Finalizing the design....

Over the next few weeks, i spent alot of time looking at lots of pictures of basses and emailing with Marko and between us we came up with a spec that made us both happy.....

Final Spec:

• 6 string, Fodera Imperial Elite, Neck Thru body design
• 33" scale
• 19mm string spacing
• 24 Fret

Woods

• Body - Bookmatched Figured Walnut Top with Alder body
• Neck - Wenge Neck with Figured Walnut veneered headstock
• Fingerboard - Birdseye maple with custom brass and black fret dot markers
• Finish - Matt Lacquer

Electronics

• Pickups - Bartolini G6 single coil pickups
• Preamp - Aguilar OBP-3 (18v) with passive/active switch and custom tone modification

The controls on the preamp are:

• Stacked Bass and Treble
• Mid
• Pickup Blend
• Master Volume
• Passive/Active Tone (push/pull bybass)
• Passive/Active Switch
• Mid Frequency Switch (400Hz or 800Hz)

Hardware

• Gotoh Tuners (4 Black, 2 Gold)
• Schaller 2000 Bridge (Black and Gold)
• Brass Nut
• Flush Mount Strap Locks
  

Other Design Aspects

• Wide pickup spacing
• Radiused Wenge ramp
• My Initials Inlay on 12th fret
  
• Figured Walnut truss rod cover on body
• Wenge or Alder electronic and battery cavity covers
• Tuners angled like a Warwick bass
• Jack socket mounted on front of body

(A rough photoshop to show the fret marker layout)

The bass....

I have always been a fan of the Fodera Imperial bass, it's very elegant looking but at the same time very bold, and i've always wanted to own a single cut bass. I decided that the body shape i would want would be that of an Imperial Elite, like Jesse's first bass.


( A real Fodera Imperial Elite 6 String)

I already had a fair idea of some of the specs i wanted for the bass before i contacted Marko. So after he contacted me i sent him an email with a rough guide for what I wanted the bass to be like.

The first specs were...

• 6 string, Neck Thru, Fodera Imperial Elite shaped body
• 33" scale
• Body woods - Crotch or Figured Walnut top with an Ash or Alder body
• Neck woods - Wenge neck with Walnut veneer headstock
• Fingerboard - Birdseye Maple
• Warwick Tuners
• 2 piece Warwick bridge or a Schaller bridge
• Warwick just-a-nut
• Birdseye maple pickup covers
• Radiused Wenge ramp

At this point i really didn't know what i wanted as far as the electronics and pickups went.

First Contact....

I e-mailed Marko in the middle of June and asked him if he would build me a bass.

A day or two later i got a reply saying:

"Hi Kris,

if you are not in a hurry and are willing to wait until autumn I can try to find time to make you a bass. During summer I'm going to take a break about instrument building as I got a bit full of it during last spring. If you want you can give me the details you are thinking and I'll see what we can do. Summer is also not good time to build as it's a bit too humid."

Marko

EXCELLENT!!!!

For me this would work out perfectly! It would give me time to sell of some of my unused or updated music gear to help towards paying for the bass and also get the rest of the money together.

How it all began....

I've been a member of a bass guitar forum for about a year now, it' s been a great place to learn about new gear, see other peoples basses and talk about all bass and music related things.

Around the beginning of the year i saw a fellow bass player from Finland post some pictures showing off his new custom 6 string bass. The bass was stunning, a copy of a Fodera Imperial, with zebra wood top and ebony finger board.



(Jesse's basses, both built By Marko Ursin: Left: 5 String Matthew Garrison Fodera Imperial Copy with Figured Walnut top. Right: 6 string Fodera Fodera Imperial Copy with Zebra wood top)


For those of you who don't know (and probably a lot of you reading this won't), Fodera is an American Bass building company owned by two very talented luthiers, Vinny Fodera and Joey Lauricella. Fodera undoubtedly make some of the finest basses in the world, and this is very apparent when you look at the list of world renowned players who own Fodera basses.

One of the Fodera models is called an "Imperial". And its this model that Jesse's bass is based on.

I contacted Jesse though the forum and asked him more about the bass, and more importantly how much it cost him....
After a few messages back and forth between Jesse and i found out the bass had been built by a luthier in Finland called Marko Ursin, and he had built it at a very very reasonable price. Of course there are several differences between Marko's version and a real Fodera, but Jesse got a whole lot of bass for a great price in my opinion.

It was then i decided at some point i have to get Marko to build me a bass....


A few months later Jesse put up pictures of a second bass that Marko had built him, another Fodera Imperial copy, this time a version of the Matthew Garrison Imperial Model, a 5 string.
After seeing the pictures and listing to the sound clip of this bass, i decided to get things in motion and pull the trigger on getting Marko to build me a bass!!