Mike is at a point in his career where he can do whatever he likes, and he sure seems to like building some really unique instruments. He builds the USA MTD's with his own hands, like he did the early Tobiases, and each one is different, sometimes radically so.
I am fortunate to have 3 of his finest basses, and to my taste and for my purpose I feel thay are as good as anything in the world.
When you consider the amount of care and hand work put into one of these instruments by a true master, they are great bargains. Go price a violin built by one of the world's great builders.
When I told him I wanted a neck through 5 after he built me a fine bolt-on that didn't fit my taste at the time, he helped me locate a zebrawood and wenge bass he built in 1985, which does what I wanted and Mike considers it one of his best. I call it the torpedo, because it's B string can punch through heavy steel. It weighs a ton.
I once discussed the neck through versus bolt on issue with Mike. He currently uses the neck joint hinge and the resonance of the neck as a sort of high pass filter, attenuating stuff too low to hear and accentuating harmonics that make the bass record well and sound better in the real world. Mike is a scientist, and he is constantly experimenting and improving the art. He is the first to say that there is no one "best" solution, and he will make specials when he gets inspired.
He tries very hard to find successful solutions for players who can figure out what they want a bass to do.
Best Aloha,
Jonathan
but i was just looking around at some Tobias stuff, and i came across the fact that there are too totally different Tobias Companies, there's the Gibson one and MTD or Michael Tobias Design. so what IS the difference? just the ownership or what?
