An acoustic bass with a cello body and a bass guitar neck.
Introducing The Bace
The Bace is an instrument designed for bass guitar players looking for a contrabass sound, while keeping the familiar feel of a traditional bass guitar.
The sound is probably as close to an upright as you can get with a 34″ scale cello sized instrument.
Features
- Cello body
- Solid Spruce top
- Solid maple back and sides
- Detachable maple J-style bass-guitar neck
- Ebony fingerboard
- Schaller tuners
- Sound hole
- Three channel preamp
- Dynamic Microphone
- Undersaddle transducer
- Body sensor
- 1/4 upright bass strings (alternatives possible)
- 34″ scale
- 7,5″ fingerboard radius
New finish option: Antiqued & Shellaced:
The story
As a professional bass guitar player who operates in a scene where upright bass is the norm, I have experimented with various instruments to find a good acoustic bass sound. These included fretless solid body P and J Fenders, a semi-hollow Precision A/E, Acoustic flattop basses, Godin basses, a Kala bass ukulele and the Takamine B10, which I toured with for years.
However, I always thought that a bass instrument based on a cello should be an interesting avenue to explore. After decades of experience in tinkering with basses and guitars, I finally dared to cut up a broken cello that a luthier friend gave me. This old laminated Kay (which was actually delaminating at the time) ended up as my first prototype with a half-depth body and a G&L neck that I took the frets off. I was very pleased: with a commercially available pickup system installed, it already sounded much better than my trusted B10! It can be played horizontally sitting down, but if you choose to have and endpin, also upright like a contrabass. It can’t be bowed though, because of the flatter fingerboard radius and much lower bridge and smaller neck angle.
But, I didn’t stop there. I wanted to know what a full-depth cello body with carved solid top and bottom would offer. I tried and yes, it made a huge difference! This time I designed a neck that is better suited to be attached to the modified cello body. Next, I custom designed the electronics to optimally amplify the full woody tone of prototype nr. 2, using two types of pickups plus a microphone which can be mixed to get the right balance between woodyness, focus and ambience.
The resulting instrument, which I called The Bace, (short for Bass Cello) far surpasses my idea of what I thought I could achieve. I’m getting great feedback from both bassists who tried it (see Richard Bona below), and audiences at recent gigs where I’ve brought it out to – so it’s not just me 🙂
The Bace is “bass of the week” on the (click->) No Treble website!!
The First 5-string Bace was collected by client Diederik Billiet. He drove from Belgium to pick it up.
Go to The Bace Website