This is one of Steve’s Fantasy models. It is made out of Guyanan rosewood, which has amazing color and grain. The neck is African rosewood, purpleheart and mahogany. The fingerboard is a very dark Brazilian rosewood, which I’ve stabilized with epoxy. The controls are rear mounted (an option), which is far more appealing to me than the front access cavity that is standard on Wishbasses.
First step was to get the sanding, shaping and contouring of the bass completed. The fingerboard was been leveled, radiussed and epoxied. The epoxy was necessary as the board, while it had great figuring and color was a little too ‘unstable’ for my liking, even after sanding to 600 grit. With the epoxy, the board has been ‘stabilized’ and now looks and feels great.
The pick-up cavity rout was enlarged to allow for shielding. The previous cavity was to tight for that. During the rout a little nick was made to the fingerboard side, but this was repaired in such a way that there is no sign of the ncik at all. It was only very minor in the first place. The side hole for the jack input was then drilled. The bass was then sealed and Tru-Oil was applied; a total of 30 coats. The allowed for a high gloss finish on the bass.
I decided to fit a three way switch to take advantage of the Kent Armstrong’s series, parallel and single coil setting. This required the drilling of an additional hole for the mini-switch. I shielded the bass using copper tape and I wired a new harness with a volume, tone, micro switch and side input jack. I had to rout out the area around the input jack to allow for the fitting of the jack plate. The harness and jack plate were then refitted and an initial check minus strings indicates all was working with the wiring.
The rear cavity cover was sprayed gloss black and the original chrome tuners were replaced with black ones. A new nut and bridge have been fabricated from ebony and refitted, and the nut was slotted to allow for the restringing with LaBella Tape Wound strings.
