Hiya folks!
not sure the world is ready for this but I've just finished my first license plate bass/lead hybrid! I read a tip that works very well - put the pup below the plate cos it's magnetic.
I built my own box to fit the plate. Learned a lot about basic woodwork in the process!
I'm pleased how it looks, but got to admit the lead strings sound a lot better than the bass ones, so I'm going to restring with all lead strings to make a resonator. But I'm not going to give up on the bass/lead "baytar" just yet and make a similar design to this but instead cut up an old oak table to make a solid body license plate one. Can't wait to get started!
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One of the guy's over on the TDPRI guitar forum removed the middle pickup of his Strat type guitar and replaced it with a 2 pole Delta Groove pickup and plays bass while playing guitar at the same time.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-5L3iRxyIo
Bass pickup to a on/off toggle switch, then to one of the tone knobs converted to a volume and run to a separate jack to a bass amp.
That is a great sound! Sorry, but how does he get the bass sound? Is he using an octaver?
http://www.tdpri.com/threads/presenting-blackie-my-guitar-bass-proj...
Here's the thread for details.
You can run a guitar signal to a bass amp and get convincing bass sound at least using the low strings. His pickup only gets the low E & A strings. A octave pedal would enhance it well.
There's a couple of companies out there making pickups in a humbucker housing that will do this, but they are very pricey. You can make your own fairly cheap.
Oh I get it now. That is a very clever idea! Thanks for sharing. I'll include this in a design and report back the results :)
You still get a little plate influence in there.
If you guys get a chance, check out Duesenberg Guitar's Rezobro guitar. It looks like a Les Paul guitar with a round plate on top, but it has a unique bridge/pickup feature to maximize/minimize the resonator influence and sounds awesome. http://duesenbergusa.com/product/pomona-6-lapsteel/
Curious...what is the benefit of a solid body license plate build? I mean, I get the resonator thing for a license plate on a box, but it seems like a plate on a solid body would just be decoration (which is cool if that's what you're going for.) Again, just curious.
Purely decoration! All my mates have said it looks cool with the Elvis plate so I thought it would be a shame if I didn't have it to use onstage (I'm our bands bassist/singer).
The one thing I was thinking about was whether to again position the pick up below the plate? I'd still like to try and get a more rattly sound on the bass to add a bit of roughness to our sound. Plus the plate looks good without another hole in it I think.