Tuesday

26 Jun 2007

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Tuesday 26th June '07

I thought I'd start the day with an email I recieved this morning, it made me think.. and first thing in the morning that is a difficult thing to do.. anyway.. question..

Hi there. I own relatively crappy instruments, but that's through choice mainly. I'm always checking out boutique basses, and they look and feel nice, but soundwise I'm not so sure there's much of a difference between them and the instruments you can buy for £300 with a nice pickup upgrade. It's not like something with a super rare botswanian maple top is going to sound better than a plain old basswood body, it'll just sound different. Playwise, you know yourself that you can set almost any instrument up to play beautifully, it doesn't have to be a 4 grand custom made job. I browse the odd internet forum and sometimes you get guys with their brand new 5 grand ritter basses posting sound clips which often sound shit in all honesty, and I just can't get my head around it. My question to you is, do you really feel that price makes a blind bit of difference in how an electric solid bodied instrument is going to sound? I think the 90% of the difference in quality of sound is the pickups, after all, the bass/guitar doesn't work without them.

answer...

Hi, In brief I should say that obviously I am biased.. I need to make a living here. Your point that the pickups do a lot of the work is valid, however the difference in tone between a bass with tone chambers or graphite in the neck is amazing, tone chambers in the body etc etc. The real reason why people come to luthiers like myself is that they know that they cannot buy a guitar that will work exactly for them off the shelf.. the scale length might need adjusting, the type of bridge, hardware, finish.. you might want piezo pickups powering a MIDI synth or a built in distortion pedal or signal boost.. put all that together.. (and add some visually stunning timbers) and you have the reason why I can still sell guitars in spite of the Japanese crap that's not so crap... so, wanna buy a bass?

A more pics of the Vee under finish.. the base coat has been applied and it is then

coated with the first of several flip flop coats.. I can't wait to see this one in person..

Rock trying to decide if there are any birds hiding under the water...

.. the acoustic, I started out by drilling her out until I have a three mm gap between the hole and the outside wall.. and then start carving by hand with a chisel... this will take a while!