Another mystery bass?

[David Moss]

Originally Posted by David Moss

Tomorrow I'll try to take some pictures under natural daylight at our patio door, and I'll make sure the colors look right at least on my computer before posting.

I picked the wrong day for taking pictures! I wanted an overcast day to get some diffuse daylight on the bass, but what I got was heavy rain all day and a really dark sky. I had to turn the iso on my camera all the way up which gave me grainy images, and I still had to handhold at 1/15 to 1/4 shutter speeds, a tripod just couldn't get the camera to the places I needed. I'll have to try again at the weekend and hope for better light. In the meantime, here are the four best attempts and the measurements. Thanks in advance for your opinions.

Upper Bout: 20"
Belly Length: 43"
Center Bout: 14 1/8"
Bottom Bout: 25 1/2"
Scale Length: 42 1/2"
Rib Depth: 8"
Angle break in back plate: begins 9" from top of back plate, upper rib bout tapers to 5 1/2" at the neck block



Overview of the top plate. At least you can now see it's made of wood, in contrast to the previous picture! The color looks about right on my monitor. Full size image (1920x2560) is here.



Upper back plate. The apparent sudden change in color/finish from the lower left corner isn't real, it's just the different angle of illumination above and below the angle break. Purfling seems not to be just painted, I can feel an indentation when I run my thumbnail over it. Full size image (2560 x 1920) here.



Sorry for the camera shake on this one, 1/4 sec handheld exposure... Color here is slightly lighter than in reality, the next picture catches it better. Another seeker of knowledge on the TB forum has the same ebony strips either side of the neck heel and small circular patch, see here - are these covering a peg or bolt? My luthier told me it's an approx. 100 year old neck on an even older body, but didn't say whether the neck graft was done 100 years ago or recently. I know the bass had a major restoration in the mid 1990's, maybe it was done then. Full size image (2560 x 1920) here.



Upper bout ribs on G side, showing a large patch of non-matching wood. Colors here look OK to me. My luthier told me this is a very old repair, he found the workmanship pretty good but the choice of wood eccentric to say the least. I stupidly forgot to ask him what wood was used in the patch, but my bass teacher thinks it's poplar. Full size image (2560 x 1920) here.