Sander Roscoe Wolff

Ever since, or perhaps even before, I completed the guitar project I’d dreamed of creating a custom bass. Encouraged by the results of the Sandblaster, I decided to undertake a 2nd instrument-building project: A bass.

I originally hoped to create an instrument using similar African Mahogany but, much to my dismay, large pieces of highly figured African Mahogany are becoming harder and harder to find. Old growth trees are now almost entirely gone, sadly.

Anyway, I began to expand my search to include other woods, and even several woods in combination. ( I just had this idea that one solid piece is somehow better… I don’t know if that’s true, though.) Anyway, I have a Taylor acoustic guitar with Sapele sides and back. Sapele is similar to African Mahogany, but it is heavier, darker, and more expensive. Also, like most popular woods, large highly figured pieces are hard to find. So, after many weeks of patience, John of West Penn Hardwoods selected some pieces that, ultimately, will end up as the body of my next bass.

There are three ‘sections’: The top, which is made of book-matched sapele, the middle, which is made of flame maple (soft), and

The book-matched top:

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A typical weekend morning:

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This lovely lady lives in our front planter:

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Niko was beating up on our other kitty, Violet, so I went out to the living room to play with him. He wasn’t playing:

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Today I was in an experimental mood so I went out and purchased a generic body cap for my Pentax K100-D DSLR, took it home, drilled a hole into it, taped a piece of foil over the hole, added a very small pinhole, and took a few pinhole photos. I don’t know if you’ve ever experimented with pinhole photography, but I love it. I ran out of natural light today, but managed to get one:

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My father remarried shortly after I graduated from High School and, before long, he and his new wife, Mary, and her two children, Kelly and Tom, were off to Washington State. My plans to move in with some friends fell through and, with no place to live, I decided to join them in the Great White North. The year I spent there was one of the best, most challenging, and certainly the most transformative of my life. What made it really great was being an older brother (for once) to two great kids.

I was quite the shutter bug, and I was always with my trusty Pentax K-1000. Here are a few images of Kelly from that time:

When Kelly graduated from College the parents had a shin-dig at the house. I believe this was from that time. She and I were abandoned by our respective parents, and this was going to end up on a milk carton or something:

This instrument was given to me by a friend who got it from another friend who found it collecting dust in her house. According to trusted sources, it is a Hofner Galaxie. There are a number of different models in that line, however, so more specific info would be most welcome.

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This first one is my favorite, so far:

This one is a bit of an homage to the Fender Telecaster logo:

Personally, I don’t think the 2nd one will fit nicely on the headstock. The first one would, though…