My Baby Love To Pizz! (EUB build...)

[Randy Cordle]

Just wanted to show off my new semiacoustic EUB build. It goes from travel/storage position to playing position in around 60 seconds, no string slacking necessary. It has both a transducer to pick up the top vibrations and a magnetic pickup to help with the low end. 34" scale, flatwond strings, and upright vibe. At 15 pounds, it's slightly smaller and about 7 pounds lighter than my Englehardt 3/4 size bass. I'm happy.

[Jim McConkey]

Clever!

[Steve Senseney]

Took me a while!!

Clever!!

[Bill Raymond]

VERY clever, indeed.

[John E Giarrizzo]

Randy,

I am still trying to figure out how you did it.

Does the fingerboard rotate, or bolt on/off? If rotated, how does it lock in place?

[Mario Proulx]

Very clever!

I ask, also, how does the neck and "body" attach, or do they rotate/spin around one another? And does the "body" add to the tone, VS playing it without?

I've been wanting to build myself a "portable" upright bass for a long time, seeing how my cars keep getting smaller, which makes my real upright impossible to take-along on most trips...

[Randy Cordle]

Very clever!

I ask, also, how does the neck and "body" attach, or do they rotate/spin around one another? And does the "body" add to the tone, VS playing it without?

I've been wanting to build myself a "portable" upright bass for a long time, seeing how my cars keep getting smaller, which makes my real upright impossible to take-along on most trips...

The neck is attached by two spinner knobs and takes less than a minite to convert between storage and playing positions.

Your reasoning regarding the travel issue was the exact same reasons I decided to pursue this design for myself. The body contibutes tremendously to the acoustic tone of the bass. It sounds very good just using the body transducer, but the magnetic does add a lot to the bottom end. I have a YouTube video that demonstrates conversion to playing position, signal routing options, features, and actual separate sound clips from the body transducer, the magnetic pickup, and the two when combined. I think adding the Youtube link is acceptable, so you can find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dU8h9WP ... 8Z6nCmOBfw

Hopefully the link works, you might have to copy and paste it, hopefully not.

Thanks for the comments and please feel free to let me know what you think about the design and its implementation. I put a lot of thought into it and I'm pretty happy with the results.

[Jason Rodgers]

Very clever solutions, Randy! Here's an idea that would cut down on assembly/disassembly time, as well as eliminate the need to actually separate the neck from body (following others' assumption that it rotates). 1) Keep the top bolt the same (bolt fixed in the neck shaft), with the nut to snug and loosen than connection. 2) On the bottom bolt, flip the orientation: in other words, put a threaded insert in the neck column and secure that point with a bolt (maybe with a wooden head/handle on it). In this way, when the instrument is either "open" or "closed," one simply removes the bottom bolt, rotates the neck/body on the top bolt, and replaces the bottom bolt. No need to take off two piece of hardware, separate the neck and body, re-orient them, and put the hardware back on.

Now that I think about it a little more, I suppose you'd need to relocate the bolt that does the pivoting, as you are actually swapping connection points with this setup. That shouldn't be to hard, though. This is really a very cool design!

[Randy Cordle]

Thanks, Jason.
You can't keep the pivot point as the top bolt and pivot the body to change positions as the body length is too long for it to tuck neatly behind the neck below the peg box. By removing the neck and swapping the protruding studs in the body holes everything positions nicely where it should be. Believe me, I've tried a lot of different configurations, automating the position swap in CAD so I could get a handle on the geometry required and this is the best I could figure out. I'd love any suggestions for improvement in the design, though.

As it is, I can swap to travel position in less than 60 seconds and stick it longways across the back seat of my Honda Fit. That ain't too shabby! (It will sit upright in there, too!) My Englehardt isn't that cooperative.

It's got a lot going for it in my view, least of which is how easy it plays. It feels like the best fretless ever, but in a really nice ergonomic position when compared to my upright. I love sitting down to play at my advanced age...