I thought I would combine My Rockabilly , martial arts and Motorcycle passions all in one 25th Anniversary Bass. .

The Body of the Bass , was a new design, again all cut out by hand with a jig saw. I designed the F holes to be symbolic of the YIN and YAN . The tips of the sides of the bass I curved up slightly to represent a roof on a chinese temple. The neck would be slotted into an aluminium tapered dove tail joint similar to a wooden bass.

The Neck and Scroll The Kenpo Karate Patch has a Dragon positioned at the top of the crest, so as I intended to have Aluminium and wood, the Neck had to be special, I found some amazing carvers in China that took 3 days of carving in chinese maple to produce this amazing chinese dragon head , which sits proudly at the top of the Bass , When the neck arrived , they never smotthed the back of the neck, or shaped the bottom, even though they said they would, so out with the sander and I shaped the angle, neck and bottom including the dovetail joint, (so now I have to be a carpenter as well as a sheet metal worker !!)

Turning Keys My first set of Brass turning keys looked some what plain once I discovered these oriental engraved keys.

The Finger / Fret board.For this one I thought I would have a go at making my own fret board, I managed to get a peice of Victoria Ash, that was over 90 years old, I had a wood machinist cut the basic shape, the rest was shaped by hand using the sander, a lot of elbow grease with sand paper. I like the natural wood look, it suits the black and white Yin and Yan theme.

The Tail Peice the first tail peice which I did actually cut out, was a chinese dragon, all cut and filed by hand, BUT for some reason, and I do not know why I never thought of it before, While Training at kenpo, the Kenpo Patch stood out and slapped me in the face.. I just had to use the Patch to hold the strings. So as the regular patch is small in length, I did an elongated version, and wrote the words Kenpo Karate in chinese, cut it all out with a jig saw I had to borrow from work, seeing as by now the roller that sits behind the jig saw blade had fallen out, still for $12.00 it served me well. ok so I mentioned motorcycles as a passion, well here it is, Not only have I named the Bass after my exhaust making business Sidekick Performance , but you will notice at the bottom of the kenpo patch there is a letter K that sits in th shape of an axe , I have used The very same K logo that I use on ever muffler / silencer I sell.

The Strings these are LENZNER Gut strings from Germany

Polishing during the polishing, We decided that the orbital finish looked awesome, with the mirror polished sides, this time no laquer just left as is

PaintJob another passionate rockabilly come awesome painter/signwriter, is Trev, he managed to squeeze me in, and created this peice of artwork in less than A week, he is busy creating his own hot rod master peice, so I am might gratefull for his time, his air brush skills are amazing, (puts the rest of the bass to a bland shame now !!)