Marco.EB

Pff I got an Ibanez pre, but the wires are cutted... if tou want to solder them back, I can send it to you for free ... Otherwise I have a Uni-Pre 5 on my Nitti and it's awesome. Edit : or I have a Warwick 4 knob pre but you will have to put a dummy knob.

Bartolini. Fits perfectly Ibanez and sounds dope. HR5.2-AP/918

Hello folks! Thanks to those who followed the first steps of finalzing the project. I deleted the video and the content of the first post. Now I can introduce properly the very first (not prototype) Elwray Basses WN4. The Logo is not yet applied for the simple reason I'm still looking for a clean and neat solution (and the Schaller S-locks are on their way) In a few words, I wanted to build a "back to basics" bass, with no fancy stuff but with the details that matters. That's why I chosed the walnut body with no top, the maple neck, the passive operation (I prefer VTVT this way I can put different caps on each pickup, more smoothness on neck pickup and more growl on bridge one), The B-style bridge (simple, efficient, reliable, quick release), the Res-O-Lite tuners to minimize the neck dive, Graphtech nut because IMHO it's the best, fake pearloid because I prefer the consistancy in the matter and it's not from nature (woods, except from the ebony, are european woods), truss-rod is currently a hex one bevause I couldn't find any Muiscman style in stock nut it'll be with those in the future, stainless steel medium frets from Sintoms because it's the a classic and the size seems the best option to me, body design and overall bass design is made to obtain a lightweight bass ; this very one is 3.4Kg or 7.5lbs and the 23rd fret is really accessible thanks to the fretboard shifted towards the nut (and the shape of the body). I rather use my skills to make a very good "basic" bass instead making fancy colors and tops with exotics woods from dying tropical forests. I really wanted to have dual coils pickups to enjoy the full noiseless experience, and passive shouldn't fail you in the middle of a gig/rehearsal/playing (and doesn't need batteries). I'll made a propre video as soon as I'll have the good gear to film it. As for the neck shape, to be honest it's done with my feeling, I can't say if it's a C or D profile but it's between a thin Ibanez-like and a old fat Fender style. I'd say medium (I've read somewhere that thin necks are not really good for lot of playing, but I'm not a kine). I played a bit with chrome/black details to a add a bit of 'life" in the hardware instead of the "all black" gear. So here's the specs of the bass: Body: - two bookmatched pieces of walnut - no top but available on demand - hand carved body shape on the back Neck: - bolt-on neck (5 bolts with flus mounted chrome ferrules) - flamed maple with walnut inserts (4mm) - ebony fretboard (rounded edges) - dual action truss-rod at the heel with 4mm hex key covered by a matched piece of walnut - 40mm nut width, Graphtech Black Tusq XL - Sintoms stainless steel medium frets with rolled edges - 34" scale - radius 16" - fake pearloid side dots (2mm) and round fretboards markers (6mm) - angled headstock with flamed maple top, tuners layout 2 + 2 (angled) Electronics: - Bartolini M34C dual coils humbuckers (EMG35 enclosure) - those are "Original Bartolini" (I'm stll open to use Seymour Duncan SSB4 pickups) - passive operation VVT (on this version but mainly VTVT), blackwood knobs - 500K ohms pots with 0.047uF cap - Switchcraft chrome stereo barrel jack Hadrware: - Hipshot B-Style 5B400BB (Black Brass version), flush mounted - Gotoh GB350 Res-O-lite tuners black - black screws / chrome screws - Schaller security S-locks black And here's the pictures of the final bass (without logo and straplock buttons) : Here's the video :

MK1 , MK2 and BH2 are "fake Barts", produced by Ibanez. So as Doug from Bartolini told me. They're not produced in USA and just co-designed with Bartolini. As long as the tone is on the spot for the player it doesn't matter anyway. I don't like BH2 but I like MK1. I like high end pickups as much as the cheap DX5 on my old '99 Ibanez. No judgement here, just to share infos I got from Bartolini directly (I'm in contact with them to get Bart's for my future projects). Cool you've found the issue and fixed it.

I love Ibanez, I love BTB, I hate those fake Bart's. lol. No offense if you like 'em , that's the most important part. Intermittant faults are mostly due to a grounding issue or a bad soldering. You have to check every wire and if it's not broken and correctly welded. Best option is to play and touch every component, wire, pickup to find the location of the issue. BTW in worst case I have a set of BH2 pickups in stock, barely used, if you want them I can "sell" them to you for pennies. (coming from a EHB1000) Hope it can help.

Wood and tools. 🤣 And make 4 basses with the money !

Thanks mate ! And please please watch the restrung documentary in memoriam of Randall, it's a beautiful life story.

Long time no see Thanks !

To me I quit GAS and changing cabs every 3 months with keeping my Epifani UL310-2. Best "hi-fi" speaker I had for a bass cab. I still run Glockenklang head so I wouldn't say it's Hi-Fi but it's somewhere in the spirit...

https://www.youtube.com/@marcoelwray In 20 years I never learned how to play.

I returned as a lamba user. Start from scratch. Where's my crown? 🤣 J/K I don't give a **** . Indeed I couldn't handle living without you guys 😛

I just finished a first post to recap my builds... with a bit of teasing at the end many thanks for your kind words. I was a supporting member but unfortunately I lost my "ranks" but doesn't really matter after all 😛

Hello there, As I some of you may know, I am an amateur bass builder. I have no formation and I am self-taught. Randall Wyn Fullmer (may he rest in peace, he past away 2023) gave me a lot of tips and shared his knowledge without limits. Before presenting my basses I'd like you to take a look of the documentary made by Mike Enns, : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNACNx5UlR8&t=2092s&ab_channel=Restrung Such a nice guy Randy, not like some others luthiers, if you check the Restrung channel you'll see he shared with Mike 16 videos "How to make a bass". It's really kind regarding the number of people who wants to "hide" their secrets. Anyway, I almost always was the tech guy since my youger ages, from electronics, amps to guitars and basses... If a friend had a need he came to me for a repair, a restrung, or something else. I think there's only a few of my basses I didn't touch and keep them stock. I learned by making a lot of mistakes, and now as I'm 40 I realize that mistakes are almost the thing that make you progress the most amongst everything, even if I have to admit some tools are almost mandatory if you want to achieve very nice job and you are a demanding to yourself person like me (and also impatient) :') (SECURITY RULES APART OF COURSE). I have to skip all the mods I've made, there's too many of them, if you want to check my Youtube channel you'll see some refins, probably one of the thing I like the most when it comes to get my hands on a bass. So after (a tiny bit of) thinking, I directly bought good woods to make my first bass. At the time I had one router (Elu MOF96) and some basic tools. For obvious reasons I made a fretless bass, 36" inches scale (why not?) with a flamed bubinga top, padauk back, and a hidden neck-thru construction (can't see neck from both sides) made of Wenge and bubinga. The fretboard was african ebony: I still own this bass today, it is far from perfect but still 100% functional and my first attempt too... As you can see I've putted Hipshot, Schaller, Seymour Duncan so only good stuff on it. I called it "Infinga" which is a mashup between Infinty (Warwick) and Bubinga. As a second bass one of my best friend just make me an order (to support the cause also) for a five strings. I choosed the woods carefully with a touch of "rare" wood ; a flamed ash top. Wings are made of ovengkol (or amazakoue) and the neck is 3 piece bubinga/mahogany with an amaranth fretboard. I fretted it by hand and hammer. I had a radiused wood bloc and a little bandsaw this time. Fortunately, I didn't screw up this one at all, and it is still used today. Originally pickups were SD SSB5 but my friend wanted more mojo so I've switched for Delano DCB5 quad coils with Glockenklang pre. Schaller tuners and ABM monorails. Then I wanted to realize a new shape a start to carve the wood and I created the Amani, which was a sort of simple cutaway bass made of maple with a bubinga top an ebony fretboard. I went with wood covers for the pickups (what a pain...) and wenge inserts in the neck. Still a neck through design. But as you may see, I pay some attention to carve the rear of the body by hand to make a lightweight and nicely curved bass. On the stand it might look akward but in hand it was very nice IMHO. The fretjob wasn't perfect at all so after a period I changed for an amaranth fretboard, fretless. I really love this design but it's not easy to make and doesn't please everybody. Pickups were, again, Delano (at the thime I had a company and I worked with Delano directly). Schaller tuners and ABM monorails. I finally sold this bass in its fretless version to a belgian mate. After this alien, comes the Infinga some of you tried, the one that made a passaround in UK. It was (yes it's dead) a birdseye maple body top with walnut babk, neck through contrsuction, and a neck made of walnut with maple inserts. It had this lovely Delano twincoil that remains, IMHO, one of the best pickups on the planet. It can cover a lot of sounds and has a nice warm and powerful tone. Despite the images below looking good, the fret job wasn't really good, I've made a mistake in measurements and the neck was thin too far inside the body. I broke a chip of wood and had to fill it with epoxy too. It went fretless for a long time before I recently burned it because I needed more room and I had too much unused basses and stuff. Routings weren't very clean neither. After this one I came back to the Amani model for one of the finest build I've ever made ; I sold it on this very website and if the owner is still here I'd love to have some feedback on it today. The recipe is once again a proven one ; flamed maple top with maple back, neck through maple/wenge neck with amaranth fretboard. The inlays were wood inserts of maple and wenge. I just used saddles from an ABM bridge and made a kind of string thru stop tail myself. Schaller tuners with custom amaranth keys, Delano DCB pickups, passive operation. I barely remind it so if it's somewhere it could be very nice to have some feedback on it. Speaking of one of my most beautiful build, I made another Amani 5 fretted, this one featured on Notreble.com (just google Elwray Basses notreble). It is a freaking great bass. Sold to a french guy who, I believe, still play with it. Despite the used woods it was very light because of a partially hollowed body (I routed two cavities on the back so it can handle any preamp with 4 batteries if needed, even if I decided to use a passive mode with "coils blenders" (just a pot that blends between the coils of each pickup). It's in french but the test is the first video on my Youtube channel. The body was made in afzelia (Warwick used it for some very firsts Streamer's), afzelia neck with maple inserts. Schaller tuners and ABM bridge. The fretboard is a very weird piece of padauk really hard and with differents colors in it. I took inspiration in the Warwick Thumb for the pickups placement; but even if I don't use Delano no more, the cost of these Delano Times Square pickups with tofferite magnets was outrageous ; 200/pc at the time an now I believe it'es close to 300. But they have a unique character I'll let you judge in the Youtube video. Then I decide to "innovate" with a bolt-on model. A simple Infinga 4 made of 50 yo dry belgian maple top and padauk with maple stripes back, thuya burl electronic cover, and a maple/padauk neck with same maple fretboard. I went for a Musicman style with a single EMG pickup. All the hardware was the Schaller vintage copper from the passarounf Infinga 4... A unique bass for me and it was bought by the same guy who bought me the Amani 5 above ! Following this one I've made an exact same setup (Infinga 4 bolt-on with Schaller hardware) but this time with an afzelia body and a P/J EMG X configuration. The neck was excatly the same, with same woods. I can say today I prefer bolt on, it's easier to made for me, and I like the idea to switch bodies and necks. On the pictures you can see the Amani 5 fretless (the first one) that became a fretless amaranth one. This bass made me love EMG pickups. I still think they are a very good option for recording setup and wide tone spectrum with a big choice of different pickups in a same enclosure (EMG35,40,45). Sold this one to a guitarist friend for not much. Then I used Leo Fender famous technique (joking, I don't know if it's true or legend) of "use chunks of woods laying around the workshop and make a bass with them", so I came with a bass with so many problems that it never has been finished and I burned it with the Infinga recently. The truss even crack through the back of the neck lol. Padauk body with afzelia and oak top, 9-ply neck (lol) with maple/padauk/afzelia. Nothing special about it, it stayed for many years like that. I retrieve the truss rod, although. Then I went in a period without real build, but I've made a lot of restorations in guitars and basses. Like a lot. An honorable mention although; in a trade I get a Rockbass Corvette $$ I completly transform into in a "better-than-custom-german-made" Warwick ; that's the only picture I have of it stock : Then I went a bit crazy and I completly made a new top in thuya burlwith a P/J configuration (Delano), all brand new hardware from Warwick, and a Crovette Proline '97 wenge neck : After all this like I said I quit bass making due to house works AND not enough money AND time consuming job. I continued restoration and reparations. But now after 4-5 years I finally get proper tools, new big bandsaw, fret tools of all sort, a Mafell router, a design I've been working on since 2 years. So if you read so far I'll tease a little bit before making a video (or maybe not in video, my english is just okay-ish) As I don't know yet when I'm goin' to make this video to introduce the "WN4" (stands for WalNut), I will try to explain briefly how I end up with the actual "classic" configuration of my very last one: I mentioned I had the chance to put my hands on a lot of basses, with the restorations and my GAS syndrom, so I worked on a design for about 1 year to have a classic but modern style (whatever it means something). Here's my points: - The body design is unique but still not too ostentatious, and small but ergonomic (small to avoir overweight, I didn't want to exceed 4Kg max, the proto is 3.5Kg) - Even if I'm a 5 string player, I designer a 4 string as it can interest more people in a first time - In my very personal experience with woods, I found that the type of wood is not the most important but the chunk itself is. I still wanted to go for walnut because it's rarely bad souding and it's a bit ecologic as it's coming from France. - For the neck, flamed maple and walnut inserts of 3mm seems to me a great solution to nail a quality tone - For the fretboard I went for an african ebony with stanless steel frets to have a "dry/clean?" tone - I choosed EMG35 size routing as EMG offers jazz, precision, dual coils, ceramics, and all brands are available in this size. - Despite the "classical" design, it is unique (I guess) because as a Warwick Infinity, (hard to explain here) the fretboard is starting where the body stops so the access is really, really easy to high notes and it's not a sort of commercial shitty argument. - I'm still torn because I like abalone but for ecological resaons I think for the future ones I'll go for fake white pearloid inlays, 8mm. - After trying a thousand bridges, I decide to use a Hipshot A style. But finally I went on the B style for two reasons: it's the same as MTD uses and it's simple and reliable (brass version) - Tuners HAVE TO be Gotoh for me (I know some ppl prefer Hipshot), so GB350 Res-O-lite. - I see no reason to not use a Graphtech nut. I had to replace a FODERA brass nut because it was poorly made (yes true) - I choose a passive operation even if I'm reasonably open to active. - Like I said bolt-on is easier to make and I like the idea of switching bodies/necks - truss rod is reversed (nut towards bridge) and in the future should be musicman style, way easier to setup. - 23 frets because not 24. 😅 Well, we will discuss all that on the appropriate post, but here's the prototype (in the video I'll introduce both proto and prod 1) for a bit of teasing : I do not intend to make a business but maybe if I can sell some to continue making basses that will be okay for me. Thanks for reading, Marco

Hello, thanks! It's coming, I need to make a video because it might be a little too long to explain with pictures and text... Soon Hi, thanks too, it went nice, the bass came back to the house. I took good notice of every feedback. Unfortunately even if that was an "okay" bass (to me), I finally use all the hardware and electronics in another projects, and as there was some quite obvious issues with it, after being fretless I just burned it into the fireplace (yeah , for real) ... lol. As I did with another messy project. But I am very demanding towards myself, I can't support "okay" stuff As for my prototype of WN4, I am satisfied, it was mainly to put me back in the "business" , but I am very pleased with the "production" number one, which is really good (and I am surprised myself to say so). You guys make me want to already introduce the bass 😛 Cheers

My 2 cents; I never have been a pro but I assume it might be easy nowadays with high speed internet... You can work at distance without even moving... i'm not sure if you can make a living with it as a "studio" recorder without gigging, but I know some pros (not bassists only) works that way ; a call, "make me this or that", send files, get files, send to producer ... etc... But I do realize making a living of it must implies a high level of notoriety ?

Hello people, I can't really find my old introduction post (lazy) but that's okay, I'll make a new one. For those who remember me ; Marco aka Marco Elwray aka Elwray Basses, I did a passaround around 2019. I was active here since 2018 maybe? From scratch; I originally left the forum for disconnect a bit with the digital world, now I can manage that and I spend almost no time in social medias. I did not have any problems with anybody here including Admins. That's said. My name's Marco, I live in Belgium, I'm 40 now (damn...) I started playing bass at 15/16 yo, with a Suzuki P bass in a band called "Hollow". Since then I always played bass but I never really het into it, never really learned music theory... I can't possibly make a list of basses I've owned, too long. The main interest here is that I restarted making basses again, now that I have moved in a bigger house and invested in more tools, just a month ago I finished my prototype Elwray Basses WN4 (WN for Walnut and 4 for ... 4 strings obviously.) and at this very moment I just finished the first real bass of the "production" (I forgot ot mention it's not a living for me, I'm an amateur and enthusiast and I don't like call me a luthier). For more info on this last bass I'll make a post with a video, easier I think. Disclaimer: no ad here, I have no money interest or whatsoever in the following infos; I've made a couple of videos on Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@marcoelwray , sorry main of those are in french. I've an Instagram account @elwraymarco but nothing very interesting there... And voilà, no long story here, I'm mainly here to present my basses and get some feedback from people, share with other people making instruments (or curious about making), if you've got some questions don't hesitate to ask them. See u soon, Marco

I'm back.