New Build: Upright steamer trunk bass

Over the last several weeks I made this upright bass out of an old steamer trunk I found at a thrift shop for $10 (no Macklemore jokes please).

Here is the finished product, but keep reading for more finished pictures and a description of my process.

Several years ago I tried building an upright bass for the first time, using a metal washtub that can be bought at any hardware store for a few dollars. It was quite the learning experience, I ended up having quite a few things that just didn’t satisfy me about it. Here are a couple of pictures from that build:

Obviously I made a lot of mistakes since it was my first attempt at something like this. I was never quite satisfied with how it turned out, but it did see a lot of stage use! Here are a couple of action shots:

I finally decided it was time to make a new and improved version when I found this old steamer trunk at a thrift shop for $10, and I really liked the look of it for a bass. You can see it here before anything was done to it, although I have some wood set out to make the first few cuts. You can also see the old bass in the background, I had it there to take measurements as I worked (mainly to fix all the mistakes I made the first time). I didn’t work off any plans, just used my previous work and some quick calculations to figure it all out. One of my favorite things about this project, I already had most of the stuff needed to make this bass. The tuners and pickup were the most expensive part of the last build, and this time I could just use the ones I had from before. That made this bass much cheaper than the last, although better in the end.

It might be easier to show the rest of the process in captions:

So that’s the build. Here are some more pictures of the finished beast. Thanks for making it this far, hope you enjoyed it!