And here’s the in-progress photos. More to come, soon!

The Good
This guitar represents my personal design aesthetic better than any other instrument I’ve made to date. I like the contrast between the red sparkle top and the natural wood back, separated by the binding. I call it the best of both worlds. I like the white vulcanized fiberboard for the bindings. It’s something different, not plastic but has that bright color. The pickups were made just for me by Ken at Roadhouse Pickups. They’re slug-magnet single coils made just like a Fender pickup but sized like a P-90. I modified the bridge to accept 8-32 thread stainless steel socket cap screws, and installed steel threaded inserts in the body. I thought that might be an elegant replacement to the thumbwheel bridge posts you usually get. While those elements are clearly my own, there are other aspects that are less obvious. There is no control cavity cover on the back, cause who would want to cover up that nice wood grain? The headstock and neck angles are shallow, because I like the harmonic overtones you get that way.

The Bad
There’s three things about this guitar that you wouldn’t normally find on one of my Oceana model guitars. The first is that the body is thinner than usual. I typically shoot for 1.75″ body thickness, but this one ended up around 1.625″. Because the body is thinner than usual I had to mount the pickup selector switch on a plate instead of directly in the wood like I had originally planned. Second is that the neck heel is carved much smaller than usual, which came about as something I just wanted to try, but have decided that I prefer the look of the fuller neck heel. Third is that the nut width is narrower than the usual 1.6875″ that I typically end up with.

The Ugly
Unfortunately, there’s a few flaws in this guitar, most of which have to do with the finish. I decided to experiment with using Z-Poxy as a sealer coat underneath the finish, and while most people don’t seem to have adhesion problems using Z-Poxy, I definitely did. The nitro lacquer finish has chipped in a few places on this guitar, and while I was able to repair some of those chips, others are still visible. You can see a few small places around the tuners where the lacquer is peeling up slightly. I won’t be using Z-Poxy as a sealer anymore. There’s also a joint in the binding on the bass side cutaway where I did it backwards, so you can see it from the top, instead of it being hidden on the bottom.

View Mike’s Flickr photo stream, with pictures of his VI here!

Specs-wise Mike’s (BlixaFan) Bass VI is pretty standard issue stuff, with a few exceptions. First of all, we went with a wider nut than a Bass VI typically has. In my opinion (and so far Mike agrees!) this increases the playability of the instrument ten fold. Bass VI’s typically have that narrow Jazz Bass 1.5″ nut width and with six big strings in there, they feel cramped! I used a 1-11/16″ wide nut, which is much more comfortable. It’s also got a 9.5″ fretboard radius, unlike every Fender VI, which has 7.25″. I can do it either way, or even go flatter, but I think the 9.5″ is comfier than the 7.25″. Otherwise, it has a two-piece Alder body, slightly flamed hard rock Maple neck, Indian Rosewood fretboard, with white ABS plastic binding, and reconstituted stone MOP inlays. That’s basically where they take real pearl dust and cast it in a polyester glue. I think I prefer totally synthetic polyester MOP for big block inlays like that, unless the instrument is going to have a 12″ or flatter fingerboard radius, in which case real MOP can be used. The finish is acrylic lacquer applied really thin and not buffed out. Mike wanted it to wear out and get naturally “relic’d” as fast as possible. The switch plate, master control plate, and lefty vibrato plate are all stainless steel laser cut plates that I custom order. You may have noticed some of the other custom plates I make and sell, there’s some up in the For Sale section of the forum here now. One wonderful feature on Mike’s is the pickups which were hand wound for us by Ken at Roadhouse Pickups. I really try to encourage people to go through me and get pickups from him put in my guitars, because they really are phenomenal pickups. Ken is an electronics genius and has applied real electronic theory to his pickups. He does a custom wind that has excellent note separation, and perfectly balanced highs and lows. I only had time to play Mike’s bass for a short while before I shipped it out, but it easily surpassed my expectations tone-wise. Way better than the Fender CS VI I used to have.