Brooks EXB-12-Q

[Basvarken]

I have just finished the build of a twelve string bass for Rob van der Loo, bass player of Epica.
Rob wanted an Explorer shape bass with quilted maple top and two humbuckers, each with its own dedicated output.

It took me quite a while to build this. But now it's finally finished. And I'm happy with the result.

Here's the specs:

- 34" scale
- Mahogany body
- Bookmatched Quilted Maple top
- Three piece Mahogany set neck. Glued in
- Transparent black stain on top
- Solid black on body and neck
?- High gloss transparent acrylic finish on top
- Matte transparent acrylic finish on sides, back and neck
- White binding
- Ebony fretboard
?- Mother of pearl position dots
- Jumbo frets
- Buffalo horn nut ?
- Dean twelve string brass bridge set
- Two spokewheel double action trussrods
- Carbon reinforcement strip in the neck
- Lace Alumitone Bass Bar in the neck position
- Lace Alumitone DeathBar in the bridge position
- Allparts stacked pots (volume/tone volume/tone)
- On on switch for coil splitting (humbucker-single coil)
- Gotoh GB 350 lightweight bass tuners
- Gotoh Stealth ST 31 guitar tuners
- d'Addario EXL 170 - 12 strings

A friend of mine helped me out with the electronics circuit. His name is Bas Becu (check www.bqmusic.nl)












Pics of the build process can be seen here:
http://www.enkoo.nl/brooks-exb-12-q.html

[doombass]

That is one incredible piece of work Rob! I'm pretty stunned.

[Rob]

Really impressive!

[Highlander]

B E A utiful...

[Granny Gremlin]

You've outdonw yourself this time.

Love those stealth tuners.  How do you find the Alumitones?  Was considering them for a project.

[Dave W]

Beautiful!

How did you come to decide on the DeathBar for the bridge pickup?

[Basvarken]

Thank you guys.

Rob van der Loo wanted two humbuckers that could be splitted into single coils.
Het wanted each pickup to have it's own dedicated output jack.
The neck pickup for a bass amp. The bridge pickup for a guitar amp.

Because of the four pairs of three strings I figured I needed a pickup with a bar magnet rather than polepieces. Just to make sure each string would pickup up consistently and evenly.
Plus the pickups needed to be wide enough to pickup the outer strings. Most of the humbuckers I found were too narrow.

In my quest I found Lace Alumitones and I liked what I heard in the video that I saw on YouTube. Very silent and very tight sounding.
Rob van der Loo was convinced these would be the right choice.

The DeathBar and the Bass Bar come in three widths. So I picked out the right width. 3.5.

[4stringer77]

Very sleek and mean looking machine. I bet sounds just as badass too. Awesome job.

[Dave W]

Oops, I didn't notice the second output jack. Makes sense now.

I did like the BassBar demo clip on YT.

[dadagoboi]

Fantastic build, Rob!

[amptech]

A stunner!!

[gearHed289]

SO cool! Great work, great aesthetics.

[Basvarken]

Made a quick video of the Brooks EXB-12-Q.
I don't have any fancy recording equipment, so this was done via an old minidisk recorder as an interface.
Each pickup has its own dedicated output jack. I panned the pickups hard left and hard right.
(and I had to get used to playing twelve strings! )

I'm sure Rob van der Loo will do a much better job.
But for now this'll have to do.





I have also made some more photographs. It was nice outside yesterday. So I took it outside. The top reflects the blue skies, so it appears a lot more blue in these pics

[Chris P.]

I love it! Both pics and video!

[Dave W]

You did fine on the video. Great pics too.