6-string Bass 1995
$3,300.00
Rubÿtone’s first complete build, made in a sculpture-class woodshop from scrap-pile lumber, with a Carvin neck and pickups and body horns inspired by the curves of traditional f-holes.
Available on backorder
Rubÿtone’s first complete build, made in a sculpture-class woodshop from scrap-pile lumber, with a Carvin neck and pickups and body horns inspired by the curves of traditional f-holes.
Rubÿtone begins
In 1995, I was taking a sculpture class, but I kept finding my way into the functional design studio. They had a woodshop, and I preferred working with wood. Somewhere along the way I decided that my sculpture project should also be something I could plug in and play. So I built a bass.
The body started with pieces of lumber that I found in the scrap pile. There wasn’t a conventional bass-body blank waiting for me, and there wasn’t much reason to go looking for one. The scraps were there, I had access to the tools, and I started putting the pieces together and figuring out what the instrument wanted to become. Looking back, that way of working would eventually become a big part of Rubÿtone.
The F-Holes Became the Horns
I was looking at the curves of traditional hollow-body instruments and became interested in the shape of the f-hole itself. Instead of putting f-holes in the body, I used their curves as inspiration for the outside shape of the body. Those elongated lines became the horns. Looking at it now, I can see an idea that I would continue exploring for decades: taking something familiar from traditional instrument making, pulling it out of its expected place, and letting it perform an entirely different job.
Six Strings
The neck came from Carvin, as did two of the pickups, and this was a full-width six-string bass. That detail became more important years later. I built and played this instrument long before I experimented with converting a narrower five-string neck into the six-string configuration used on RedwoodBungBass. When I eventually wanted to find out how narrow a six-string bass could comfortably become, I already had this one as a reference for the other end of the experiment.
Looking Back
There are things I would do differently now. The headstock is the part of the design I have never completely made peace with, and at some point along the way the truss rod broke, which gives me another problem to solve if this bass is going to begin another chapter. But I don't want to redesign 1995 out of it.
This was the first complete instrument I built that year, made in a sculpture class, in somebody else's woodshop, from lumber pulled out of a scrap pile. I didn't know where all of this was going yet. Looking at it now, I can see that I had already started.
Additional information
| Instrument Type | 6-String Bass |
|---|---|
| Approach | Structural Reinterpretation |
| Construction | Solid-Body |
| Body | Scrap Bin Lumber |
| Beam | Carvin Through-Body Neck |
| Neck | Maple |
| Fingerboard | Ebony |
| Headstock | Modified Headstock, Bass Headstock |
| Scale Length | 34" |
| Number of Frets | 24 |
| Bridge | Standard Gotoh 6-String Bass |
| Tailpiece | |
| Neck Pickup | Carvin |
| Middle Pickup | Generic Replacement |
| Bridge Pickup | Carvin |
| Pickup Switch | 5-Way Lever |
| Controls | 2 Vol. 3 Tone |
| Knobs | Knurled |
| Amplifier | |
| Power Supply |
