Bass of the Week: 5th Day Products Molly Bass

5th Day Products Molly Bass

Jeremy McDiarmid wrote in to share his first bass build with us called the Molly. The instrument features a beautiful mix of woods that reminded his wife of a certain actress.

“The name Molly came from the color contrast reminding my wife of Molly Ringwald when I began shaping the body,” the builder tells us. “Molly was designed and built from an engineering standpoint to give me every feature I was looking for in an instrument to begin learning to play on. I still have not had time to learn anything more than a few basic riffs. [It’s] lightweight (less than most Strats) with full access to the 24th fret and lots of body and forearm relief to make playing comfortable.”

The neck-through bass is built with a multi-scale design ranging from 34 inches to 32 inches. Its neck is maple, African padauk, and African ribbon mahogany, which also makes up the body wings and headstock ears. The body and headstock are then topped with an elegant book-matched birdseye maple.

McDiarmid fit the bass with a pair of customized EMG J-style single coils with a volume/volume/tone control configuration, though it is set up a little different than usual. “[The knobs] are actually dials protruding up through the body from their sideways mounted pots,” he explains. “The output jack plate is Padauk and is recessed into the body cutaway behind the bridge. Pickup cavities and pot routed chambers are lined with steel that is solder connected to copper tubes for wire runs for shielding. All shielding was then covered with epoxy to make it part of the body and not messy or able to vibrate.”

Congrats to McDiarmid for a great looking first build!

5th Day Products Molly Bass Specs:

Construction:Neckthrough
Scale:Multi-scale - 34″-32″
Neck:Maple, African Padauk and African Ribbon Mahogany
Neck Profile:Asymmetrical
Body Wings:African Ribbon Mahogany
Top and Headstock Cap:Bookmatched Supreme Figure Birdseye Maple
Fretboard:African Padauk
Nut:Gaboon Ebony
Pickups:EMG J-Bass Single Coil
Controls:Volume, Volume, Tone
Output Jack Plate:Padauk
Photos by RAM Photography

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