re: Electric Bass Guitar 4 String Custom Inlay Figured Maple Burl Walnut Abalone Ultra Rosewood Carving

Wow (understatement).

Inlay fascinates me. Especially when it’s well done, like this. I’ve done the equivalent, but that 1/2" gap around the edges of mine just didn’t seem to pull the thing together.

This caught my eye because I have a friend who comes over to cut much of what he needs to build things like dulcimers and psalterys. Of coarse, there are the occasional thumb pianos, flutes and what have you.

I know nothing about playing ANY musical instrument, but consider most to be pieces of art for the eye and ear.

In spite of my limitations, with regard to playing, I enjoy helping my friend. Our latest endeavor is winding out own pickups.

As with the other things built, I am able to influence my friend’s projects with reminders that merely because something has been done a certain way. We are working on some rather unique approaches to common problems and it’s been fun watching the successes grow.

One example would be regarding the dulcimers. He insisted on building it the way everyone told him to. My take was, a guitar has a much wider face and doesn’t require near the support being called for building a little, narrow dulcimer. In the end, his turned out fine and sounds beautiful (that’s more on him than me).

One of the outside the box approaches was setting the positions of the frets. What a mathematical pain. I had him grind the bottom off a piece of fret stock and we used my inherited tone meter dohicky thingamabobber to locate each fret and it worked will.

Before, a couple frets were off, which meant filling and uglifiying the neck, or sanding the over 1" thick beast down (could have sanded it flat and laminated complementing stock on to that, but. . . .).

Anyway, I always appreciate the more complex builds, like this. Great shtuff.