An "origin story" about the Crescent cut. Vinny and Joey worked with me to create the first crescent cut bass in 2019. I wanted to combine egonomic and headless design principles with an Emperor lower bout and a AJ Presentation upper bout. We added the hollow hybrid design from my Hybrid Presentation to further complicate matters!
We collaborated on sketches first. Vinny then built a plywood mockup and sent it to me to iterate through the body dimensions until it was just right for me. Who else does that? The electronics are two pickups with front/dual/rear coil taps and vol/vol/tone passive controls. We ended up putting the controls in the upper bout and the jack on the back.
Why call it the Cresent? The original name was going to be Radius, which was already taken by Ned Steinberger. I requested a copy of the John Coltrane Tone Circle on the back of the bass, which led us to Coltrane's album entitled Crescent. Given the shape of the cutout and the Coltrane connection, Crescent was the perfect name. I can play the bass in four sitting positions: 1) standard right leg 2) right leg, crescent cut, 3) between both logs and 4)left leg, crescent cut (quasi upright).
- and driving in Boston but that's a different topic), and honestly, I feel pretty bad about it now… but shout out to them. Great guys, superb shop. I'll be back once my credit card recovers.
