2 years ago when my daughter was born I wanted a an electric upright bass to practice for my community orchestra rehearsals. I also wanted to use it for pop gigs. My first requirement was that it bared some resemblance to a musical instrument, I really did not like the "stick" type basses. I wanted a 42" scale length, real upright bass tuners, a "D" neck and a decent sound.  The final requirement was that it not be expensive.  I could not find one that matched what I wanted. Sure, there were some cheap upright electrics out there but they all fell short. Any bass out there I wanted to play was $2000+. I decided to design and build by own.

I first needed a design. I went to every electric upright bass site on the web and downloaded photos.  I really interested in how they did their bridges, tail-pieces, peg boxes, etc.  I then purchased some books on violin and upright bass building and ordered plans for a Panormo copy. I used the neck template do do the the neck and scroll box then extended the it through as a neck-through-body design at the proper angle for the bridge height I wanted.  The neck and inner body are 4 large pieces of maple laminated together. When the body is cut out it looks like a stick bass. Here is a photo of the first prototype with 1 wing brace and the other wing template.

The wings are hand drawn. There really wasn't any designs out there that I wanted to copy. The tailpiece went through a few changes along the way. I used a rosewood fingerboard and brass tuners. The flame maple bass you see on the right is the prototype and it was made from flame maple from a tree in my backyard but cutting the logs down to size turned out to be too time consuming.

It dawned on me while I was building the prototypes that there may be others out there who would like a decent upright electric that does not cost a fortune.

The first prototype was purchased by my bass teacher and he has been enjoying it ever since.