THE STORY

The Question Was Six Strings

I had already built and played a conventional-width six-string bass. I'd been playing that one since 1995.

What I wanted to know was whether I could get the same six-string experience from a significantly narrower neck.

Instead of starting with another six-string bass neck, I started with a 24-fret, five-string LTD bass neck.

The question was pretty simple:

Can I fit six strings into the space normally occupied by five?

I modified the headstock, added another tuner and modified the nut to accommodate the sixth string. Then I needed something to put the neck on.

That's where another story entered the guitar.

The Redwood Came From Tommy Smothers' House

In 2001, I was living in Napa Valley, right between the vineyards.

A famous cabinetmaker there had done the finish work for Tommy Smothers' home, using second-hand materials that Tommy had collected throughout his life. When Tommy decided to do a gut renovation, the cabinetmaker hired me to help take the house apart.

I could barely contain myself over some of the material we were removing.

Tommy noticed.

He told me I could have as much of it as I wanted.

A lot of what I brought home was extraordinary old-growth redwood that had already lived at least one life before it ever became part of Tommy's house. Some of it had come from barns. Some had been used in water tanks inside windmills.

The piece in RedwoodBungBass came from that collection.

It's a redwood water-tank stave with a bung hole in it, and it became the beam for this bass.

So by the time I got hold of it, this piece of wood had already been a tree, a water tank, building material in Tommy Smothers' house, and salvage from a demolition.

Then I drilled holes in it and made a bass.

Six Strings Fit

I modified a five-string P-Bass bridge to accept six strings, put everything together and played it.

I liked it.

That answered the question.

The narrower neck worked. Six strings fit. I could get the extended range I wanted without the width of the conventional six-string bass I'd been playing since 1995.

And once I had proved that to myself, I put it on the wall.

The Reason This Rubÿtone Is in the Garage

There wasn't some catastrophic problem that sent RedwoodBungBass to the Garage.

The experiment succeeded.

That's actually part of the reason it stopped.

I had wanted to know whether a five-string-width neck could become a usable six-string bass neck. I modified one, built enough of an instrument around it to find out, and got my answer.

Then other ideas became more interesting.

What remains is an unusual six-string neck attached to one of the more extraordinary pieces of wood in my collection. Both of those things deserve to be part of a finished instrument.

I've even wondered whether this might eventually be the answer to another Garage problem. TigerWood has a rare simulated-woodgrain Eminee Tiger body that deserves a better context. RedwoodBungBass has a neck and a piece of old-growth redwood that deserve a body.

Maybe they belong together.

Maybe they don't.

That's exactly what the Garage is for.

RedwoodBungBass already answered the question that caused me to build it.

Now it waits for me to ask the next one.