The latest...and amongst the last instruments to come out of the Bravewood workshop. For those that don’t know, I am closing down Bravewood Guitars, so this is one of the last J types that will be available to buy, and it is certainly going to be the last stack knob J type available.

This bass is an accurate recreation of a ‘61 style J type, complete with the dual concentric knobs that were seen in the first few years of production. Completely hand made, the body is alder and the neck maple with a dark rosewood slab board. Both body and neck templates I used to make these were taken directly from vintage instruments I have owned (I had a ‘62 slab board jazz and a ‘65), the contours are vintage correct, it even has the little router hump in the lower cutaway (if you know...you know..!), the holes for the individual mutes that were fitted until around mid ‘63 and the brass earthing strip, so you could not get closer..!

Neck depth at the first fret (not including the fret) is 20.8mm, 24.7mm at the 12th, the fingerboard has a 7.25” radius and 6105 size medium frets. Nut width is 38.2mm. The dots are ‘clay’, both side and front and the nut is bone for enhanced tone. The neck is a comfortable C shaped profile with rolled edges and is aged to suit the body distressing, it feels smooth and played in. The neck is reinforced with two carbon fibre rods hidden beneath the fingerboard, this not only makes the neck much more rigid, it also helps eliminate dead spots and gives a more consistent sound over the entire fingerboard.

Vintage style parts have been used throughout, it has the Kluson style reverse tuners, threaded saddle bridge, correct thickness neck plate, genuine Fender control plate with the non-counter sunk holes and pan head screws, stack knobs with the chrome top and black bottom, the tug bar is present below the G string and it even has the somewhat useless ‘hootenanny’ button on the back of the headstock...The pickguard is a 4 ply celluloid with the correct 30 degree bevelled edge and the thin black layer as would have been seen at the time.

The pickups are a set of hand wound Bare Knuckle HF 60’s, the pots are CTS and the jack socket is a Switchcraft, which should give years of trouble free service.

The bass has a resonant, taut sound, clear and precise low notes, snappy higher notes and is a joy to play. The stack knob set up is very versatile, due to the fact there are a couple of 220K resistors in line (as is seen on vintage stack knobs), this prevents ‘cross talk’ between the tone controls, so they work completely independently from each other, a favourite setting of mine is both pickups on full, the tone fully open on the bridge pickup but completely down on the neck pickup...that also works well the other way around. Of course you can set the volumes and tones wherever you want, a very wide range of sounds can be obtained.   

The bass tips the scales at exactly 9lbs...so certainly not a ‘70’s boat anchor..!!

The distressing is accurate and detailed as usual with a Bravewood instrument, there’s plenty of checking, dings and dents, forearm wear and buckle rash. There is ‘component shadowing’ beneath the pickguard, control plate, etc. for complete authenticity. As ever the finish is 100% nitro-cellulose.

The bass is supplied in an ABS hard case...any further questions, please ask....

‘61 style J type bass in

distressed sunburst

SOLD