Ready for her closeup (Patreon)

Serge Skunk wanted to see this, and the only surprising thing is that it wasn't done before now.

Dani knows it can't be a porno unless somebody is wearing REALLY UGLY shoes.

As a special bonus because I'm an old fuddy duddy who approves of porn less and less every year, here's a picture of something else I built this month: I'm provisionally calling it the Stew Paddle Bass. It started out as a Steinberger-style headless long scale which I assembled as a kit. Had to sand it, wax it, and wire up the electronics myself. They intended for it to have 3 knobs on the front (volume for each pickup, and a master tone) with the output jack on the end. NO GOOD! The main reason I wanted a Steinberger was because it's flat on the end and you can stand it on the floor, leaning against your amp. No need to bring a guitar stand! One less piece of crap to carry to a gig, that's significant. So I wired the pickups together into one giant mega-humbucker, gave it a single volume and tone, used the third hole for my output jack, and stuffed an old wine cork into the hole where they wanted the jack to go. Also the kit knobs were those bland knurled barrel knobs in a black finish. YAWN! Also annoying because they have no directional markings so you can't look down and see your settings. The knobs I put on came from some broken old piece of test equipment I found at a thrift store. Volume has a skirt with numbers 1-10, and for tone I used a plain knob with a line marker on one side. Sounds best with the line pointed right at the strings. That bass was lightweight and well balanced but the neck had an uncomfortable flat profile, and the way it hung on my shoulder, it never seemed to be in the right place. The low frets were too far away, and if I lengthened the strap to try to scooch farther to the right, then the whole thing would ride too low and I still couldn't reach them. The few times I took it out to gigs, I wound up fighting with it by the end of the second set. Worse still, because of the way the behind-the-nut string clamp was designed, I could not put the strings I wanted (La Bella "deep talkin" flatwounds) on it. I thought about selling it, but resisted because this was MY bass which I had built from a kit! So I bought a short scale neck and a replacement bridge (was going to use the Steinberger bridge but it wound up being too big to sit where I needed it; you can see the replacement bridge is sitting right at the very edge of the body. It almost didn't work!) I already had that set of black tuners; don't remember where they came from. The headstock was originally a blank rectangle, large enough to cut into the famous Fender shape if that's what you wanted to do. I did not want that. I wanted it to be as small and light as possible, so I marked it off just big enough to carry the hardware and lopped the rest off WITH A HAND SAW! I am amazed those cuts came out so straight. Fuma must have been smiling upon me. I'll never be that lucky again. Because the neck is a different color of wood from the body, I stuck reflector tape on the bottom and left edges, to sort of tie the design together. Bought that caution tape guitar strap to complete an industrial equipment aesthetic, but I think I'll have to replace that with a wider strap because the bass digs into my shoulder a little bit. (I have played one gig with it already.) It weighs noticeably more than it did, and it's a little top-heavy now, which isn't great, but OH MAN it is way more comfortable to play and it has a surprisingly woody tone with the La Bella strings on.