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« on: July 03, 2018, 11:23:24 AM »
Hey all, long time no post. Glad to see a lot of familiar faces around here from 10 years ago!
Just wrapped up this project, I converted an Epiphone Allen Woody Rumblekat bass into a bass VI.
Most six string basses of this type are all Fender Bass VI clones with the same trappings. I wanted a six string bass, but I'm a Gibson guy and plunky single coils and wonky Fender tremolos were just not doing it for me. The Epiphone Allen Woody bass is a sharp looking instrument; kind of a semi-hollow Les Paul set up like a Hofner Cavern. It has a very airy kind of sound and no worries about feedback since it lacks f-holes. Looking at some of the specs, it lines up very well with the Fender Bass VI: Scale: 30.0", Nut Width: 1.68". It's got a mahogany sandwich body, mahogany neck, maple top, and the wood looks ok for the money. I got the bass with the case for about $380.
My parts list:
- Hipshot GL0C Locking Guitar Tuners (The low E and A tuner string holes are routed by Hipshot for up to .100 string gauge)
- Black Tusq XL nut
- Gibson Les Paul Deluxe mini humbuckers. These are the blade pole piece pickups from the 2015 models. No pole pieces make the different string alignments no issue.
- Gotoh Tune-o-matic Bridge and Tailpiece. This is the wide post model to grab more wood and buck the tension from the heavier strings.
- CTS 500k pots, Mallory .033uf cap, Switchcraft jack, metal jack plate, PRS knobs, chrome screws (to replace all the gold ones).
I hired a luthier to plug and paint the old tuning peg and bridge post holes and install the new parts. He did a great job aligning the new bridge and intonating it. The stock mini humbucker rings needed some filing to work with the Gibson pickups, the Hipshot tuners have short posts so they needed to be mounted to the wood directly instead of with the mounting kit, and Epiphone used a mini pot for the Tone knob so the route had to be extended a little bit to accommodate three full size pots, but otherwise there weren't any snags in the process. The paint matching didn't need to be great for a utilitarian like me, but it turned out better than I expected. I sold all the old gold parts and stock pickups on reverb and made back about $125.
The sound is really wide frequency; the bass really thumps on the low strings, which surprised me, but the high end sings in a really clear, jazzy kind of way. A bass amp makes it sound like a bass, and a guitar amp makes it crunch like a guitar. Going to take some getting used to the string spacing since I've only ever played bass and piano, but it's a great machine.
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