Finished! Through-neck headless

Andyjr1515

Well blow me down with a feather - it's got "Bass Of The Week" on the No Treble ezine!

https://www.notreble.com/buzz/2021/03/01/bass-of-the-week-ajrguitar-mods-swift-triple

It's my fifth!  I think they must think I have a small industrial unit somewhere in the wilds of the UK rather than the small workbench squeezed up against the wall in the cellar! 

Well chuffed

Jazzthat

Well deserved !

Andyjr1515

Jazzthat said:

Well deserved !

Thanks

PeteC

Very well deserved Andy - it’s a remarkable Bass ! 

Andyjr1515

PeteC said:

Very well deserved Andy - it’s a remarkable Bass ! 

Thanks, Pete

Snap

bloody hell. I'm speechless. shine a light, that's amazing.

Andyjr1515

Snap said:

bloody hell. I'm speechless. shine a light, that's amazing.

You're very kind

I have to say that, while I started off with a personal (and somewhat conservative) view that headless guitars and basses 'just don't look quite right', this has turned out to be one of my favourite builds

Snap

I think it look a fine piece of work. Wouldn't be my choice (I like something simple), but in terms of build and creativity, it's ace. I bet it sounds cracking too.

I quite like a headless, but then I started playing in the early 80s which was Steinberger prime time!

PhilKing

I like it, though for myself I would prefer a 34" scale, but I realize the short scale was what was requested.  The Sims pickups look really interesting and the switching seems to give you all the key bass types.  I'm assuming that's also why there are 3 of them, to get the different positioning.

It is a fantastic looking bass.  It would be really interesting to hear how it sounds and how the different settings work on the pickups.

Andyjr1515

PhilKing said:

 The Sims pickups look really interesting and the switching seems to give you all the key bass types.  I'm assuming that's also why there are 3 of them, to get the different positioning.

It would be really interesting to hear how it sounds and how the different settings work on the pickups.

Thanks, folks!

The chap I'm making it for is going into it with his eyes wide open, @PhilKing ;, and treating it very much as an experiment.  The reality, of course is that many of the options are going to sound very similar to each other - especially as it's a bass where the tones are more difficult for many of us to discern subtler differences.

That said, I have fitted a pair of them in a save of an old bass and they sounded stupendous with very different sounds (see the video at the very start of this thread - halfway through Nick Smith, SimS demonstrator at the time, plays that one)  So it will be interesting.

And the huge, huge advantage is that there is pretty much zero volume change with any of the pickups on or off or their settings, which is remarkable as well as helpful to the player.

So it will be interesting.  I have asked the future owner to do some comparisons for us all through his proper bass rig although, because Covid will delay the pass-across, that might be some time away. 


As a postcript, I was asked a number of years ago by the then Vigier show demonstrator to wire up a strat in a way that also had 125 or so combinations.  Apparently he then spent a complete weekend (we're talking 16 hours plus!) trying and retrying them all and found the three he wanted.  In the mail he wrote to me, he said that, although he would only be using three combinations, they were EXACTLY the sounds he was looking for and hadn't been able to create in any other guitar.  So there you go