Blockless..

[Ken Smith]

A few years ago, I was having a conversation with the late great bassist Charles Fambrough about his bass. It 'was' a blockless bass until it was damaged in flight. I think he was somewhere near Austria when the bass came off the Plane broken. I don't know the extent of the damage but he told me the Airlines was covering the accident under their insurance. He found a Luthier around Austria (I think) and was told something like "I know all about these Basses which were made around here", or something to that nature. It was just a brief mention within many subjects of the conversation. I wasn't in the process of doing research on the subject otherwise I would have not only picked his bran but would have gotten the name of the Luthier as well. His bass was blocked and repaired and it was even better according to Charles after the repair. I have played this bass many times when sitting on of some of his gigs. Sometimes I used his bass and sometimes I had one of mine and we did a 'two bass' thing and had a ball doing it. His was a 7/8ths by today's standards but then I figure this was the Full sized model of just the Orchestra size model. It was smooth, powerful ad he could play the heck out of it! RIP Charles, we all miss you here.

The point being that the Luthier in or around Austria knew these basses, and he never worked at Sears!