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So a couple buddies of mine and I decided to get together and build something.

We decided on an upright 4 string washtub bass. It will be fully functional and hopefully sound nice. We’ll actually use it for acoustic sets, worship sets, and some community oriented gigs here and there. We found the specs online, but have really had to be creative in working this out for ourselves.

I’m adding this to the “Creative Chaos” entry for this week, because it’s a project that the 3 of us (all on the worship team) are doing together. The end result will be a neat looking upright bass and we’ll have it available to use in large gatherings and worship sets at our church.

So far it’s cost us about 20 bucks each (60 total), and if it comes together like we envision, it should be a working upright bass, for 60 bucks. Not to shabby.

It’s not fully finished but I figured I’d go ahead and begin to post the progress of this journey to completion

Strings (L to R): Coated Clothesline; 3 Weed Eater Strings of differing diameter

(and also an eye screw that serves as the string anchor at the bottom of the tub)

Cutting out the birch sound board.

Getting the tub ready to insert the support post (pine).

Support post inserted into tub.

Adding sound holes to the sound board (At first we decided to try it with offset left sound holes a la ovation, but decided to go with sound holes on both sides)

Shaping the oak neck and finger board (a table saw would have been nice!)

Inside of tub with sound post, and blocks for attaching sound board (clothesline E string rigged up to see how tuners would work)

Sound board (without second sound hole set) and temporary bridge but not yet attached to tub.

One tuner affixed to head. Won’t be a quick tuning option (may have to use screwdriver to turn “peg”) but once tuned it should hold tune nicely

That’s it. We’re getting close to finishing this up. It’s been a blast working on it and running into small constructions snafus and solving those as a team. Pretty fun stuff.

*UPDATE: Phase 2 Here*

When we complete I’ll post a video of it being used.