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.