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Manton Customs Multi Build! Three Echo MK II 32” Tele meets Stingray Basses

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Manton_CustomsManton_Customs Frets: 10
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Thought I’d share these few here, I started on them a few weeks ago and they are now going into finishing. The body shape has been in our range for a while in guitar form, it’s inspired by a Tele but with a bit more aggression and curves. The specs for all three are very similar; same body shape and mostly the same woods, they will differ in colour and hardware. There is one pickup in the Stingray sweet spot which has been custom made by Armstrong pickups, the goal was to have a sound similar to a Ray but fully passive (most Ray pickups require a preamp to sound their best). There is also a push pull to offer two very different tones from one pickup.

Specs are-

All are

32” scale,

20 Fret

Ash Body

Ash Neck

Custom handwound Aaron Armstrong MM pickup

Gotoh Hardware

Passive, CTS pots with push/pull

Contrasting black grainfill (Ceruse style)

Differences will be colour schemes:

1) Will look like a Hornet – Yellow and black! Transparent Yellow, Ebony fretboard, black hardware.

2) Modern - Transparent charcoal, Ebony fretboard, chrome hardware

3) Traditional - Natural, Rosewood fretboard, black hardware

All three are for sale at £1350 each which includes a hardcase, so speak up if you’d like one!

Let’s get started.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/1 Echo MK II Tele bass templates.jpg

Here's the set of templates. As the design has it's control cavity on the front, all routing (pickup, neck, controls) can be done with the template at the same time as cutting the body. The template also features indexing holes for the control plate.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/2 Echo MK II Tele Bass Fingerboards.jpg

Lets look at some of the woods, these are the fingerboards I'll be using. The Rosewood will be for the nautral variant, an Ebony for the Yellow and one for the Grey/Black. All are AAA grade and look great in person. They currently have too many frets (24 instead of 20) so these will be trimmed off.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/3 Echo MK II Tele Bass body blanks.jpg

The body blanks. All three are single piece English Ash blanks.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/4 Echo MK II Tele Bass black blank.jpg

This will be the one used for the black/grey bass, it's the least pourous and slightly more subdued than the other two.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/5 Echo MK II Tele Bass yellow blank.jpg

This is for the yellow bass. Luckily that knot was avoidable. You can see I drilled through it from the other side to make sure neither side of the body would contain any knot! I wouldn't have used the blank if the knot was unavoidable, which would have been a shame.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/6 Echo MK II Tele Bass natural blank.jpg

Finally the blank for the natural bass. I chose this one for the natural as it features some interesting colour and burr like figuring.

http://i1067.photobucket.com/albums/u425/Manton-Customs/Manton Customs Echo MK II Tele Bass Build progress/7 Echo MK II Tele bass neck blanks.jpg

The neck blanks. I intended the blank on the bottom for the natural bass, but in end it was not suitable, so was scrapped and replaced.


More coming soon, thanks for checking out this thread :)

Manton Customs, Shropshire based Luthier
www.mantoncustoms.co.uk
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