Jake Serek, a custom bass luthier out of the Chicago area, may not be a name you have heard of yet, but you will before long.

Jake hand crafts his custom line of Serek basses, and they are like no other custom builds that I have ever seen.

Serek basses are built in short, medium, and long scales, with the Serek Midwestern being a short scale bass. A couple of things that stood out for me were the neck and the pickup that he used. The neck reminds me of what I call a ‘baseball bat’ style neck; it literally feels like a baseball bat cut in half, although quite  slimmer. While you may find this odd, some of the older vintage basses were built with this type of neck, in fact I have one.

The neck on the Serek Midwestern bass is extremely comfortable to play. The body is Mahogany, and I wanted to bring that up before talking about the pickup. Mahogany is widely used in basses nowadays, but what brings out the different tonal qualities of the Mahogany body is the pickup. The pickup is a Serek B90 single coil proprietary pickup, hand-wound by Jake Serek himself and modeled after the Gibson P-90, but specifically for bass. There is a pickup upgrade to the Novak BS-DS as an option.

The Serek B-90 pickup is warm and punchy, and puts out just the right bass tone. As a matter of fact, I haven’t heard a tone quite like this and I have to say, it is nothing less than remarkable and really has that classic Motown vintage sound, along with modern vibes.  The B-90 is a passive pickup and the controls for the pickup are volume and tone. Being that the Serek Midwestern is a short scale bass at 30.5”, it has an Indian Rosewood fingerboard with 20 Medium/Wide Nickel forest and a bone nut. The neck wood is the same as the body, which is Mahogany.

Hardware for the tuners and bridge are Hipshot, with the tuners being Ultralite and the bridge being the Hipshot 2 Pt. Supertone. Finishes available are satin aged cherry, natural, and black.

I really like short scale basses, and the Serek Midwestern bass is a complete joy to play, has tones of warm punchy tones and a mid-range that will cut through any mix! Also, be sure to check out the other models offered by Serek Basses, the Saratoga, the Midwestern 2, and the Armitage!

Visit online at www.serekbasses.com