Standin'Up

Stand-up Bass for sit-down players

One day...

I saw Robert C. Anderson, playing bass with his band in the subway at Times Square.

I imagined a bass

That would make it easier
So I used what I had around to build the most compact electric bass you never saw before... with built-in amplification. The first project turned out well but it did not have enough sound to match the power of the brass players in the band.
image

When I had time...

I made a more powerful one
The Blackstar mini has a feature where you can connect their extension cabinet and access the full wattage and more than double the sound it puts out. So I arranged another bass like this.

The first time he played it

He loved it
Not only did it have the juice to hold up to the horns, but it also did not look like any other bass. But we were still not satisfied. Robert learned how to play on a classic bass, standing up. It's not practical to use these on the NYC streets, but he saw something in what we had that was practical. If we could only make it StandUp.

So I took it all apart

removed the frets
And added some of the parts from a junk hollow-body electric guitar, the end-pin from a classic bass, and some marine hardware. The clip highlights how well the bass serves sitting on the lap or Standin’ Up -the way that he imagined playing it right from the start. Once he put it on the floor, he played it that way for the rest of the set. I really like the way Standin’Up allows Robert to access certain nuances in his experiences with a classic bass which don’t come all the way through when he is playing with the neck horizontal.

out of many, one.

E Pluribus Unum was once the motto of the United States of America and references the fact that the cohesive single nation was formed as the result of the thirteen smaller colonies joining together.

Materials:

  • Neck

    Maple, Rosewood
    Fender® Jazz Bass I never had the guitar this was on. I scored it on eBay. Robert needed a fretless, so I removed them and filled the slots.
  • Beam

    Cherry wood
    Stanley® Carpenter level I like to create a level playing field.
  • Body

    Maple Plywood
    1960s import hollow-body electric guitar.
  • Bridge

    Ebony
    floating, trapeze style
  • Pickup

    Fender®
    Jazz Bass®
  • Amplifier

    Mone
    This is the first Rubÿtone to finish with no amplifier. Well, I think it is finished on 10/23/20

First "test drive" video

#stayhome