I haven't shared it on there yet, but I will.
 
Here is an update of my most recent work to it.

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looks great - that would totally be at home in an episode of 'FireFly' (which was sadly discontinued/cancelled)

also makes me think that if Gene Simmons was a bass player in the 1860s, he would PLAY this^ bass :) as it reminds me of his axe-shaped bass

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