What's this bass?

[MikeStockport]

I've just bought this bass on eBay. Anyone know who made it? Jon Letts, perhaps?

 

[Bassassin]

There was actually a BC member (whose name unfortunately escapes me) who built basses a lot like this for a couple of years. He did commissions for several member here, this was maybe 10 or so years ago, if I remember he abandoned it as a business because of the pressure & time constraints of doing so alongside a day job/normal life.

Can't for the life of me remember his name, and for that reason would guess he doesn't post here any more. IIRC his builds tended to be small-bodied, headless, short/medium scale & chambered to keep them light. This does look a lot like his basses in terms of design & timbers.

Was interested because I had ideas about a compact, lightweight fretted/fretless double neck for the band I was in at the time. Not much help, but hopefully someone else will remember who I'm talking about!

[TheGreek]

I have that same bridge on one of my custom builds - bloody heavy - mine suffers from the opposite of neck dive - body dive??

[NancyJohnson]

6 hours ago, MikeStockport said:

I've just bought this bass on eBay. Anyone know who made it? Jon Letts, perhaps?

You paid £311 for that and you don't know what it is?

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

18 minutes ago, NancyJohnson said:

You paid £311 for that and you don't know what it is?

+£7.92 postage!

Each to their own, but I’m not sure I like the look of the control cavity. Or the rear for that matter, but that may just be me. Listing states it has electrical issues as well and needs setting up. Hope it turns out OK for ya.

[BassBunny]

2 hours ago, Bassassin said:

There was actually a BC member (whose name unfortunately escapes me) who built basses a lot like this for a couple of years. He did commissions for several member here, this was maybe 10 or so years ago, if I remember he abandoned it as a business because of the pressure & time constraints of doing so alongside a day job/normal life.

Can't for the life of me remember his name, and for that reason would guess he doesn't post here any more. IIRC his builds tended to be small-bodied, headless, short/medium scale & chambered to keep them light. This does look a lot like his basses in terms of design & timbers.

Was interested because I had ideas about a compact, lightweight fretted/fretless double neck for the band I was in at the time. Not much help, but hopefully someone else will remember who I'm talking about!

Was it Paul, @Prosebass ?

[Bassassin]

1 hour ago, BassBunny said:

Was it Paul, @Prosebass ?

It was indeed! Cheers!

A bit of Googling later, pretty sure it's one of Paul's, seems to be a signature body style:

Hopefully, he'll drop by to confirm.

Edited March 23, 2021 by Bassassin

[LukeFRC]

20 hours ago, BassBunny said:

Was it Paul, @Prosebass ?

You got there first! 

[adamlunt]

On 23/03/2021 at 15:31, TheGreek said:

I have that same bridge on one of my custom builds - bloody heavy - mine suffers from the opposite of neck dive - body dive??

Belly flop, I think 😅

[Dazed]

Yeah it’s a prose. I recognised the body shape from one I have.
Was watching that on eBay. Congratulations!

[MikeStockport]

I've used it a few rehearsals now, after paying £35 for a setup and having the electrics sorted. It plays and sounds great, and it balances well, but there's one problem: while I can loosen the strings (to make the pitch lower) without any difficulty, the tuners are so stiff that to tighten them (to increase the string's pitch) I have to use a pair of pliers! @Prosebass

[Bassassin]

On 09/08/2021 at 12:50, MikeStockport said:

I've used it a few rehearsals now, after paying £35 for a setup and having the electrics sorted. It plays and sounds great, and it balances well, but there's one problem: while I can loosen the strings (to make the pitch lower) without any difficulty, the tuners are so stiff that to tighten them (to increase the string's pitch) I have to use a pair of pliers! @Prosebass

It's just a badly-designed tuner unit, I assume Paul used these on his headless builds because there wasn't much available that was affordable at the time he was making these.

 

I had an identical unit on a bass I owned a couple of years ago, the flaw in the design is that the tuners use a geared system to wind the strings around a cam to produce tension, rather than a simple straight pull like most headless tuners. This means it's stiff to begin with & the more windings there are around the cam the higher the gearing becomes, making it increasingly stiffer & less accurate. It works best with as few windings as possible around the cams, but to be fair it's a stupid idea badly executed - and ridiculously over-engineered!

 

This is the bass I had:

 

If I'd hung onto it I'd have seriously thought about looking at fitting a different tuning system.

[kodiakblair]

On 09/08/2021 at 12:50, MikeStockport said:

the tuners are so stiff that to tighten them (to increase the string's pitch) I have to use a pair of pliers!

Don't the ends of the tuners accept a hex key ?

 

On my headless the knurled part is just to bring the strings to a slight tension, then you tune properly with the hex key.