JCR luthier

I live 65km from him and I've been in his workshop 4 o 5 times. He makes maybe the best basses in Spain, they're just superb, sound incredible and play like a dream. Jaume is also a fantastic person

 

any other thoughts on these? I just bought a single cut from bassgears. Arrives next week hopefully.

 

Did this get to you? Just ran across one on Reverb (Fodera Presentation inspired) and had never heard of them before.

 

How was/is it?

 

it's a great sounding instrument but was 1lb heavier than he advertised it. The fretted bass above was supposed to be 9.1lbs but it's over 10lbs. I'm guessing that the reported weight did not include hardware...

Additionally, the fretwork was very poor. My luthier was shocked that it left the factory like that and wondered if maybe luthier students are doing the work. The burl has some sunken in areas that were not professionally finished IMO. It's common with burls that the luthier has to use epoxy to fill in gaps and holes in the burl but typically it's done in several steps or else the epoxy sinks in below the level of the rest of the wood. That is what happened here and in several places you can see and feel the sunken in lakes where it wasn't filled properly.

I also purchased one of his fretless basses at the same time and it buzzed like a sitar in several places. Many high spots in the fingerboard. At first I thought it was from the fretlines but my luthier said he had to take off quite a bit of wood to level it out. Again, he was shocked that something this expensive would leave the factory like this.

I recently took my valenti fretless in to have dot inlays added and asked him to level the board while he was at it. When I picked it up, he commented on how much better the valenti fingerboard had been leveled.

There were other weird finishing details that were kind of shocking like the tuner ferules not being tightened, several bridge pieces not being locked down with the set screw so they fell out when I changed strings, a bad blend pot which had to be replaced on one of the basses and sloppy soldering in the body cavity.

I purchased from the fretted bass from bassgears in france who were useless to deal with. Their reverb shop says they offer a 14 day money back guarantee but I ended up purchasing directly from their site and I unfortunately found out that they do not offer returns for JCR if purchased through their site.

Because they wanted payment with wire transfer, I had no leverage to use.

Jaime did pay for the repair costs.

Anyway, bottom line is that the two instruments sound great and other than the weight, i'm very happy with them. At this price point though ($3800 shipped for each bass), they should have been "right" straight from the factory.

I would never buy a new JCR bass again.

 

Thank you so much for the honest review. Seems the beauty of the basses are not reflected, or at least guaranteed, in the quality. Would most definitely be sight unseen, and international shipping which would be a huge risk for an instrument that needed more work. Also who weighs with the hardware off?!

Glad the instruments were eventually worth the hassles.

 

I saw this on Facebook this afternoon, disappointing that JCR would put out basses with such issues.

I had similar with another European luthier, in that case the workmanship was cosmetically sound and the bass played nicely but it just sounded totally dead. This was a bass that if you had built by them now, it would be nearly $7000 USD before shipping and taxes. To say it was underwhelming for the price was a huge understatement, but that is the risk you take sometimes with custom instruments.

I should add as a caveat to that final point, there are some builders who I'd have absolute faith in, places I know I could put my money and get an amazing instrument, but some luthiers are more of a gamble. You might win, you might not!

 

Yikes. A lot of frustration all around it sounds like. Between the false weight and the bad finishing / playability.... Hope you are satisfied now. Although I know the weight is the major issue.

 

Yes, i'm happy with both basses. The fretless is actually under 9lbs so it's ok. I put ultralight tuners on the fretted one and it's about 9.5lbs but it's still heavier than my dmark omega which is disappointing since one of the reasons I got the JCR singlecut was to try to shave 1lb off the final weight. It seems that 9lbs is about the cut-off point before I start to get all sorts of nerve and neck issues. When I first got the JCR, the setup was so bad and the pickups that were in it had some extreme magnetic pull when adjusted to the height I liked so it really sounded awful to be honest. But I swapped the pickups for Bartolinis and with less magnet pull, it sounds so much better. I'm not a bart fan so I have a set of nordstrand big rigs on order which I'm planning to swap out.

With the original pickups and setup, the dmark slayed the JCR. No comparison. But now, after the fret level, tuners, new pickups and other adjustments, the JCR is a great bass.

I would never buy a bass through bassgears again though. It's funny, 3 months later and they still have the fretless bass listed on reverb that I purchased...

This is the fretless bass I bought a few months ago alongside the tuya burl fretted bass. Bassgears still has it listed. Not sure what they'd do if someone bought it but I'm guessing they don't really care...

https://reverb.com/item/44171605-jcr-sj-5-black-limba-fretless

 

I know very well JCR and bassgears also,
J'aime isn't a good luthier, only try copy a fodera without experience,
I bought 2 basses from him with a good price like 1200€ everyone one,the basses coest normally 2300€ everyone but he did a discount to me, and i like one but other i wanted to send it
back because it's sounds horrible,
The one who i liked the sound,it has many default and mistakes, a jazzbass but with only 16mm ‍♂️ but him never told me,so i can't slap and play easy ect....
But mistakea on this bass was incredible
He never try his basses,he doesn't play bass,is a guitar player,but if you build without to try instrument is difficult my friend.

 

^ yikes. Well .. he's gotten a bit better in the interim at least.

 

Something that surprised me on the JCR fretted bass:

I wanted to knock some weight off it since it was over a lb heavier than advertise. It came with some sort of cheap, gotoh knock-off tuners and from experience, I knew you could shave off close to 1/2lb by putting in Goto ultraweight tuners which have a 14mm shaft size. I emailed him about the hole size because I didn't want to have to ream the holes out. He said the hole size was 14mm. Turns out , it was smaller than 14mm. Perhaps 12mm. I didn't measure it but it had to be reamed out quite a bit to accommodate the GB350 tuners. Even more, this makes me wonder if he is actually farming out the work. You would think he would know the tuner-hole size on his own basses.

The other thing to consider is this: Most good custom luthiers have zero stock or at most, 1 or 2 instruments and a long waiting list. He has dozens so the question is why?

 

There are obviously some alignment issues with the pickup routes, but this bridge is actually mounted correctly. It has an offset baseplate and it is not supposed to be centered on the body. Look at the saddles - the middle saddle is aligned to the middle of the bass. It's the base that is offset. This might look odd to some, but now that you've seen it and heard this explanation, I bet you'll start seeing it a lot more on other basses out there. It's not uncommon.

 

@Beej, I highlighted the center seam in this photo and you can clearly see the middle string is not aligned with the center seam and neither are the pickups.

 

@Beej I added a second photo where i drew a perpendicular line out from the center seam. you can see that the pickup is indeed mounted perpendicular to the seam although it's mount centered correctly. The bridge is clearly mounted correctly in either axis.

 

It's difficult to be sure with the camera angle, but I still think it's better aligned than the pickup. I've spent many an hour locating bridges and routes and they will often require multiple measurements from different points to find the center.

I'm not defending the problematic practices or workpersonship, I was just pointing out that is an offset baseplate bridge design, as it was highlighted as a problem in the build when it wasn't really a prime error.

 

Never heard of them but… whew. No I can be sure and steer clear and want anyone else on here lol.