[FRED MANGAN PLAYING BASS]

FRED MANGAN: This is my favorite of them all. This is a commission by a woman. Like I said before, thank God for the women; they're the only ones that seem to have the hutzpah to play stuff this crazy. The name is Becka Joynt and she's in a really flamboyant band, the Bobby Conn Band. They've been around forever in Chicago. Kick-ass band. They're the band you don't want to open for you because they'll kill you.

[FRED MANGAN PLAYING BASS]

Everything about this guitar, the look, the sound, the playability is a complete home run. I again borrowed from the Danelectro world as far as the bridge goes. The bridge is an actual 38 revolver. I thought it was kind of unnerving to point it at you as you're playing so that's what I did, but the old Danelectro basses were a single piece of either rosewood or ebony, and what they did was they took the time to figure out the scale and set it up correctly and the pitch, and that's what I did with this. And acoustically, it was -- that's what I did first. I set it up acoustically and it was magic.

[FRED MANGAN PLAYING BASS]

I used the aluminum billets and metal once again and the pickup is an old Bartolini from the '70s or '80s. I've been collecting junk for years so God knows. You can see the way it's constructed back. It's pretty raw but it's super solid and it plays really nice.

The weird -- I don't know if it's weird or whatever but I chose a 3/4" scale neck for two reasons: (1) I like them, and (2) I don't want my stuff to be neck heavy so I knew with the weight ratio that there's a possibility that if I used a full-scale neck, it would be neck heavy so it shows that it's based on -- I'm actually liking it and the weight thing was a factor, but because of the shorter scale, it really pops with the aluminum. The clock face is also aluminum and I think with a shorter scale, you know, it's just gorgeous, metallicky and everything you want for a unique sounding instrument.

[FRED MANGAN PLAYING BASS]