The Bassonator

The Background

The Avonator was a beginner class in instrument mutilation. It proved that hacking guitars to pieces could actually worked and more importantly, that it was stupid fun. But I wanted to push the design further and drag that chaos down into the subsonic dirt.

Enter the unwilling victim: a cheap, ‘70s plywood Kay SG-style bass I’d dragged out of Camden Lock market. It was the first bass I ever owned - a short scale wreck of a thing complete with 0th fret and a knackered looking finish, and it was about to get completely gutted.

The Avonator’s main flaw was the face-mounted fan. The faster it spun, the more the pick was pushed outwards, away from the strings. Learning from my mistake, I ripped out the two middle strings and dropped a rotary motor right into the gap. The idea? A spinning plastic pick that would violently thrash the remaining strings alternately as it spun.

The Process

Out came the power tools, and I carved a trench straight through the plywood for the pick to spin in. Once I proved the concept wasn't a total failure, I needed it to look the part. The aesthetic I had in mind was pure industrial grit with a heavy dose of Soviet utilitarianism. I wanted a massive metal faceplate but had no idea where to source one. So, I ripped the side panel off an old Gateway PC tower, sanded it down to raw steel, and brutalised it into the rough shape of an SG with a Dremel.

For the guts, it needed a speed dial like the Avonator, but I decided to take it up a notch and wire in a literal ignition-style key start. Because why not? Also like its predecessor, the power would be fed through a heavy-duty XLR jack. One £20 raid on Maplin later, and I had the hardware to make it happen.

The Result

Behold The Bassonator, tuned to a gut-punching D-x-x-D. When you turn the key and flick the power toggle to “ON”, that spinning motor pick fires up and alternates between the low and high D, grinding out this massive, pulsing octave rhythm. Crank it to full-tilt, and the notes bleed together into a brutal, physical octaver effect.

With two strings missing and a massive trench in the middle, it’s unwieldy and hard to play anything complex. You can bar both strings for simple octaves, reach to play dyads, or use both hands for absurd double-octave chug. Nuance was never the point - this thing was a blunt weapon built purely for bludgeoning. Having said that, I never did file down those jagged edges on that metal faceplate...