This is the second bass I built for Daniel Gómez. He’s a hard working and hard travelling musician, so the idea was to make a fully functional bass that he can take as cabin luggage on a plane. And so was born this 65 cm long design (that is 25.5 inches, for the imperial folk).
The tuning is one octave higher than a regular 6 string bass. For the lower register, he uses an octave pedal, but the sound is so thick and full that most of the time he doesn’t use the pedal.
Another first for me was the sliding pickup system. The soapbar style pickup slides from the bridge to the neck, so you can set it in any intermediate position to choose the right tone.
The slinding system was quite the research project. After designing and building many different combinations of rails, sliders and spring material, I finally found the way to get the pickup to slide easily but with enough friction so that it doesn’t move on its own.
Happy customer and happy luthier!
And of course, I made a custom case, with fitted plush interior.