2000s Rob Wave Electric Upright Bass

A local customer has been having a bunch of work done on family instruments and he brought this in for sale to offset that work. It's a Rob Wave electric upright -- fretless -- and has only an "acoustic" undersaddle pickup mounted in the bridge. While the straight-out signal has a little bit of annoying upper-mids/treble zip to it, I think that may partly be due to the tapewound strings which often sound a little piano-like when not through a magnetic pickup -- and partly to do with the pickup being an undersaddle unit. At any rate, once I notch-out the offending band and boost the bass, you get what you hear in the video clip -- thump, mwah, and more thump.

I remember reading forum buzz on these Row Wave instruments (out of Kentucky) about a decade ago, but it seems he's not building as much lately as I don't have a website for his shop to link to. Regardless, this bass has held-up well and it only needed a glorified setup to get it playing right. It's an instrument that seems geared towards electric bass players moving to a vertical posture more than double bass players wanting to go electric -- as it has an "electric" scale length, radius to the board, and depth and cut to the neck. It's easy on the left hand, though, that's for sure!

Work included: lowering the bridge and recutting the (modified) saddle for better action, mild cleaning, and setup. Action is a hair under 1/8" board top to string bottom at the 12th "fret" position, the neck is straight, and the truss rod (access hidden at the end of the fretboard) works.

Scale length: 33 3/4"

Nut width: 1 1/2

String spacing at nut: 1 1/4"

String spacing at bridge: 2 1/4"

Body length: 15 3/4"

Lower bout width: 6 1/2"

Side depth at endpin: ~1 3/4"

Body wood: solid mahogany

Neck wood: mahogany

Fretboard: flamed maple

Bridge: rosewood w/maple+ebony saddle

Neck feel: slim C, ~14" radius

Condition notes: mild usewear throughout but nothing obvious -- it's pretty dang clean.

It comes with: its drum-style stand and a gun case to fit.

The ebony headstock veneer and nut are spiffy-looking.

The truss rod access is hidden under a screwed-down maple plate/section of the fingerboard over the body.

I like the arc of the body from behind.

The drum-style hardware makes this really easy to plant where and how high and at what angle you want it.