The neck was made from a 2x4 cut at a slant to approximate the width, thickness, and taper of the standup 3/4 bass in the living room. It was also rolled around on a belt sander to "crown" the finger surface, although the ~15 years of playing has made a pretty good groove that doesn't seem to affect playability much. Fingerboard dimensions were modified a bit - taking the rough 1 1/2 inch thickness of the 2 x 4 "as is" as sufficient for the single string.

The angle approximates the position observed when a standard bass (our no-name or a friend's Kay) was being played by real bass players. The rather heavy base, with wheels for getting it around the campgrounds, made it a bit awkward to "tilt for comfort" so I made a rough try at making it sit in a "playable" position. A few experienced standup players did actualy tilt it back a little further, but they were husky young fellers who liked to dance around a bit with their playing.

Analysis, to the extent you can call it that, indicated best sound would be with the string anchored to the center of the tub bottom, unless some sort of bridge system was used; and I was a little too lazy to fuss with that.

With the string at the middle of the tub, getting acceptable string height off the fingerboard dictated where the bottom of the neck needed to be, and much lesser tilt would have made the player lean to reach over the tub - okay for the high notes down close to the tub but not very comfortable at the top of the neck. A more straight-up neck might have been okay with a foot up on the base or on top of the tub, but with two tubs stacked up the top of the tubs was a bit of a stretch, and I went with "casual comfort" for the position.

The open string length, incidentally, is very close to the nut to bridge length on a standard 3/4 standup bass of the kind seen most often in bluegrass/country etc. bands; but I usually find the "tuning nut" moved down about 3 or 4 inches to get a pitch that matches the 2d lowest string on a regular bass. Trying to get the pitch with the full length string with just tension on the cord I used will pull the bottom out of the tub. Tension can be varied to swap between low and second string for tonic pitch, but it runs pretty close to being as much as the tub can take when the players start "trimming the tuning."

The whole purpose of the experiment was to see if I could make something that sounded as much as possible like a "real bass" - both in tone and range, rather than to achieve a distinctive "tub sound." That's probably not quite what you want to do for a gutbucket performance instrument, since the characteristic "buckety" sound (whichever of the several you choose) is part of the performance art.

John