Epiphone Allen Woody Bass VI

[n!k]

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.

[Granny Gremlin]

Cool.  Been thinking about VIs lately.  The Fender one is the only 30", rest are 28-29 or so, which would be important to me because I'd want to tune it Low E down vs baritone like they all come from the factory.

[Dave W]

Very nice.

[Highlander]

 

[clankenstein]

Cool Idea. By E do you mean e to e tuning like a guitar but an octave lower?

[Basvarken]

Very nice.
Also love the fact that you got rid of the gold hardware.

[BTL]

That's pretty spectacular!

An ideal I have been kicking around is to offer a 32" scale IV to VI conversion kit.

It would include a neck with machines and a bridge and would enable a J or P bass to be converted by simply swapping out the neck and bridge.

I's say that your project validates the proof of concept nicely.

Well done!

[gearHed289]

Very nice.
Also love the fact that you got rid of the gold hardware.

Yes and yes!

[n!k]

Cool Idea. By E do you mean e to e tuning like a guitar but an octave lower?

Yeah, this is tuned as a bass, so EADGbE one octave lower than a guitar.

Also love the fact that you got rid of the gold hardware.

I don't even think that 24 karat gold string company makes a Bass VI set. If nothing is going to match, there can't be gold!

That's pretty spectacular!

An ideal I have been kicking around is to offer a 32" scale IV to VI conversion kit.

It would include a neck with machines and a bridge and would enable a J or P bass to be converted by simply swapping out the neck and bridge.

That would be really interesting. One thing to consider though would be the pickup. Six strings between the four magnet poles of the P-pickup would probably have some inconsistent output. There probably isn't a 6 pole-piece P/J replacement pickup, though I think DiMarzio makes a blade pole piece version of the P?

[slinkp]

That would be really interesting. One thing to consider though would be the pickup. Six strings between the four magnet poles of the P-pickup would probably have some inconsistent output. There probably isn't a 6 pole-piece P/J replacement pickup, though I think DiMarzio makes a blade pole piece version of the P?

I bet it'd be pretty usable with a standard P/J. Remember there are actually 8 poles! With them that close together, I doubt it matters much in practice where the string actually is.

People have stuck guitar P-90 pickups in basses with good results.  Our very own Brad Lowe reported really liking it on the ones he's built. Not blades, as I recall. On a 4-string that would mean you've got the E and G right over polepieces and the D and G somewhere in between.

[amptech]

I think I only have one pickup with volume dropout issuses between poles; the neck pickup on my '75 rick 4001. It's a hi-gain i suppose.
I'll make a toaster for it one day - wich by the way is a 6-pole guitar pickup, isn't it?

An oh, there's the EB-4L pickup. Never had one, but have noted that owners of it complains about dropout.

[Dave W]

I think I only have one pickup with volume dropout issuses between poles; the neck pickup on my '75 rick 4001. It's a hi-gain i suppose.
I'll make a toaster for it one day - wich by the way is a 6-pole guitar pickup, isn't it?

An oh, there's the EB-4L pickup. Never had one, but have noted that owners of it complains about dropout.

AFAIK no dropout with a toaster. From what I've observed and read, it seems like pickups with magnet rod polepieces are a lot less prone to dropout between poles than steel polepieces with magnets below.

[BTL]

I bet it'd be pretty usable with a standard P/J. Remember there are actually 8 poles! With them that close together, I doubt it matters much in practice where the string actually is.

People have stuck guitar P-90 pickups in basses with good results.  Our very own Brad Lowe reported really liking it on the ones he's built. Not blades, as I recall. On a 4-string that would mean you've got the E and G right over polepieces and the D and G somewhere in between.

Yes, the 8-pole split-P and J-type pickups are ideal for 4 to 6 conversion.

However, the P90 shape I use is a Fralin Big Single mounted on a dogear baseplate.

It's sidewinder humbucker with a bar magnet running right down the center of the cover that sits on an induction plate that runs through the middle of the coils.

It's a concept Lindy prototyped for me based on his hum canceling P90 tooling, and he liked it so much he made it into a production model.

TV Jones Thunder'Blades, Lollar Thunderbirds and DB Humbuckers ar all blade/bar types as well.

My next Ridler will have these:

[slinkp]

Ahhh thanks, I misunderstood what you were using Brad. I thought you literally had the Fralin Hum Canceling P90 which IIRC is outwardly a typical 6-pole P90.