Smith Bass Design and its History (The on-line Book in the making)

[Mike Braun]

Hey Ken,

Can you please give us some information on the development of the pickups, electronics, and pickup placement?

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Mike Braun

Hey Ken,

Can you please give us some information on the development of the pickups, electronics, and pickup placement?

This is actually 3 separate answers as far as how things happened. I will be relatively brief for now and go deeper into it later if asked.

The Electronics in the Basses now are not at all what I originally intended. It was suggested to me in the beginning to go simpler like a Bass/Treble circuit other than the original big circuit like on 3 of the Basses we made for Stanley Clarke but I wanted what was in my head at the time.

The first BTs were started in 1981 with 4 knobs and some switches. These wend thru a few changes. In 1986 we did the concentric BT and made it for sale as a replacement for Fender type basses with some modifications needed but it would fit most. Then in 1993 we did the 4k-knob again but with an addable mid 5th knob. A few years ago we modified that and re-designed it to the current unit we have now.

On all the circuits from the first BT 4-knob to the Concentric and onwards I had played around with the Treble frequency center point as well as the shelf of the bass control. Mind you, the Amps we have today were not around in 1981 so the studio was about as close as you could get to hear the full range of the bass with they full range playback speakers.

The Pickups were also an idea in my head that took 3 years to get to and stayed there ever since the first Soapbars were completed in 1981. I personally made the first wooden casting molds out of Curly/Tiger Maple in my Brooklyn shop. The pickups we have now and since then is the sound in my head.

Placement... ok.. this was not as planned but it did come about unintentionally.

The first 20 pickups after a proto-type were all made by Bill Lawrence. Bill made a wooden cover for the first one and we made the other 20 in the shop. Then I ordered 60 more pickups and had some covers waiting. These were different. Bill had changed his tooling and didn't tell me. These used plastic mounting rings like a guitar pickup.

On one BT we made in 1981 the customer asked that we put the pickups as far back as possible towards the bridge. We did so and the mounting rings were almost touching each other. In a year of so he traded up and I took that bass back. Now though I had the new Soapbar and wanted to upgrade this earlier bass. We were able to re-route a slightly larger cur for the new pickup to fit and just barely routed away all the screw holes from the mounting rings. Now the pickups were further back towards the bridge with about 2 fingers of space between them, like they are now.

Maybe it was that bass, or that bass with there pickups or the placement or the re-build and re-firb of an older broken in bass.. something.. BUT, that bass was smoking.. I made the decision then that this would be the new pickup spacing.. Why? Because I liked it. No R&D.. just my gut feeling and some R&B actually..

That's in in a nutshell..

[Tim Bishop]

Ken, how did you come about determining string choice for your basses?

I ask this because I have tried other strings on your basses , however, my ear always takes me back to Smith Medium Taper Cores .

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Tim Bishop

Ken, how did you come about determining string choice for your basses?

I ask this because I have tried other strings on your basses , however, my ear always takes me back to Smith Medium Taper Cores .

Well, prior to the Taper Core which came out in 1983 I had used the same gauges that came about with some trial and error or rather by choosing what worked best for my ear and also the same gauges in a Bare Core. Just before, during or right after (not 100% clear on the timing) we made our first 6-string by order for Anthony Jackson we were asked by him to make a Piano style Core for the Bridge area similar to what Rotosound had been making but without the adjustable Ball length which required a tool and some work to fit and tighten each Bass to the Core for every string. So, we made the same Gauges but used different Core wire and slightly different construction than did Rotosound and made a fixed Bass Bare Core String. These were called 'Bare Core' which we sold mainly to Anthony and maybe 10-20% to others after market. We continued to use our RWM (Round Wound Medium) Custom Balanced Gauges.

About a year in to this while at a Namm Show in 1982 Martyn Howe from Rotosound came into my display Booth during the Show and told me that they had a Design Patent Registered for that String and if I wanted to use them, I would HAVE TO buy it from them, not my supplier here in the USA. When I consulted a Lawyer shortly after the Show and looked up their Patent we discovered that our String was made differently but intended for the same exact usage. I was told that Patents are mainly for Design and not Usage. Then I was asked by the Layer about Income for this string and how much it was worth to me. I explained that gross sales (or gross profit, can't recall exactly this far back) was only about $2,000 a year on that particular string which by then we had in 4 gauges (L,M,ML,LM.) It was then that we were told that right or wrong, we could not afford to fight this in Court if $2,000 annually was the amount we were trying to protect. Then, my main contact at the String factory suggested that we run the last cover wire over that Bare Core and be done with it! This design was already in use with the Double Ball Strings but with 'Bare Core' on my mind, the thought just never came to me.

So, just like the Pickup placement coming about by chance, so did the Taper Core idea. Funny huh? To this date, I think I have sold more Taper Core than RS has probably sold in their design that they called 'Superwound'. I never hear of them nor do I know if they still make them.

One think of note here is that there was a small problem with the BC strings with some players. They had to raise up their Bridge saddles pretty high to get the Bare Core up high enough so that they didn't hit the Pickups when playing due to them sitting lower on the saddle on the Core and not higher up on the total thicker winding diameter. Some players also reported some overtone problems due to the raw exposure and accuracy brought about by a string with a truer tone than the sometimes muffled sound with some round wounds on the thicker gauges. The Taper Core was right in the middle between the BC and the Regular wound sting and fixed the overtone problem as well.

After developing the TC Strings in the same 4 gauges we made the regular Custom Balanced and BCs in, we started using the TCRM as our standard string for the Smith Basses. This happened around 1983 or so.

[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)

[Ken Smith]

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)

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.

[Christopher Rhodes]

Ken,

How did you come up with the construction method of the neck-thru basses? How did you get it to feel so smooth?

No other luthier does this to my knowledge. Is this your patented idea?

I always take notice of this feature when soloing in the upper register of your instruments. So comfortable.


Chris

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by Christopher Rhodes

Ken,

How did you come up with the construction method of the neck-thru basses? How did you get it to feel so smooth?

No other luthier does this to my knowledge. Is this your patented idea?

I always take notice of this feature when soloing in the upper register of your instruments. So comfortable.


Chris

I don't think 'ideas' can be patented but either way, it just sort of developed over time on the bench. A smooth feel has always been the goal here so it just fell in place. The early basses were less carved in the horns but still smooth. In the last 10 years or so the basses have been cut-in slightly more around the neck-body joint area.

[Christopher Rhodes]

I really enjoy the 'heeless' feature of your basses; where the body and neck meet.

I also like the balance standing or sitting. Many basses can only do one well.

The body shape of the BMT is a bit more balanced for my personal taste.
The BSR hits the mark very well with body shape in regards to function of balance either standing or sitting.

This is a very interesting thread for me. I did not know of any of these pieces of the history of your company.

[David Newcomb]

Were any of the early basses that had the wood cover Bill Lawrence pickups 5 or 6 string basses? I only ask this because on the rare occasions something of this era comes up for sale on Ebay or a similar site they are always 4 strings like mine. (Subway guitars has I believe #43 or #44 and this morning I saw a 4 string Pas II #108 on Ebay but it has the soaps).

[Ken Smith]

Originally Posted by David Newcomb

Were any of the early basses that had the wood cover Bill Lawrence pickups 5 or 6 string basses? I only ask this because on the rare occasions something of this era comes up for sale on Ebay or a similar site they are always 4 strings like mine. (Subway guitars has I believe #43 or #44 and this morning I saw a 4 string Pas II #108 on Ebay but it has the soaps).

There were only a few basses made with the wood covers, all but one or two were 4-string and were 1 or 2 pickup basses. Mainly one pick-up. There were two 6s made with wood covers but the Pickups were not by Bill Lawrence. These were custom coils made up that went into the first two 6s. One for Anthony Jackson, the first 6 we did and the second, a near twin went to Bill Dickens.

[Anton Hasias]

Hi Ken,

No need to tell you how much I appreciate your art of making basses.
I have a question concerning the finish of your basses either satin or high gloss.
I would like to hear the story of how have you arrived to find these finishes and the impact they have tone wise on Smith basses.
So please tell us about your "Secret Sauce".

Best regards