Blue Lagoon

You ever seen the movie?

It has become a "standard procedure" for me to build two basses side by side. So building "The Fenix" this one was/is "the twin". It's convenient, fast and practical to have two builds happening at the same time, since you can make the same steps in the build on not one, but two pieces, while your at it. For instance, while the first one is clamped down and your waiting for the glue to dry, you can make the second one ready for that particular gluing step. While building "The Fenix" this "Blue Lagoon" was the second (twin) build. The same shapes all over, except for different woods used. I chose elm (ulmus glabra) for the body core, partially chambered to make it a bit lighter, with figured birch on both top and back. The neck was glued together from birch (both sides), maple (in the middle), two wenge stripes with cherry stripes on both sides of the wenge stripes. All-in-all a 9-piece neck. The fingerboard was made out of merbau (intsia spp.)

Some specs;

Construction: 5-string (bolt-on)
Scale Length: 810mm (32")
Strings: Kerly Music 45-130
Number of frets: 24
Tuners: Boston (Gold)
Bridge: Göldo (Gold)
Frets: Dunlop 6310

Neck wood: Birch, maple, cherry, wenge (9-piece)
Body wood: Elm (2-piece) with figured book-matched birch top and back
Fretboard wood: Merbau
Neck pickup: EMG CS40
Bridge pickup: EMG DC40
Preamp: EMG BTS System


Since the front and back of the body was nicely figured I wanted to dye the top and back. All along I had this idea of a simple blue/black burst, so I bought some blue food coloring, tested it out on a scrap piece of birch, and it turned out fairly well. However, when the blue dye dried it turned a bit green(ish), which actually looked quite nice. Sort of a turquoise tint to it, just like the waters in the Bahamas, hence the name "Blue Lagoon". About ten coats of clear acrylic lacquer was left to dry for about a week, then wet sanded, buffed, polished and waxed.



Here's a sound sample. Bridge pickup at 75% neck pickup 25%, bass and treble pots at 2 o'clock.