Ultimate Jazz Laminate

Ah - Truly one of my personal favorites...

Though many Norton Custom basses sport thin, vintage-style nitro lacquer finishes, I went with oil varnish for this one. Intending for the bass to be a jazzer from the start, I wanted to give it the look of a bass with a few stories to tell, but with the reliability of a new, good-sounding laminated instrument. Starting with a Shen 100, the bass was hand-varnished starting with a yellow-gold ground, then added glazing layers of different brown and red-brown hues, applied and manipulated to achieve a distressed, antiqued look. The bass was set up with a buttery low string height and Thomastik Spirocore Mediums for big volume and excellent tone. Additional details include Shen's surface-mount individual machines, which look and work wonderfully, and a quilted maple tailpiece from Mike Pecanic, which was finished in an amber-brown mild tiger eye to add some fire to the look. Ohio's Tony Moore owns this bass.