Bat Bass Specifications

-View Another Guitar Hawk Guitar LB "Rockabilly" Special Guitar Player Guitar RH Guitar SamBella Headless Bass Canary Guitar Lizard - Walnut Guitar Lizard - Chambered Guitar Lizard - Quilted Mahogany Guitar Amboyna Lizard Guitar Bat Bass Blue Funk Guitar Dean Rubinstein, known to his friends as "Big Dean", is a pawnbroker in Philadelphia. We originally hooked up for me to repair and restore some great old instruments that he had come across; and old Rickenbacker lap steel and a Rickenbacker electric mandolin, both from the 40's with the "horseshoe magnet" pickups. He also had a 1959 Premier electric guitar prototype that was found in a dumpster, (check out the pictures and story behind this guitar elsewhere on this web site). While I was doing the work on these instruments, Dean was thinking about a bass he would eventually like me to build for him. After a while, we got around to discussing exactly what he had in mind. He came down to my shop and I showed him some woods. He immediately decided on the Bloodwood board that I had in stock. He wanted a five string headless bass with a modified "SG" kind of shape, passive electronics, a pawnbroker "3 balls" symbol headstock inlay and his name, "Big Dean" inlayed at the 12th fret. He marked up my original design drawing to make it "pointier" and more distinctive looking with a pointed and Bloodwood inlayed fretboard end and a pointy cutout at the end of the body. The pawnbroker inlay was done in gold mother-of-pearl and sterling silver. Besides the bookmatched Bloodwood top plate, control cavity cover and headplate, we used a 3-piece Mahogany laminate for the through-neck and body, Gabon Ebony for the fingerboard, and knobs and black hardware. Each string has its own separate bridge/tuner unit. These beautiful units from ABM feature fully adjustable, locking, hardened and ground steel saddles and a 40:1 tuning ratio. The pickups were Bill Lawrence, (www.billlawrence.com), J-Bass style humbuckers and the controls were kept simple with a volume, tone and pickup blend pot. I made the steel string retainer myself and painted it black. It uses standard strings and simply clamps the plain ends with setscrews. The nut is black water buffalo horn. The finish is my standard hand rubbed, leveled and buffed varnish, which is very durable, long lasting, easily repaired, and VERY THIN to allow the wood to resonate as freely as possible. It's clean, simple, distinctive looking and sounds great.

What's the best guitar you'll ever play? Yours!
Call me and I'll build it for you. Your handmade guitar will be totally unique, and custom made for you -- anything your heart desires.