Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Jenkins
I've been to the shop in PA and enjoyed meeting you and taking the tour. I love my BSR Elite 6. (1) Did you ever have formal luthier training, if so from where and if not how did you get he courage to try building your first bass? (2)Can you tell us where you built your first bass and what you had available such as tools/woods to do the building? (3) Can you tell us the story of how you moved from where you first started building to where your shop is now? (4) Please tell us what led you to try various building techniques such as multiple piece necks, multiple piece sides and body shapes (BT, BSR, Fusion)
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Well, we might run out of ink here so I will keep brief what I can.
1) No, just working on my own Basses since I was a teen. Made plenty of mistakes, asked a zillion questions and got to where I am today. Still learning..
2) The first one was glued up at Carl Thompson's shop and left mainly un-carved but cut out and made to the Specs of the Pine Demo I made. I carved the body in my lap sitting on a chair next to my bed in my 13th street apartment in NYC about 1976 or so. I had some tools as I had also been restoring Double basses for some years by then as well. I bought some old maple to make the neck and in later years made a few more necks from that same chunk of wood. The body wood was Birdseye maple and I may have gotten that from Carl, can't recall 100% now.
3) Moves.. wow.. well my first shop was in Brooklyn in mid 1980 a few blocks from Vinne's parents house (Fodera) where he lived then. Just prior to that between Spector where Vinne worked prior and a wood dupli-carving place in Brooklyn we made two runs of 16 Basses each. The second run was around the time Spector was moving after selling his company to Kramer then. I don't recall if we made the entire run there because I remember re-carving at least one of the bass bodies afterwards. Some carving at my place and some at Vinnies house.
Vinnie always wanted his own shop and I was at that time a fairly busy freelance studio musician. I was only wanting to design my bass in the beginning, not build a company. It came to this by the needs to continue the initial dream of having my Bass out there on the market. You know the saying, "if you can't get it done right, do it yourself". Well, what started out as a good looking arrangement, wasn't! In 1983 I sold the Shop to Vinnie with all the tools and some woods for his own basses which he promised would not be in competition with me at all. Well, we all know how that turned out. The exception being that a Coke in NY is 2x the price as in PA, so it would seem.
By 1985 I had sought out a shop in Pa that had done some contract work for Martin Guitars when they went into making solid bodies. Using a Bass I had completed in the Dovetail style model (hidden mortise actually, as made decades earlier and still today by Gibson and others) I tooled up in PA to make a run of maybe 20 or 40 Basses, I can't recall the number. I sold a bit of the wood I had in NY to Fodera but had already used quite a bit of it on my own Basses there the last 2 years in the sub-contract phase. When I sold the shop to Fodera, the building owner asked him to move a half block down because his son was taking this corner location for a Pizza shop. They had to tear down and re-build the shop all over again a few doors down the street.
We had dozens of Necks glued up before this all happened and quite a bit of body parts as well. Fodera mainly completed the work I had already started in the other shop. After working in the Studios some mornings or on days I was free, I would drive to the shop in Brooklyn and make the Neck and Body parts myself. Vinnie did the carving and the basic oil finishing. I would complete the Oiling in my apartment in NYC and do all the set-up work.
In case you are wondering, the total number of Basses made in NY (many or most of them carved by Vinnie but NOT all of them) we made just about 200 Basses, The first serial # for a PA Bass was #201. We are now approaching 5,800. Actually, we are over that with the stock I have but have not numbered them yet as I only do that during the final set-up. So the score is PA 5,600+, NY 200.
In PA we moved a few times looking for better space and then I personally took over running the operations in 1991. I was commuting to PA and bringing the Basses back to my apartment in NYC (till 1987 or my office from '87-95) to do the set-up and shipping. In 1994 I bought a house in PA with plans to move out of NY for good when the school year ended in June of '95.
With building code problems concerning my building which I was renting I was forced to find another location. The owners would not bring the building up to code externally so we had to look elsewhere. I put about $60k into the interior of the building and both the Local and State inspectors as well as the Fire Marshal said what I had done was fine. It is the building that is not up to code, not the interior.
I found a new building in 1997 and placed a deposit on it to purchase. I tried purchasing the old building but the owner would not sell. As soon as they heard I was moving, they sent in some home improvement handy man and his schlock crew and brought the building up to some level of code but only after 2 years of state violations and a Court hearing in which they were fined. By this time I was already making other plans and stayed there only long enough to get the other building ready. We moved in the new place at the end of June, 1998 and turned in the keys to the old place.
Having ownership of a building allows you to do things you might not do in a rented space because all the improvements are yours to keep.
4) Ok, various techniques and designs are not necessarily the same thing but one does need the other. Neck pieces, body pieces and body shapes..
Humm, well coming from the 70s we know what didn't work to the greatest and that was the single piece slap cut Maple neck with a decoration of Rosewood as a fingerboard at best as the Frets actually go in as deep as the wood is thick. My Idea at first was 2 pieces of matched Maple with a rosewood center strip. Opposing wood grain for strength and the darker strip for beauty. Half of that center strip would be routed away for a truss rod so structure was not the main advantage there. About a year into the basses I made up a 5-pc Neck. Rickenbacker and Alembic had done this already so it wasn't new. My first 5-pc had tiger maple and mahogany mixed. Only one or two that way. Then, I went with Morado as the strips and stayed there for some time. I also added Graphite in the Neck parts in mid 1980. I think we made the Neck and Body parts with a friend in NYC for the second run that were carved thru Spector or maybe the 3rd run right after. These details escape me at the moment. The important fact is that by 1980, I was trying Graphite Carbon Fibers mixed with Epoxy in the necks to strengthen and and stabilize them.
We did both regular and Graphite inlaid necks after the first year and until today as well. Body laminations are more aesthetic mainly from the concept but the tone does change each way you do it and with each wood used. Infinite combinations are possible. I try to stick with what I can predict mainly.
Body designs came as they did. The original shape at first and then the BT which was altered for the size of the back plate needed for the circuit and the point at the bottom added for style as it just fit there and looked right. Other shapes came from a need of pleasing different players and making something new. The BT design was over 12 years old and we needed a second shape. The 1993 BMT was first shape I designed in PA and then the BSR a few years later which combined the two. Adding the curve back at the bottom we get the Fusion model which is the combined shapes of all of them in a blender. Not as much science here with the body shapes as compared to the necks but if it feels right, it is right.
Try telling a BT lover that the BSR is better. It's a no win situation. They like what they like and I am not about to tell anyone they are wrong. This is why we still to this day take orders for the BT shape and even some with the older larger headstock.