I've made several solid body guitars but this was my first bass. It was for Billy Greer of Kansas and this is the video I shot of the first 2 songs at the Jethro Tull/Kansas concert at Red Rocks Colorado with him playing it. It's a solid one piece zebrawood body with a zebra wood neck (carbon fiber rods inlaid in the neck for stability.) I make no money to speak of building guitars but if I can keep on seeing them played like this, I don't care!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f90lBXN2Q6I

Edit to add some build pics:

zebrawood neck and one piece body blanks


headstock layout with truss rod and carbon fiber rods in:


RockHouse inlay at the 12th fret - this has special meaning for Billy:


layout of the fiber optic cables to be routed in the back of the fretboard:


LED test:


Fitting the neck and checking the lights. Note target on the wall in the background:


Had to make a special battery box & cover for the 9 volt (active EQ) and AA (LED)


Neck shapes up:


Body shapes up:


Billy came over just about every week to check it out. We're friends now:


Matching electronics and battery box cover. Battery cover uses 3x1 mm rare earth magnets to hold it on:


Finished headstock:


Finished Guitar:

That's cool, man. That thing has a nice finish.

Thanks. The finish took 2 weeks to do due to my poor pore fill job - 35 thin coats of minwax polyurethane, 320 sand between each coat, then I used a stew mac buffer on it and that really did the trick. Here's a vid of the 21st coat going on - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqU20-5DKHc

The neck is a little thinner than a regular Jazz Bass but that's what he wanted. I thought it was a little on the thin side but he likes it. To help with stiffness, I inlaid two carbon fiber rods along side the truss rod to hopefully keep it stable (the neck is zebrawood too)

Pickups are Seumour Suncan BassLine SBJ-3b (bridge) and SBJ-3a (neck) passive pickups. Electronics are Seymour Duncan STC-3p 3-band active EQ for passive pickups. Also, there's a circuit an engineer friend of mine designed to controll a dimmer to a blue led that lights up 1mm FC cables that run under the eobny fretboard to the 3mm pearl side dots. That's what the little knob to the far left (or right if you're the one playing it) controls.

I have an album of pics of the build if anybody wants to be friends on facebook - [email protected]
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1540376349229.2074329.1229539626

Here's a photo I snagged from a video taken at the Sweden Rock Fest just the other day. Wish I could have been there too...

That fiber optic setup is CRAZY.

Beautiful bass. I really like the fretboard lights too.

And congrats!

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