how faithful are you to your luthier

[PsychoScout]

ow boy, I just went to the luthier I bought my realist from, to get my realist switched from one bass to another (seemed to be stuck and I didn't want to force it) and left my new bass there because of a fresh crack.

Normally I'd go to my regular luthier, but he's on holidays. When I came home I felt really sick to the stomach for leaving my bass there (and because a friend of mine said it was very perverse of me to leave her at that luthier)

So I called that luthier and asked just to place the realist and fill the new crack for now (no holes, no repairs, no messing with anything apart from the realist)

I'll give her to my regular luthier when he's back in the country...

Do you guys have a regular luthier, one you trust above all the others?

[Ed Fuqua]

Well, yeah. But we aren't married fer Mithra's sake!
Pretty much anything that's planned work, major work etc. I'll take it to Jeff Bollbach. But if it's gotta happen quick, I hop on the R train and go to Gage's. Mike and Sprocket have worked on my bass before and everybody understands that it's nothing personal.

[PsychoScout]

Well, in this case there's a conflict in the approach of cracks, my luthier is against drilling holes and these guys were going to drill holes. So i put the repair on hold

[Eric Hochberg]

Sure, one guy since '82 or so when I left my first guy after 10 years or so. My first guy was an old world, Hungarian gentleman, and I mean that. A wonderful, kind and helpful person and not without talent, just maybe not so much for jazz bass setups. I decided to get a second opinion on my bass (which I bought from him) and the 2nd guy tweaked it up and it played and sounded better than ever. I've stayed with this guy a long time.

Now up until a couple of years ago, I had a bit of the disappearing G string as I went higher up the neck, always figured it was just the bass, nothing to do about it. I had the bass at a bass player friend of mine's house and he looked at the tailpiece and noticed that my wires weren't centered in the saddle, in fact the saddle was off center itself. We moved one wire over a bit, retuned, and voila, the G string sang all the way up. If only the 2nd guy had tried that 25 years earlier!

I decided to get a few opinions on a bass I bought a few years ago as it wasn't responding the way I wanted. The 2nd guy did about all he thought he could do, short of bringing the neck out a bit. He wanted way too much money for that operation so I declined. I got second, and third and fourth opinions from other esteemed luthiers and finally took the fourth up on his suggestion to replace the fingerboard with a new, thick and lightly scooped one. The result was a huge improvement in the bass' playability. He is the only guy of the four that suggested that, but after playing one of his FBs on another bass, I thought it made sense and was worth a try. I even traveled 5 hours by car to see the 3rd and 4th guys, they are that good.

I was worried about how the 2nd guy would react to my getting work done by someone else, I felt a little bad about it as we've had a very long and successful relationship. I still wanted to be able to use him. It turned out fine, he was cool with it and complimentary about the new FB and the way the bass now plays.

I've learned from this that no one has all the answers and we need to do what we have to as bass players to get the most out of our instruments. Loyalty is great, but only when success is also part of the mix.