1 mins
ANTHONY MORTON
A peek into lutherie workshops around the world
LUTHIER
ALL PHOTOS CODY REX
Lutherie
I’ve been working at the Bass Violin Shop for eleven years, and in January I bought the business with my partner Cody Rex, after the founder Bob Beerman decided to retire. He founded the shop in 2001, when the only option for double bass repairs was to take the instrument to Cincinnati or New York! The double bass is a popular instrument in our area, as this part of the country is a melting pot of both European and traditional American music. We see a steady stream of work from classical, jazz, bluegrass and old-time, and bassists of many other genres. That keeps our repair work and customer base very diverse and interesting!
The whole shop is about 140 sq m, and the area in the photo makes up around half of that. The door at the back leads to what we call the ‘dirt room’, where we have our bandsaw, sanding machines, drill press and anything that makes a real mess. It’s a good idea to keep the shop clean as much as we can! There’s also an office and a large bass showroom, which takes up most of the rest of the space.
Some basses come to us in a terrible state. In the centre of the room is a bass top on a plaster cast, which arrived at the shop with a sunken top. Someone had ‘sprung’ the bass-bar, putting extra tension on the top, which had gradually pulled the top inwards, giving it a kind of concave look. Then the other side reacted to it by pushing outwards! It’s going to be a long project to get the arching back to normal. Springing the bass-bar was once thought to be good practice, but has become controversial among double bass luthiers in recent years.
With such a large workshop to take care of, and so much work to get through, we’re planning to hire another employee. We currently have Rachel, our office administrator, who helps out with a few things around the shop, but we really need someone with some experience, who can hit the ground running.