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the bebensee arrives today!!!!!!

#361
tribal3140 said:
ressurection

I read that lost post after the other bebensee post,
the finish looks fine because

I steel wooled it for 3 solid hours. and thats the second time i did that.
everyone got to see how assy it was at the SE GTG.
up close and personal I made sure of that.
and side note:

ken actually called brian to ask his opinion to see if I was just an A-hole and the bass spoke for itself it was worse than a DP of old. and he said
he would refund me the $$ andfor brian not to sell it

he never called or email me about that and that was last december
what a stand up guy

after the second batch of steel wool and 3 hours of my life I
uncovered about 15 cracks in that muddy ziricote on the back and a crack in one of the knobs, with witness to this fact.

I was in a life threatening accident last year and I needed money and good news and ken just added insult to injust and now the repair is going to be a grand and I'll still NEVER be able to sell it.
chris has his work cut out definately.
I hate ken and forever will
praying on others
that guy in the other thread waited 10 years for a 3 month bass.
I have built 10 basses in the last few months just to see how hard it is and its a joke. ESpecially without a spray finish should only take a month and a half.
heres mine. body finished
and neck glued up already
I am also recreating this (rudy I)exact bass just for ken.
what a lowlife
Click to expand...

Way to stick it too him! Also more pics:hyper: Show one of your finished basses, superb job.
 
#362
Tribal3140,

I am so sorry to hear about your experiences with Ken. I guess I had the total wrong impressions about him. And to hear you say that he stole your wood and made my knobs with them is even worse. It is unexcusable on his part. Again I am sorry. BTW your basses look awesome :)
 
#364
Beautiful body work Todd!
I had a Bebensee and it was the most trouble of any bass I've owned! The fret boards wood grain was opening up and splitting and the headstock split several time into the g string tuning key hole. The bass was always handled carefully. I had it repaired a few times then gave up. I will say that it sounded great though...When it was working. Luckily I had traded a Stingray 4 string straight up for it so I ended up making a few bucks on it...Sorry to read your sad story.
bebensee.jpg
 
#371
wow. I didn't have the patience to read through all 19 pages, but I did pick out the important parts. And all I have to say, is WOW. I hope everything worked itself out for you. Did a lawsuit against Ken ever go through? Did he ever get any punishment for what he did?
 
#373
john turner said:
oh, and by the way, this took bill conklin and phil groschy less than 6 months from initial order to finished product (and no, conklin does not use any cnc machines, nor do they outsource anything. they used lane poor pickups, seymour duncan electronics and abm bridges and keys and made everything else) :

jtdblneck1.jpg


i talk about the process of ordering it and interacting with bill and his ideas here...
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Yes, But Bill and Phil are still pretty young so dimensia hasn't set in, yet :D :D :D

I think Ken Bebensee may have been exposed to too many noxious solvents over the years...(not a dig, just a theory...) :p
 
#376
PilbaraBass said:
Yes, But Bill and Phil are still pretty young so dimensia hasn't set in, yet :D :D :D

I think Ken Bebensee may have been exposed to too many noxious solvents over the years...(not a dig, just a theory...) :p
Click to expand...

heh, actually phil's not even with conklin anymore, hasn't been for a few years. now the #2 guy there is mike, who's just as much of a badass, if not more of one :).
 
#378
Hey those 7 string pickups are pretty dang rare. I would say you have atleast $1500 worth of pickups alone.

john turner said:
hmm. well, here's the rest of the story. i appreciate the effort to come here and clear things up. perhaps this thread can change into more of a 2-way discussion, so i hope you can continue to participate.

however. i am also very experienced in the realm of custom bass orders. between conklin, ritter and lowend jazz/benevente, i have a dozen custom built instruments. none took this long to build, by a long shot, and none were so divergent from my original ideas and designs.

some folks are not cut out to build custom instruments. they are good folks, they have creative designs, a grasp on the manufacturing side of the instrument, the understand the physics and they are craftsmen, but they still don't belong building custom instruments, for the simple reason that they cannot handle when someone is not happy with their product.

by way of example... not a bass, but a computer. i built this...

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this summer. i custom built the water cooling solutions (2 of em) along with customized water blocks for the video cards(which did not otherwise even exist for sale yet) and custom built the case. i've received emails about it from folks wanting me to build them one, but i flatly refused. i could easily make a thousand bucks a piece building them, but i don't want to deal with the customer issues.

you mention in the email listed that tribal's instrument designs "kept changing". how? in what way? and most importantly, how did this impact the build time of over 3 years?

oh, and by the way, this took bill conklin and phil groschy less than 6 months from initial order to finished product (and no, conklin does not use any cnc machines, nor do they outsource anything. they used lane poor pickups, seymour duncan electronics and abm bridges and keys and made everything else) :

jtdblneck1.jpg


i talk about the process of ordering it and interacting with bill and his ideas here...

Invalid Link Removed

sorta hard to rationalize 3+ years given that. unless, of course, bill conklin -is- in fact god, as i've always suspected ;).
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