The Specification

I am simply a novice player and, before I started, had little idea regarding the art of guitar building, or how to select electronics and hardware. I am a little better informed now, but was looking for all the help on offer in speccing my new instrument. I certainly got some great advice along the way. Many thanks to Tom Konig (www.konigbassworx.com.au/), for help with choosing, and setting up for, the Delano pickups, and to Spike at Warmoth (www.warmoth.com/) for pretty much everything else.

 I expect this to be my only instrument for many years and so I want it to be something I can develop into, and something that is versatile in the range of tones that it is capable of. I had to take the time get the spec right.

With Warmoth you get to specify absolutely everything!

So after months of poring over every inch of the Warmoth website, I decided on how I was going to create my bass. Of all the options, I decided on something a bit special. Not a Precision, or a Jazz, or any of the other familiar styles. I am going to build the Warmoth Gecko 5, with a medium-width neck.

The body core is Swamp Ash with a unique choice Bubinga laminate top. This means I selected the exact piece of Bubinga from a range offered on the website. Bubinga was one of the woods that drew me to a Warwick Corvette in the first place, so that wasn't a difficult choice. The selected piece has fabulous figuring and symmetry and I'm hoping it will really pop out after the tung oil finishing treatment. You will also notice that there are no drilled holes for the controls. I wasn't sold on the standard Warmoth diamond pattern, so elected to do this task myself (no cost reduction to omit this process step, btw).

 Probably the decision that I agonised over most was with respect to getting the strings to line up over the pole pieces of the pickups. Having chosen the Delano pickup set, the question became one of ensuring that the string pitch from the bridge matched the pole pitch at the pup routing position. This is where the information and suggestions provided by Tom Konig was invaluable. The suggestion of his that has ended up giving me some peace of mind (up to now), was to create a full scale drawing of the arrangement of bridge, pickups and the strings over the top, through to the nut. To do this, I used the free Sketchup drawing software. (When I started, it was a Google product, now it is known as Trimble Sketchup).

It was this advice and the subsequent drawing (shown at left) that led me to opt for placing the bridge pickup in the "sweet spot" position. This moves the pickup away from the bridge, towards the neck. A further measure to ensure this string/pickup alignment was to choose the Hipshot Type "A" bridge, which allows for minimal side-to-side adjustment of the strings individually. I guess we'll find out soon enough if all these precautions work out as planned.

I chose a Wenge/Bubinga laminated neck with a Black Ebony fingerboard and stainless steel frets. Wenge was again a Warwick feature that I was interested in, but it was the information from Warmoth that convinced me that this was the way to go for this project. The ebony is for tone, durability and tradition. The stainless steel frets for durability and contrast with the Ebony fingerboard. The scale length on the Gecko is 35", which is an inch longer than the standard bass neck. This allows for the B-string to be tensioned a little more, avoiding the floppy nature of the low string on the standard scale. 

The peg head features matching Bubinga laminate, and there is additional Ebony veneer on the neck ramp, where it joins the body. A nice, quirky feature of the Warmoth Gecko bass is the nice lizard inlay, also in matching Bubinga veneer. The position markers are on the side of the neck.

The electronics are Delano "The Hybrid-5" pickups, with "Sonar 2" preamp (the full Delano saga in a  later post). The hardware is all black: bridge, tuners control knobs etc. I'm hoping it will all contrast nicely, for a cohesive and stylish look.

The full parts list will be in the next post.