Bass builder Stephan Mongeon sent me some photos of his latest build and I had to pick my jaw up off the floor. The Stellart Guitars Nemesis is a six-string neck-through semi-hollow fretless bass. Judging by these pictures, it’s a work of art, too.
Mongeon builds basses with his wife, Ella, in Quebec where they’ve been honing their craft for almost 10 years. The Nemesis seems to be the culmination of their efforts with a dazzling array of beautiful woods with intricate patterns matched to an equally colorful tonal palette. Its body is built with a laminated core of maple, padauk, and purple heart with padauk pinstripes for the core. The top is a stunning single pice of claro walnut, while the back cap is book matched cocobolo. The neck is an equally complex sandwich of purple heart, black Gabon ebony, and padauk with maple pinstripe veneers and extra maple, wenge, and padauk laminated longitudinally. Its snakewood fingerboard is bound with black Gabon ebony and inlaid with mother of pearl dots. Snakewood also adorns the instrument’s headstock.
Stellart opted for a piezo and magnetic pickup mix with an RMC piezo in the black Gabon ebony bridge and a Delano Xtender 6 situated near the bridge. The electronics include an F Bass EQ with a 3-position selector switch for the Delano to toggle between rear single coil, parallel, and front single coil operation. Another 3-position switch allows for utilizing the Delano, the piezo, or both pickups at the same time. The piezo has its own volume and tone controls. Taking it even further, the Nemesis has dual output jacks for different output options for the pickups.
The Nemesis is the first bass I’ve seen from Stellart, but I’m ready to see some more.
