This bass started off as a Claw model. The body is walnut and the neck is maple and purpleheart.
When it arrived it was obvious that the lower horn was going to seriously interfere with resting the bass on a knee or thigh and the upper Claw was a little uneven, the natural wood grain and in particularly a burl meant that this was going to be hard to smooth down so I couldn’t resist the urge to do some remodeling work! Below are my progress pictures of work from start though to the end product. The glossy finish in the interim pictures is achieved by spraying the wood with denatured alcohol from a mister bottle. This is a temporary result for the photos only to highlight the wood grain and figuring.
Again, I went with a Tru-oil finish and I was able to achieved a high gloss finish, which goes well with the dark walnut. The fingerboard as been re-profiled (9.5” radius), fine sanded, polished and finished with fingerboard oil. I fabricated a new control plate from black walnut that matches well, and installed a new electric harness with a volume and variable tone control. I also made a new ebony nut and floating bridge and I replaced the original silver tuners with for fetching black ones. Finishing touches were added with black schaller straplocks, black cover screws and Rotosound 77 flatwound strings.
I have decided to call the the ‘Thunder-bone’ or ‘TB’ for short!
