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Welcome to The Liverpool Beat website, chronicling the history of UK Rock music from the golden era of Merseyside music of the 50s and 60s to the present day. Some say the roots of Rock 'n ' Roll lie purely in the deep south of the USA. That maybe true, but Liverpool in the 50s/60s was the centre of the new wave of music which formed the basis of "garage" and even heavy metal. Liverpool Beat takes you on a journey from those heady days of The Beatles into the 21st century with news, reviews and exclusive articles from the real world of rock music.
Before going any further it was time to think how the bass would sound and what electrics and pickups needed to produce it. The sound in my head was a deep growl with lots of bottom edge and plenty of ‘punch’ Like a Music Man ‘Stingray’ bass but without the active controls so I opted for the simple electrics of a 1962 Fender Precision coupled with a Stingray bass. The sound is awesome greatly aided by the density of the Coco Bola. I had treated myself to a new heavy duty band saw and boy was it needed, It took me almost an hour to cut the body shape out! This is one tough plank of wood. There were similar problems routing out the pockets for the neck, pickup and control cavity and after blunting several router bit’s, the investment in Titanium bits saved the day.
Now the tricky bit -shaping the body. None of my planes, even the High Tec micro planes used in shaping metal for space rockets, would go near it and the belt sander ground to a halt so -- but I won’t be beat.
My good friend, who has sadly passed away, Jimmy Kelly was taking a keen interest in the building process and it was him who came up with an idea. Jim used to teach Racing car drivers and as they had many crashes it was costing a fortune to replace the nose cones. So he made up an alloy that was so strong that the only way it could be shaped was with a powerful angle grinder - bingo! that’s the tool I used to shape the body and a ‘magic’ disc of resin bonded diamond flaps. Even then it was tough going but it worked well in the end and the real magic of the wood came out.
The bass is called The Spirit of the Wave and true to it’s name, fantastic grain waves made by mother nature were there for all to see, all I did was to bring them out. It was at this point that the beauty of the wood really stood out and I decided to keep it natural no modern plastic guitar lacquer or polymers just the wood plain and simple.
This then gave me lots of idea’s for the neck inlays. Next time we will make the neck and finger board then the biggest job of all ,the neck inlays.