1980s Westone Rail Bass headless design with sliding pickup

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Hello!

I'm a casual bass player with a lifetime goal to eventually become a bit better than at the moment. I first heard about Westone's Rail Bass in your blog (http://guitarz.blogspot.fi/2009/04/westone-rail-bass.html), and now a couple of years later I finally bought one on eBay. Cost me a bit less than 500 euros (£380, $650). Even though red is the least cool color it was produced in, I love the way it looks. Attached are a couple of photos of the bass and its sliding pickup. You can use them in the blog or store them in the archives.

Cheers,
Jorma Kim
Finland

Very nice. Thanks for the photos! - GLW

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Atlansia Solitaire single-string fretless bass guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I'm trying to figure out if I could get through an entire gig on bass using a single-stringed bass such as this Japanese-made Atlansia Solitaire currently listed on eBay UK. I suppose it depends on the gig and what songs were required. It could certainly work in some scenarios I can think of, although I think that if I had to keep it minimalistic I'd be a lot happier with one of Atlansia's two-string basses such as this or this.

Currently listed on eBay UK with a starting price of £499. (I believe the seller is a long-time Guitarz reader, by the way, so I'll try not to say anything rude about the bass!) You might think that's quite a lot of money for a single string but these pictures should illustrate that this bass is a quality product and quite rare outside of Japan.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Stradi Symphony Five-string Fretless Bass

guitarz.blogspot.com:

The design of this Stradi Symphony Five-string Fretless Bass incorporates visual elements from both the electric bass and stand-up acoustic double bass, but at the same time it is quite a minimalistic design with no visible pickups, control knobs or switches being allowed to sully the face of the instrument. In fact, the sole control on the bass is a volume slider and that is to be found located on the backplate on the reverse of the instrument (seems a weird place for it, I'd imagine it could get knocked there). Note how the fingerboard (wenge, apparently) continues all the way to the base of the body beyond the bridge, giving the whole bass a very sleek and elegant appearance.

The specs are as follows:

Body: Walnut and oak with curly maple top
Neck: Hornbeam sides with maple center and walnut lines, two 8mm carbon fibre pipes from headstock to bridge working as resonant chambers and stiffening rods
Fingerboard: One, thick piece of quartersawn wenge. Side dots made of brass with acrylic centre eye.
Tuners: Gotoh
Bridge: Black oak with Stradi cutom piezo pickup underneath
Electronics: Stradi Sweet Transistor Preamp for piezo, Volume slide pot on backplate, 9v battery operation
Strings: Rotosound Tru-Bass

I can't say I'd personally want to keep those horrible black plastic-coated flatwounds on there. One thing that polarises fretless bass players is the whole thorny question of flatwounds versus roundwounds. I am very definitely in the roundwound camp. So, OK, they are going to mark your lovely black minimalist fingerboard - but the lovely sustain they will produced will more than make up for it. But then if you really ARE looking for an upright bass sound which is often more percussive and has a lot less sustain than an electric bass, maybe the RotoSound Tru Bass strings are worth a try?

Item is located in Poland and the starting bid is set at US $2,470.

G L Wilson

© 2014, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - the blog that goes all the way to 11!
Please read our photo and content policy.

Homemade one-string bass guitar with fretless aluminium fingerboard

guitarz.blogspot.com:

According to the eBay seller, this is "Fender Jaguar inspired" and "a homemade 1 string bass guitar with Fender parts". Well, I can't see any Fender Jaguar influence, nor any genuine or even approximated Fender parts. The pickup looks like it came off an old Teisco or other contemporaneous Japanese 6-string guitar and the headstock shape looks as if its been modelled on a Peavey. Maybe the donor neck is from a Peavey bass? The fretless fingerboard (it's not a "fretboard", as the seller calls it, if it doesn't have any frets!) is made from a piece of aluminium.

Thanks to Jeremiah for bringing this auction to my attention. He comments that, with a starting bid of $9.99, at least the price is fair.

G L Wilson

© 2012, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

3-string boat oar guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Do you really need me to write an in-depth blog post about this boat oar guitar? It's a boat oar, strung up with three strings and with a pickup mounted on it, and would be used for sldie playing in cigar box star style.

Currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $100 for those who don't want to be bothered with building something similar themselves.

See also the Tennis Racquet Guitar.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

The Mike Miller footbass - play 2-string bass with your feet while you play guitar!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Just when you thought you'd seen it all, guitar-wise, along comes something like this long lost innovation from the 1960s! I guess it never caught on, because I've never seen or even heard of such an instrument before.

I'll let the text from the original instruction booklet (seen in the photo) tell you all about it:

BE YOUR OWN BASS MAN
With the all new
"Mike Miller Foot Bass"

Totally new concept in playing.

Amaze friends and audiences.

Make extra MONEY.

Makes singles sound like duos and duos like trios.

Be more valuable as a sideman.

Anyone who chords Guitar can play the FOOT BASS.

Two string, two level foot bass.

Practically maintenance free.

One year guarantee.

Complete with playing and tuning instructions.

Requires no extra or special amplifier.

14 Notes on fretted footboard.

Solid body with beautiful Red Walnut Woodgrain finish.

Well marked notes to assist beginners.

Case optional.

Overall dimensions: 31" x 7" x 2 5/8"

BE YOUR OWN BASS MAN!... You can do this very simply WITH YOUR FOOT! The all new Mike Miller Foot bass was developed with the stringed instrument player in mind. It has fourteen fretted notes, and the noting scale is in relationship to the Guitar. It is designed to lay on the floor on its back (non-skid rubber feet). It is played by resting the heel on the floor and striking the shoe sole against the strings, when the string is held against the fret this sustains the strings vibration until released. When relesed the string strikes a muffling device which kills the overtone. Easy to learn to play and inexpensive to own.

Currently being auctioned on eBay.

Additional (20 June 2011): Sold for $191.64.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

3-string Biscuit Tin Guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This 3-stringed biscuit tin guitar is yet another variation on the cigar box guitar theme, and illustrates nicely the spirit of inventiveness.

This seller has been listing such homemade instruments on eBay for several months now and has assembled a number of rustic-looking resonator guitars. It's a pity his eBay listings are let down by a lack of attention to detail in the areas of spelling, grammar, punctuation, use of capital letters (i.e. total disregard for), and even basic sentence construction.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

3-string piano-bass

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's a homemade 3-string bass built from the parts of an old dismantled piano, which includes piano strings, tuning pegs, and - strangely - a hammer (I'm not quite sure how that is employed here, whether there is a mechanism for it or if you simply take it in hand and hit the strings).

You can read more about it here on Dnki's blog.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Ron Marr's doubleneck CBG

guitarz.blogspot.com:
Hi.

Since an electric cigar box guitar wasn't quite ridiculous enough, I decided I should build myself a double-neck. Thought you might get a kick out of this.

The bottom neck is a 2-string, longneck slide bass (ala Stig Pederson). The custom nut is a hunk of bolt I hacksawed and spray painted. The tailpiece is a chunk of angle iron.

The top neck is a 3-stringer with a low action ... better for me as I do a lot of finger picking (it really is fast ... and for once I even nailed the intonation). Note the fancy-schmancy tailpiece that began its life as a pie spatula.

The homemade necks (steel reinforced ... and rounded with a bastard file) are bolt ons using helicoil inserts and gobs of JB Weld. Oh ... and lets not forget those hand-carved headstocks. Last but not least, in order to take overkill to new heights, I covered the Punch cigar box with a lacewood veneer

I'm thinking my next project may be an electric harp guitar with a 1-gallon oil can for a body.

Great blog ... I check it out most every day.

Ron Marr


Thanks Ron. As ever we are always pleased to receive photos of readers' self-builds. Funnily enough, only last night I was watching a few YouTube clips of The Presidents of the United States of America, a band known for their minimalistic 2- and 3-string guitars (dubbed the basitar and the guitbass respectively). In one clip, Chris Ballew is seen playing a doubleneck basitar/guitbass with a total of 5 strings on it.

G L Wilson

Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 9th year!

Gittler Guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

The original handmade Gittler guitar was an object lesson in minimalism. Here was something that looked like a cross between a metal fish skeleton and a TV aerial, yet is was actually a fully-functioning guitar.

The design not only dispensed with the headstock but even the bulk of the neck itself. The neck was simply a steel rod supporting a series of smaller steel rods acting as frets. What there was of the body consisted mainly of six steel rods running beneath the strings. Each of these contained a pickup - one for each string allowing for interesting stereo and panning options.

Original examples were built by Alan Gittler in the late 1970s. In the early 1980s, production instruments were built in Israel by the Bar Rashi company founded by Alan Gittler. There were two models, both of which now had small plastic-resin bodies containing the electronics, whilst one model had the same plastic material forming a "back" to the neck. This latter version is the one we see pictured here and an example of which was recently offered for sale on eBay. For a picture of the version without the plastic neck back, I refer you to pp.140-141 of 500 Guitars (another little plug there!).

I was fortunate enough to be able to try out each of these models soon after they went into production back in the day. You'd imagine that the model with the plastic material behind the neck would be easier to play. It wasn't. It just made for an uncomfortable, bulky neck. Aesthetically it's not as nice either.

However, the other version - the proper fish skeleton model - I loved.

It wouldn't be a good guitar for shredding on, and I think you'd need to adapt your playing style especially for the instrument. For starters, you need to have the thumb of your left hand firmly on the back of the neck in a classical playing position. I saw one guy trying it out who insisted on wrapping his thumb over the top, Hendrix-style, and that just didn't work. Possibly, you could use this as a tap-style instrument. I think it's one that you need to approach with fingers lightly floating over the frets (I can't say "fretboard" because there isn't one!). It's not a neck you are able to hold, as such.

Alternatively you could view it as the utlimate in scalloping!

If you want to see one in use, most people will point you in the direction of the video of "Synchronicity II" by The Police, but here Andy Summers is merely using his (pre-production) Gittler as a prop. The only example I can find of someone genuinely playing a Gittler is here.

G L Wilson

NB: Please make sure you are reading this Guitarz post at guitarz.blogspot.com and not on a Scraper blog that copies posts without permission (and steals bandwidth) so as to profit from advertising. Please support original bloggers!

Anyone for tennis?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

It's a bit early in the year, but... anyone for tennis?

From the same spirit of mind that creates cigar box guitars, comes the Sonny Daze 2-string Tennis Racquet Guitar.

Note that its creator spells it "racket". Some people unkinder than me would suggest that this is deliberate given the sound it makes, but not I. Obviously you're going to be limited as to what you can play on this, but the following video will give an idea on some of the kind of cigar-boxian slide riffs that are possible.

For an instrument (or "trash art", as its maker calls it) with practically no body mass, it's actually quite impressive. In a diddley bo kinda way.

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!

Petrol tank 3-string guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:
This 3-string slide guitar has been made from an old Villiers's petrol tank, a Pearl high hat stand and cymbal stand, and some aluminium box section! I'll let the following YouTube video do the talking:



See also: three-string slide guitar made from a BSA engine casing

G L Wilson

NB: There are a lot of blogs STEALING content and bandwidth. If you read this anywhere else but on guitarz.blogspot.com then you are reading a blog that STEALS content. Please support original bloggers!

Zoybar Open Source Guitar

Find more videos like this on Zoybar

Inspired by the open source movement within the world of computing, Zoybar is a modular hardware platform for creating custom electric string instruments and effects (such as the Kaoss Pad).

In essence this would appear to be a modular guitar system. In the words of Zoybar founder and designer Ziv Bar Ilan, "The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform. The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be changed during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile groves."

For more, see zoybar.net, check out the videos, and learn how you could win one of three limited edtion kits.

Smojo Cigar Box Guitars

I've just added another guitar blog to my blogroll. Smojo Cigar Box Guitars is a fascinating look into the world of cigar box guitars (or CBGs). The blog's author, David, got the CBG bug a couple of years ago when he tried one for the first time. He was then intrigued enough to turn his hand to building his own. His blog documents the CBGs and cigar box amps that he has built and also covers related matters such as playing techniques.

I've not tried a CBG myself but have always found them most appealing. One of these days I'm going to have to dip a toe into the CBG ocean. I admire the whole concept - they are basic raw instruments and are the ultimate recycled guitar.

Also, check out David's CBG videos on YouTube to hear how they sound.

AV Basses 3-string

Yesterday, I showed you a bass design that really did not appeal to me, so today I'm showing you what I consider to be a far more attractive design. This 3-string bass was a custom order for AV Basses, a Czech company who specialise in boutique basses with as many strings as you want - 4, 5, 6, 7 or even 3 as on this example. I love the original shape of this bass, and the scroll on the upper horn is a nice touch.

Bedpan guitar

We've all seen that tired old cliché that is the toilet seat guitar (time and time again, yawn...), but as a variation on the theme this four-stringer is a bedpan guitar.

I'm not quite sure what the deal is with the fake bullet holes.

LongBow American Classic 2-String Bass

If three strings are still too many for you, how about going one less and opting for a two-string bass?

We've already covered two-string basses on this blog - remember Stig Pedersen from D-A-D and his wacky basses?

The Longbow American Classic Two String Bass is a much simpler affair, and resembles a lengthy rectangular block of wood with pickups, machineheads and two strings attached. Which is basically what it is.

It is fretless, which also keeps things simple for the manufacturer, and is supposedly available in left or right hand versions, short, medium, long or extra-long scales, and with pickups placed in regular or "EB" positions (the latter supposedly being good for dub reggae sounds).

Except that according to the Orders page, "Due to internal company re-organization, we are not accepting Longbow orders until further notice." Which is sad, as this looks like a fun instrument. Having said that, am I the only one who thinks the listed price of $395 is a little steep for such a basic instrument?

And now for something completely different...

After a couple of posts about 12-string guitars (and basses), I'm now going all minimalist on you and am once again featuring my down-tuned three-stringed guitar - or, according to The Presidents of the United States of America - my "guitbass". I built this from parts from an old Japanese Strat copy, plus various other bits and pieces that I had in my box of bits. The three strings are tuned C#, G# and C# (octave higher than the low C#).

Perhaps I should also add that this poor instrument is the one I take out my frustrations upon. It's been dropped and abused and has also survived being set on fire.

If you want to know what it sounds like, then check out this video that I put together this weekend:


I like the idea of minimalist instruments such as this. In a way it's a reaction against these guitars and basses with an ever-increasing numbers of strings just for the sake of it, rather than because a greater number of strings is useful musically or makes for a more playable instrument. It seems there is rivalry amongst some bassists as to who can have the instrument with the most strings. (And I'm talking about individual strings, not strings arranged in courses such as on a twelve-string guitar or the Hamer 12-string bass we looked at yesterday.)

You don't need a 7-string guitar - just listen to what a three-string can do. Sometimes less is more.

Three-string slide guitar made from BSA engine casing

This 3-string slide guitar features an aluminium neck and a body made from the engine casing from a BSA Bantam motorcycle. According to the seller, it's the "little brother" to a similar 6-string guitar built for Seasick Steve. I'll look out for Steve playing that one when I go see him play the Royal Albert Hall in October.

Seasick Steve - Cut My Wings

I was at a party on New Year's Eve and so missed the phenomenal Seasick Steve's appearance on Jools Holland's end of the year "Hootenanny" programme on BBC2. If anyone recorded this on DVD-R, please get in touch as I'd love a proper copy of this. Oh, and if you get the chance - go see him play live!

Edit: The programme was repeated on BBC2 on Saturday 12 January, so I managed to catch it then, but guess what? It looks like the programme was edited because we see Seasick Steve playing another song, "My Donny", on an acoustic 6-string, but don't see him playing "Cut My Wings" on the 3-string Trance Wonder as in the above YouTube clip, which is clearly from the same programme (same set, same guests, etc). Grrrrr... Did anyone record the original broadcast?