Why Wishbass – why refining
In search of a visually and acoustically appealing and affordable fretless bass I came across the Wishbass „lobe“ – model, I fell in love with immediately!
Its design and basic woodwork comes from the luthier Stephen T. Wishnevsky who´s based in Walkertown in the North-East of Winston-Salem NC (North Carolina / USA) and they´re 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.
No bass looks exactly like another one – neither in shape or 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 just oiled (true-oil coats) and thus remains breathable and attractive. The radiused fingerboards 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.
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.