Search Ampcat.com: Ampcat's Gear (Guitars) The T-Bass The T-Bass (the "T" stands for "Toad", just in case this is the first page you've visited on this site). This is the second guitar I ever made - the first was during high school. I never took any sort of shop class, but the shop teacher was one of my football coaches, and he let me use some of the tools. It was a bass as well (I only made it because the bass player in my band needed a bass, and we couldn't afford one.) It was frightening, but we used it anyway. A year or two after high school I decided to make another bass, and it has come to be known as the T-Bass. I didn't make the neck - we originally bought a used fender P-Bass neck (it has since been replaced with a new one from Stewart MacDonald - Note to anyone who buys guitar building supplies & or parts - check out StewMac - great selection, great prices). The wood for the body was bought at Cut & Dried Hardwoods in Solona Beach, just north of San Diego. The pickups are EMG P-Bass configuration, the tuners are Schaller, and the bridge is a BadAss. I designed the body shape myself - I had a buddy who owned a Status bass, and I traced the body shape, then I traced a '68 P-Bass body as well, layed them on top of each other & drew a new shape that was a combination of the two. I've gotten more compliments on this guitar than any other I've ever built (or owned, for that matter). I built a replica from cocobolo & ebony a few years later, but it just didn't look as good. I traded this bass to a friend for some studio time a while back, but I recently re-aquired it, and I'm happy I did - it plays & sounds great, although I'm planning on replacing the pickups with real Fender pickups. The wood I used for this guitar is still one of my favorite woods - bubinga. I've seen quite a few guitars since that have incorporated bubinga in one way or another, but when I built this guitar (1990) I had never seen a guitar that used bubinga - in fact, I had never seen or heard of bubinga period (wait, I could be wrong - I think Warwick Thumb basses used bubinga, but I'm not sure). In fact, it commonly has flame every bit as good as the best quilted maple - it's not as consitently formed, but it still looks great, and it's got an amazing natural color - the bass in these pictures is NOT stained! My only complaint (and although it's a small one, it's inherent) is that both maple and bubinga are very dense & hard, and this results in a certain amount of "boominess" that you don't get with other basses. My favorite sounding basses are generally made of less dense wood, as this dampens the sound a little. Copyright © 2000 AMPCAT.COM