Why Wishbass – why refining
In search of a visually and acoustically appealing and affordable fretless bass I came across Wishbass – especially the „lobe“ – model I fell in love with immediately!
Her design and basic woodwork is done by the one-of-a-kind luthier Stephen T. Wishnevsky who is based in Glenn Ave in the North of Winston-Salem NC (North Carolina / USA) and is all handmade.
Wishbass’s Lobe is a singlecut fretless electric bass with a neck-through neck. The string alignment is string-through. A special feature of all Wishbasses is – in contrast to the nowadays usually very flat eg. JB necks – a thick neck which owns a thickness making a trussrod (truss rod) obsolete. A conceptual comparison with the neck of a double bass is obvious.
As „it doesn´t add to the sound“ (Wishnevsky) his handmade basses look all different even from the same model, so no CNC-shaped clones – but singularity in shape, width, length, weight, neck thickness, choice of wood, etc. – everyone´s an absolutely unique handmade fretless bass.
As the luthier himself claims, Wishbasses are tools for musicians – even if they have been refined exclusively. … that’s good news for the lovers of the deep tones…
The woods are not varnished but oiled (true-oil coats) and thus keeps the woods lovely grain and remains attractive. The radiused fingerboards (16″) are equipped with fret markers.
A glance at a stage played with live music ideally offers pleasurable music-making individualists of varying degrees and each of them attaches importance to her/his individuality and – in the ideal case – recognizable distinctiveness of her/his music.
I´d like to enrich the appealing ambiance with my „Wishbasses refined“ with even more individuality and courage to the unconventional, in order to take into account the desired diversity – optically as well as tonally.
By the way: to enrich the basses´sound capacities I offer with a small extra charge – on demand – a C -switch which is a great sound-enrichment multi-capacitors-tool by Helmuth Lemme – a german guitar player, physicist and electrical engineer.
Mentioning the heavy weight of my refined basses to customers, I want to say that the high density of the used woods is not only responsible for higher weight, but also for a clear defined tone and a long sustain – and that´s exactly what I want.
jbossolo (2011 on talkbass):
„If you don’t want to tinker with it, do what I did and buy a „refinished“ one.
PS: Please don´t mix up stock Wishbasses with refined ones. Refined doesn’t mean making instruments from the stock shining pretty! There are a few similarities in the philosophical approach generally with regard to the production of stringed instruments, but we are worlds apart when it comes to the choice of wood, playability and features of the finished instrument.