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Minimal Bass
Industrial Design / Featured Project
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The minimal electric bass (MEB) is a design exercise, with the purpose of reducing an object to its most basic elements. An electric base guitar can often be a large, cumbersome object to carry.
Musicians looking to practice on the go, are left with few, crippled options. Travel guitars are usually made with lower quality woods and components.
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This design aims to provide a new, high end experience to the traveling
musician. It gets rid of all unnecessary clutter and delivers an instrument
that is portable (fits inside carry-on luggage), lightweight (4lbs) and that has
the tonal qualities of a full-sized, stage quality piece.
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It is carved out of a single piece of solid Guatemalan Rosewood heart.
This unique part of the tree has a distinctive light and dark transition,
with a beautiful contrast. The wood`s high resonance and its single piece
construction provides the sustain and tone of a larger instrument.
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The wrap-around bridge design drives the strings to the back of the instrument, reducing the
total length considerably. Combined with modified tuning machines and a reduced scale length, it
allows the user to store the base inside small luggage. It also has no portruding parts, increasing its durability.
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The magnetic pickup floats over the strings, instead of lying
beneath them. This allows for a thin and light body, and easy servicing
of the electronics. Functional prototype crafted by Juan Carlos Noguera.