This guitar is the most representative of my design standpoint, my next basses will certainly follow the same view.
Being a fretless guitar, every parameter was bent toward one goal: sustain. To me increasing the sustain is achieved by diminishing the portion of the string’s energy absorbed by the guitar.
This is why I went for:
-a very stiff neck, laminated from Hard Ash and Maçaranduba
-a very hard fingerboard, made from Maçaranduba (an exotic wood 1.5 times harder than Ebony which the reference in term of fingerboard) coated with Cyanoacrylate (very hard surface and hard-wearing)
-an integral neck to body joint, with a neck-through design, sandwiched between the top and the body.
In addition to this I chose a rather hard piece of Maple for the top and a Sipo body, used a short and tilted headstock (added stiffness), a Tonepros bridge (locking Tune-O-Matic) with Graphtech saddles.
This guitar also had to be equipped with a hexaphonic pickup and 13 pin output (for modeliser or MIDI converter). After some research, I settled on the Graphtech Ghost system : a bridge equipped with six piezo elements, a mono/stereo preamp Acoustiphonic for blending the “electric” sound of the magnetic pickup with the “electro acoustic” sound of the piezo elements, a six channel preamp Hexaphonic for the 13 pin output. I’m really happy with the system and I’d like to thank David King for his precious help.
I also want to mention that all the woods in this guitar (except the .5mm Mahogany veneer) as well as the 5 string’s Maple top come from Bellême Bois.
 Fretless guitar. |
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