Welcome! I am a luthier specialised in electric upright basses.
Currently, I am working on a new model, in the mean time I am also busy organizing my workplace, which resides in an abandoned factory. For now, this website is meant to give you a rough sketch of my plans and what I am working on. You can read about developments in the articles (see menu).
About the Bass
The basic idea of the electric upright bass I am designing, is that the body is a ‘a bundle of wooden slats’ that is held together at top and bottom ends, so the middle is free to resonate.
There are 5 layers, where every layer itself is divided into several bars, resulting in a bundle of 18 different slats that together provide the total resonance spectrum and time envelope of the bass.
It is basically a complex wooden spring, just like a conventional soundbox where resonating wood colors the sound. The major difference however, is that the ‘soundbox’ of an electric bass does not need to set air in motion, so a large surface area to drive air like on an acoustic soundbox’s bass is not needed.
image above: 2019 prototype version with brass tuners, maple neck with carbon fingerboard, on a carbon V-stand.
Since this prototype I have been working on several innovations. The most important ones are a set of ultralight tuners that weighs only 360grams (4x ±90gr) to replace the brass set I developed earlier, also the fingerboard and neck are integrated into one piece of carbon, and the telescopic endpin as you see in this image needs adjusting because it is too ‘springy’ (working on that). I am also still working on a new carbon aramid tailpiece-pulley system to achieve a better coupling between the string’s vibration and the wooden layers of the body.
The instrument ‘under construction’ where the above developments will be incorporated, very much resembles the prototype in this image, the materials and weight are different though.
Specifications of the new design (approximate estimation):
| Total length | ±155cm |
| Scale length | ±104cm |
| Neck and Fingerboard | integrated carbon epoxy |
| Headstock | maple |
| Tuners | Carbon epoxy, brass, steel, 1:27 |
| Body | Spruce, maple, carbon epoxy |
| Electronics | Shadow Nanoflex |
| Endpin and V-stand | carbon epoxy |
| Bass | 4kg |
| Endpin + V-stand | 1kg |
| Bodyrest | 0.5kg |
| Total | 5,5kg |
NOTE: The start date of production is contingent on too many factors, I’ve grown accustomed to count in seasons rather than in months.
Please check the website every now and then for updates.