I’ve been working with Joe for quite a while, mostly modifying his 5 string basses with pickup and pre-amp upgrades. I was super psyched when he asked me to make a more vintage style, passive 4 string Healer bass with this cool Lilac color, seashell inspired!
For pickups we decided on the TV Jones Thunder’Mag wide range humbuckers. I feel like they are a cool combination of J and P pickup tones. The offset pole pieces are opposite of the usual P position, and the coil’s are narrower, and the larger poles offer a strong attack with fingers or a pick. I also just love using a P-90 shape on our Larger Healer Bass body, the scale seems to make sense to me.
This is the first bass neck we’ve completed since starting to work with Tom Dalia. He helped develop some jigs to hold the wood on a CNC and really get the shape and process dialed in. Can’t thank you enough for helping with these Tom! Now that the jigs are here in MA we’ll be able to work with a local friend to CNC them right here in town.
The neck is Roasted Maple with an Indian Rosewood fretboard with Cream Pearloid inlays cut by our pal Marc Seedorf in Greenfield. It was a tricky endeavor to glue them in because the actual pearloid material is less than 1/16” thick, meaning they had to be perfectly flush with the surface of the fretboard before leveling so we wouldn’t loose that top surface. We’ll definitely be trying to source a better material for this in the future, but it looks so darn good and is the same material as the pick guard. Worth the extra effort!
The body is Alder, chambered on the treble side only. I’ve come to the conclusion that the best bass tone comes from a solid bass side while the treble side can have a nice attack when chambered. It’s also easier to carve the body contours with the solid side. The instrument also balances better with a little more weight on that bass side.
The bridge is the Hipshot A style which we’ve adjusted to a narrower 17mm spacing, and the tuners are the Hipshot HB 1’s. We tumble all the hardware in a rock tumbler, giving everything a satin sheen. Thanks for your commission Joe!
