[Charles Federle]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

I currently have two olde English Basses in Restoration at two different shops. Arnold has my Hart Bass and Biase has my Mystery Bass. Within the same week recently I visited them both and to my surprise I saw the exact same type of method/concept use on both Basses by these two experienced Luthiers.

The Neck Block in the Mystery Bass may or may not be the original but it is very old. The Bass has repairs from 100-150 years ago and the Bass was old at that time as well. The current cut in the Neck Block is an old Dovetail joint but it's pretty messy and can easily be an alteration if the Block is the original. Also, this Bass being build with more Viol style internal work than Violin, could have been a Dovetail as well being that the olde English followed the German School way before they went Italian. This Bass being more of a 4/4 size with about a 44" String length needs a Block-cut to help shorten the playing length. The Block is not quite big enough to cut into and have enough support for the new Neck Graft so Biase laminated a piece of Spruce along the bottom of the Block to make up for the cut that will be made as well as change it from a Dovetail to a standard Mortise. The rest of the length will be made up with the Neck Graft which will be about 1" shorter than the current Neck which may have been an 'Eb' as well. WE should end up with a D-neck just under 42". The Bridge will also be cheated if and as needed being that the Top is very strong and the FFs Eyes are a 'mile' apart (190mm or so). Moving the Bridge forward brings the notes closer to the player.

A few days later I was up at Arnold's shop looking over the work on my Hart Bass (while picking up my Martini and dropping off my Batchelder mainly) when I looked at the Neck Block. Arnold had laminated a piece of Spruce along the bottom of the Block just like Biase did to 'beef-up' it's holding Strength as the mortise area needed to me re-cut slightly. This Block looks to be its original as well.

Two different olde English Basses. Two different Luthiers trained by different people doing the identical type repair. In both Basses, I had expected them to make a new Neck Block because there were problems with them in similar by also different ways. In both cases, the Luthiers decided to preserve the integrity of the Bass as best possible and repair the existing Block.

For this, I thanked and complimented them individually at the time of discovery. A warm feeling in my body went thru me when I saw how much they each respected the Bass they were working on.

On the hart Bass, it did have to get one new Cornerblock made and a new Tailblock. I have the old ones in my collection saved in my office.

On the Mystery Bass, all the Blocks that were on the Bass are still on the Bass. They are ancient and still in 100% working order but with about 200 years of oxidation on them.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

This story makes me very happy, not only because instruments that really should be taken well care of are, but because in my opinion they are being taken care of correctly.

I just had to have major surgery for my bass since it was damaged in transit, and I keep almost the exact same sentiments. Don't remove original woods if you don't have to. To me regraduation and refinishing are extremely unwanted operations to be done to a bass.

Through my basses life as I could afford it has undergone many things in order to be restored. These have included a new bass bar, setting the bass up properly, converting it from a 5 back to a 4 string and mostly the repairing of alot of bad work. The bad work is what has been the worst to deal with, the bass used to have alot of extra wood (maybe five pounds of unneeded or extremely heavy cletting was removed and recletted as needed), the bass bar was closer to a 2x4 then anything I had ever seen before, and to make matters worse most of the repairs were done with white glue. I have had to have this all done in 3 stages over the last ten years (being a poor student and having costly repairs are a bad combination), and there are still some work to the bass that could be done, mostly taking apart the rest of the cracks and putting back together so that they are all pretty, but that is something I will have done if and when the top ever needs to come off again. I agree very much with Ken's opinion -- If it is not broke then don't fix it. I do have to say though each time I had a major set of repairs done the bass has come back at least twice as good as before.