Coffee Can Bass Ideas

[Frederick]

Greetings all! 

 

I'm a noob here, and I'm preparing to build my first Coffee Can Fretless Bass. Any enlightenment that members can provide would be most welcome.  I'm planning on using a 3lb can (now only 2.7lbs) and some real guitar machine heads, but beyond that I haven't decided exactly what else to use. Suggestions?    

[Dave K.]

Try that, but the bass response may be a bit weak. Might have to go to like a 5 gal. bucket for good thump. I could be wrong, though. Happens all da time. And welcome to da clubhowz, BTW.

[Frederick]

I'm not really looking for thump with this one. It'll probably be more of a smooooooove sound, primarily for recoring with my PC studio. Ineed to figure outwhat to use for a pickup/transducer too. BTW, I use Cubase LE for home recording.

Thanks for the input.

Dave K. said:

Try that, but the bass response may be a bit weak. Might have to go to like a 5 gal. bucket for good thump. I could be wrong, though. Happens all da time. And welcome to da clubhowz, BTW.

[Ted Crocker]

Hi Frederick, welcome to the Clubhouse! As Dave said boom and volume probably won't be great but if you're planning on using a pickup that won't matter. I make magnetic and transducer pickups, as well as custom solutions, let me know if I can help.

One thing you may encounter, it might be necessary to drill out the holes in the tuner pegs to fit the bass strings. Let us know what other questions you have on construction, there are a lot of talented builders here happy to help.

[billy freedom]

coffee cans make good dobros. my most sucessful bass was a metal paint can open back a 2" plank through nylon twisted string and a peice of shim for a bridge (drill a hole in the shim it wont pop out) i cut a slit at the top and tied it on. you cant tie another string to get your desired scale lenght. leave the plank long mine originally was 5 feet. it sounded exactly like a bass.

[Frederick]

TY Ted! Great little site you have here.

Ted Crocker said:

Hi Frederick, welcome to the Clubhouse! As Dave said boom and volume probably won't be great but if you're planning on using a pickup that won't matter. I make magnetic and transducer pickups, as well as custom solutions, let me know if I can help.

One thing you may encounter, it might be necessary to drill out the holes in the tuner pegs to fit the bass strings. Let us know what other questions you have on construction, there are a lot of talented builders here happy to help.

[Eric Wallace a.k.a. Godzilla]

I recently picked up an old rotary phone ($5.00) and pulled out the coil that powers the ringer bells, I haven't actually tried using it as a pickup yet, have 3 other builds going on right now, but I'll try to hook ya up a link to a guy making a pickup outta one of these things.

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheDarwin1564#p/u/10/yY9YnzJdf2Q

Let me know how it works out if ya use this idea, I'm looking forward to it myself. Not trying to take away any biz from Ted, I'm actually about to order one from him myself, but it seems like it would make for a great story to use one of these coils in a guitar successfully!

[Rich Pierik]

I made a one string a few weeks back. 34" scale and a galvanized bucket. Just for a kick.:) It sounds pretty good. I used a suction cup piezo to connect to my Amp. (normally plugs into a tuner. (Matrix brand))

http://www.handmademusicclubhouse.com/photo/situp-bass-canjo?contex...

If the link doesn't work , you can see it in my album.
Rich