Friday, April 30, 2010
Micro-Frets Bass Project
I thought that some might find it interesting on how the bass guitar that I sampled for The Lamb Laid Down on MIDI was created.
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The Micro-Frets Project
The Story of Finding the Guitar
After my years of research (and Squids help when he went to The Farm and photographed some of Mike's double neck bass guitars) I realized that Mike's bass guitar on The Lamb was some kind of custom guitar. Further I found out that the original guitar was made by Micro-Frets, a short lived guitar manufacturer from Maryland, USA. The model was a Signature baritone guitar that Mike had converted for his Lamb doubleneck.
Further research on Micro-Frets told me that a total of a little more than 3,000 guitars was ever made by this company and that the number of Signature models was something much less and the number of baritone Signatures was so RARE that no one has ever saw one in recent years.
So, I started watching the auction sites (E-BAY and GBASE) for Micro-Frets guitars. Over the years a few came up but never a Signature model, let alone a Signature baritone guitar. Except one day, I saw a Signature guitar come out for sale and it dawned on me that I would probably never see a baritone guitar for sale and that if Mike had custom work done on his doubleneck, why couldn't I have custom work done on this signature to convert it to a baritone guitar.
So, I contacted the local luthiers in my area (Raleigh, NC) and inquired if this was possible and if they could perform this transformation. Once I knew this was possible, the last step was to win the bid on EBAY, which I did and purchased the guitar below from Steven P. Howansky, who was the original owner of this guitar for over 39 years whom purchased this guitar from an unnamed music store in Tampa, FLA.
Below find a picture of this guitar as I purchased it. Now, for the fun part. Transforming this into a Mike Rutherford Lamb Bass Guitar.
The Before Picture
The Work Required for the Transformation
As you can see in the picture, this guitar is a far cry from being a Mike Rutherford Bass Guitar. The obvious things that need to be done are to replace the neck with a baritone neck, move the pickups, bridge and tailpiece. Change the vibrato tailpiece to a set tailpiece (one doesn't need a whammy bar on a bass guitar), move the volume knobs and pickup switches and finally move the jack from the top of the guitar to the side.
For aesthetics purposes, I also decided to have the guitar painted JET-GLO black and have white binding added on the top side of the body.
The tail piece and machine heads would have to support bass strings instead of guitar strings. In keeping with the original style and sound of this guitar (after all, I am trying to recreate Mike's bass sound from The Lamb), I decided that the unique bridge and nut need to be retained as well as the pickups and semi-hollow body.
The Luthier
I can't say enough good things about the luthier on this project. His name is James Ringelspaugh from Cary, NC. He is a relatively young fellow that does outstanding work, usually building custom guitars (both electric and acoustic) from scratch. He was almost as excited as I was about this project and put up with my questions and demands pretty well. I supplied him all the pictures that I could find of Mike's Micro-Frets before and after Dick Knight did the work on Mike's doubleneck. His communication around options and progress of the project were truly professional and I highly recommend him to anybody that needs custom work done on their guitar(s).
Ringo has provided pictures of the progress of the project and I would like to share these with you.
The Body Work
As described above on the required work, see the pictures below on what and how this project progressed. One interesting note is that the guitar had to sit and cure for over two weeks once all the coats of lacquer were applied and before it was wet sanded and buffed out.
The entire project took over one month to complete and I thought you might find the pictures of the guitar on the bench of luthier interesting.
All Hardware Removed and Sanded Top and neck removed
New Placement of Hardware and Custom Tailpiece
New Tailpiece Required Support - Hollow Body Supports
Dings filled, binding routed and filler for Bass Pickup
BInding Prep and Setting
Binding Set and Body Ready for Paint
Rutherford Style Marker Layout
New Baritone Neck
Headstock Layout
New Heck Headstock Shaped
Neck Shaping Measurements
Neck Complete Bottom
Neck Complete Top
First coats of lacquer - ONE
First coats of lacquer - TWO
All Coats of Lacquer - awaiting wet sand and buffing
Wet Sanded and Buffed #1
Wet Sanded and Buffed #2
Wet Sanded and Buffed #3
Guitar Completed
After about 6 weeks in the shop, the bass guitar is complete and I picked it up today (June 1, 2010). The luthier set the intonation by ear and since I was going to be sampling this baby right away, I decided to stop by the local Guitar Center where most of the sales people have gotten to know me.
They put the guitar on the bench and checked the intonation on the strobe and told me it was setup PERFECTLY and nothing needed to be adjusted.
I can't tell you how great this guitar project turned out and if you ever need any custom guitar work performed, I can highly recommend James Ringlespaugh from Raleigh, NC. His website and contact information is:
http://www.ringelspaugh.com/
So, now with the finished pictures.
Finished #1
Finished #2