The home stretch...

Tuesday evening Lonnie worked on re-fitting the sound post and nut. The original sound post is in good condition but poorly fit, barely making full contact with the top and back of the bass. Fitting a sound post through the FF holes either goes really smooth or really slows…some what like building a ship in a bottle.



This one wasn’t too bad; Lonnie needed to sand off the top and bottom of the sound post to make it more flat. The previous fit was too tight and the sound post was wedged in at an angle. Though he has the sound post fits well right now, the bass will get a final tweak once the strings and bridge are in place. We take great effort to move the sound post around to find the “sweet spot” where the bass comes alive and sounds the best (at least to our ears). The nut is in good condition and is the standard factory original two piece rosewood nut used by Epiphone during its 20 years of production. It had to be reshaped for the new steel strings which require smaller grooves then the red gut strings (possibly Red-O-Rays) that were previously on the bass.



Last evening I was in the kitchen making dinner when Lonnie came up from the workshop and said, “Come down and pick out a bridge for this bass”. Whoo-hoo! Sweet music to my ears only followed a few minutes later by another request, “pick out the strings you want too” (I get all the really important jobs!). Double whoo-hoo…we are coming down the home stretch. What a great feeling.



After dinner Lonnie went down to the workshop for another three hours (this was after a 10 hour workday at his real job in a 100 degree warehouse) to begin to fit the bridge. He get’s into a zone when he can see light at the end of the tunnel and doesn’t want to stop. He can’t wait to hear the bass make a sound for the first time…something you have worked on for so long finally speaks to you. It is a very exciting and rewarding feeling.

I think I’ll need to make a video just for posterity.