Remake of the very first Brooks bass

[Basvarken]

The birth of a new Brooks bass:
Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the Brooks 1.2.

It's a remake of the very first bass I built (now 14 years ago).
But with a few modifications.

- 30 1/2" scale
- Two piece mahogany body. Chambered
- Flamed maple top. Bookmatched
- Colour of the top: Wine red.
- Colour of the back and neck: Walnut
- Three piece mahogany neck
- Dual action Spokewheel truss rod
- Rosewood fretboard
- Cream colored binding
- Guyker two point bridge.
- String through body ferrules
- Hipshot tuners
- Bone nut
- Artec sidewinder humbuckers AlNiCo
- 6 way rotary switch
   1. Neck humbucker
   2. Outer coils as humbucker
   3. Both humbuckers
   4. Neck humbucker + inner Bridge coil out of phase
   5.  Inner coils as humbucker
  6. Bridge humbucker
- Volume pot CTS 500k
- Hidden Tone pot CTS 500k

 

 

 

I'll post pics of the build process in several posts below.

[Basvarken]

About one year ago I got an email from a gentleman from France who had found my website and he asked me to do a remake of the Brooks 1.

This is the very first bass I ever built. Based on my personal favorite: my 1969 Gibson Les Paul bass.

 

 

Guillaume told me his new years resolution was to quit smoking. And as a reward for himself he wanted me to build this bass.
In June he was confident he had quit smoking for good. And he placed the order.
Since I was busy building two other bass guitars, I told him I would be able to start the build in the fall of this year.
It gave me time to order all the parts and the wood.
In october I started the actual build.

 

First off was the fretboard.

Made the ring inlay for the 12th position. I use an aluminum tube for this.
And for the inside of the ring I made a rosewood circle.

 

 

 

 

After that I drilled the holes for the regular dot inlays

 

 

 

Glued the abalone dots  and the aluminum ring in and sanded everything to the desired radius(16")

 

 

At the FabLab I lasercut templates (the 15 year old templates were no longer usable)
I used plexiglass. Laser cutting works extremely well with this material. And laser cutting MDF is not allowed, because it emits toxic gas.

First thing I routed was the wiring channel which runs in a diagonal line across the body.

 

 

[Basvarken]

After that first channel was routed I started to work on the weight reduction. I was going to route a large tone chamber in the upper bout of the body.
I first used Forstner bit to drill away most of the wood in that area. Then cleaned up the tone chamber with the router.

 

 

 

 

 

Routed the hole for the rotary switch on the upper horn. And chiseled the last part of the channel away by hand

 

 

 

Roughly cut out the outline shape.
I weighed the body and came to the conclusion it was going to be too heavy.
So I decided to do some more weight relief.
Made sure i didn't drill where any structural parts would be mounted.

 

 

 

Next step was to glue the thick flamed maple top onto the body

 

 

And then routed along the body outline template. Sorry, no pics of the actual routing.

 

 

[Basvarken]

Routed profile for the controls covers. 

 

 

Next I routed the channel for the binding. Note how thick the top was!

 

 

Glued in the cream colored binding. Using acetone, because it leaves no glue residue that might affect the later staining.

 

 

[Basvarken]

Switched back to the fretboard again

Hammered in the frets.

 

And made the trussrod access slot. Plus (rosewood) cover.

 

Routed the trussrod slot in the neck blank. And chiseled the part for the spokewheel by hand.

 

Glued the fretboard on (sorry again, no pics)

And then made the side position markers

 

Started the shaping of the neck. Using a Shinto raps, spokewheel plane and cabinet scraper.

 

 

Routed the neck pocket

 

And stated make the heel fit. Nowhere near yet in this pic 😉

 

Getting closer to the desire angle. Note how I have the bridge on a pice of brass to emulate the bridge stud thickness.

 

Needed to create some extra height for this part of the binding

 

[Basvarken]

Took the finger plane and got to work to create the contouring of the top.

 

Routed the pickup cavities

 

Drilled the holes for the rotary switch ans Volume pot

 

Dry fitted the neck. Started to look like proper bass already!

 

 

Took the neck back out  to work on the headstock.
Glued the ebony faceplate on.

 

Drilled the holes for the machine heads

 

 

I always drill from two sides. Making the holes on the back a slightly narrower diameter. The Hipshot Ultralite tuners have a very small footprint, and if you drill the hole as wide as the bushing on the front you will see gaps.

 

 

Made some paste with rosewood dust and wood glue to fill up the gaps underneath the fret tangs.

 

 

Then did the final profiling of the neck

 

While I test fitted the neck once again I noticed the string spacing of the bridge was not going to workout with the pickups.
So I decided to buy a different bridge. Instead of the wide travel Thunderbrid bridge that I had planned originally I chose to use a Guyker two point bridge. The latter has a narrower string spacing, which would work better with the Mudbuckers.

 

(Pic from another build)

 

 

Then drilled the bridge stud holes. And string-through-body holes

 

[Basvarken]

Before I set to work on the pore filling I decided to make the hole for the rotary switch a bit wider.
Not only for better access in the wiring process, but also because this was going to accommodate an Apple Air Tag.
I made a hidden compartment in the back controls cover.

 

Then did the pore filling prior to the staining.

 

Stained  the back, sides and neck in a dark mahogany color

 

Stained the top red

 

Sprayed several layers of clear

 

After several layers of clear it was time to aplly the decals

 

Just like the Brooks 1 that I built 14 years ago, this bass was ging to get a hidden tone knob.
Why hidden? I like the clean look on the top side of a bass. And I very rarely use a Tone pot anyway.

So I made a bracket from a sheet of aluminum

 

And mounted it inside the controls cavity

 

A little hole on the controls cover gives access to the tone pot.

 

My good friend Sjoerd made a wiring diagram to my specs.
And he took care of the soldering

 

It's a clever switch!

1. Neck humbucker
2. Outer coils as humbucker
3. Both humbuckers
4. Neck humbucker + inner Bridge coil out of phase
5.  Inner coils as humbucker
6. Bridge humbucker

[Basvarken]

And recorded the inevitable video demo of course
 

 

[SpondonBassed]

Beautifully built and marvelously documented.

 

Well done (as always)!

[songofthewind]

Absolutely gorgeous 

[tauzero]

12 hours ago, Basvarken said:

A little hole on the controls cover gives access to the tone pot.

 

I was going to ask about that, nice idea.

 

Lovely build.

[Doctor J]

Love your work, fella, always fascinating to see you put this stuff together.

[Doctor J]

A bit of Cry of Love in the video too, very tasteful 😉

[Hellzero]

Fantastic work as usual.

 

Congratulations @Basvarken !

[ezbass]

Stunning! Both humbuckers in series was the tone for me.

[stewblack]

A work of art. Thank you for sharing.

[AlexDelores]

Superb 👌