Today, I felt like a kid on Christmas morning…I’ve been waiting for months to receive and play my custom made T BerlyBass from Kim over at Berly Guitars. The day has finally come and I’m giddy with excitement. I opened the FedEx box this afternoon to find a gig bag, which I then laid carefully on the table and slowly opened it up to reveal the coolest bass I have ever seen….
So, the story for my BerlyBass goes like this….I have been seeing Berly instruments around town for the last few years and a few of my favorite players in Austin own a BerlyGuitar or BerlyBass. I didn’t know where Berly was or who Kim was, only that his instruments were super cool and even though I had not heard or played one, I knew if these guys owned them, they would sound great and play well, so….I just had to have one, of course.
Kim will make whatever kind of guitar you like..he specializes, I think, in Fender and Gibson style instruments but I’m sure can make whatever you can dream up. His instagram page is covered with pictures of some of the coolest looking guitars I’ve ever seen. A bunch of local celeb players have them, Charlie Sexton, Ian Moore, Scott Nelson, Johnny Moeller and Chris Masterson to name a few and you can see them in some of his pics.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting a 1951 Fender P Bass for sometime. A little history lesson here…Fender, was the first company to put frets on a bass, hence the Precision Bass name, turned it sideways, added a pickup and basically turned a upright acoustic instrument into an electric bass instrument.
I had recently read a book about Keith Ferguson, the bass player for the Fabulous Thunderbirds from the late 70’s to the early 80’s and he was famous for playing one of these early 1950’s Fender P bass models, and had more than a few and then lost them for a variety of reasons.
After reading about Keith, his instrument and his style of play, I knew that an early P bass was in my future. Sting is known for playing one and Dusty Hill, from ZZ Top, is another player that only plays these early Fender P Bass models.
Keith and Dusty of course had/have the real deal instruments…in fact, little side story here, Billy Gibbons originally wanted Keith to be the bass player in ZZ Top in the late 60’s but Keith turned him down and suggested Dusty Hill for the gig…Dusty later sent Keith a picture of him laying in a bed with cash all over it thanking him for the gig! Billy Gibbons also purchased a 50’s P Bass for Keith from Ray Hennig’s Heart of Texas Music by phone sometime in the 70’s and had Ray call Keith to come pick it up…man I love hearing those kinds of stories.
I met Ray more than a few times and even purchased a cool Schaller Tremelo Pedal from him back in the in the late 90’s, he was all sales all the way, and back in the late 80’s…I was trying out amps in his store one afternoon and who sits down next to me to try a few? Jimmie Vaughan himself, complete with a pack of smokes rolled up in his sleeve….just me and Jimmie jammin’ away in this huge room…I’ll never forget that one….he cranked it up all the way, it was sooooo loud, anyway, back to the story.
I wanted an original 50’s model P Bass, the only problem was of course was the supply of the older instruments is super scarce and the demand is so high, you can imagine how much a real, authentic P bass from the early to mid 50’s might cost…let’s just say you would need to take out a loan equivalent to a luxury car to pay for one….no way I could afford that. So, I figured I would build one myself and ordered the parts…which is about when I found Berly Guitars and put everything on hold when I discovered Kim would build one for me. I’m still going to give it a shot though.
So, back to the history lesson. Fender starts making these P basses and the first year, 1951, he only made and sold 83 of them according to his records. Leo Fender was just getting started and actually manufactured many of the small metal parts, that other companies would have outsourced, parts like bridges, control plates, neck plates, tuning machine heads etc. were all stamped out of presses in house so everything was a bit rough around the edges, literally.
The bass itself was just 2 pieces of lumber, Ash or Alder, good inexpensive tone woods, for the body. What you got just depended on what deal Leo Fender could get on the wood at the time and Maple for the neck. Maple was an inexpensive material readily available and easy to work with. The neck was just one big “honken” piece of Maple…the fretboard was just carved out of the wood along with the rest of the neck. Most necks have a separate piece of wood used for the fretboard and it’s usually some sort of hard wood, like rosewood or ebony.
They used to call these early necks “Baseball Bats” because of the roundness of feel they had, and their size and weight. The head stock had no angle to it, just flat as could be. The body had no curves or contours so it sort of dug into your gut while you played. It was just a chunk of wood, called a “Plank” that was cut into the desired shape. The electronics included, just one, single coil, pickup, and a volume and tone knob. The bridge and saddle assembly were put together with minimal parts, 2 strings per saddle instead of one saddle per string. So, intonation could be an issue. If you adjust one saddle your effecting 2 strings. Let’s just say the setup is a bit tricky but it can be done. The whole thing was designed to be affordable, playable, loud and portable. Combined with the amps they were offering with the P Bass, you could now play in your band and be heard along with the electric guitars.
I’ve never ordered a custom instrument before and was fearful of the expense although I must say, Kim, is very reasonable and agreeable in his pricing and I believe, although I’m not sure, that he just builds instruments for fun. He felt me out a bit, I dropped the names of the guys I knew that had Berly instruments, maybe he contacted them, I’m not sure. But at any rate, we agreed on a price, although there was an “ish” at the end so I’m not really totally sure what it will cost, yikes! However, I’m willing to gamble I guess and I believe he is a fair man and just wants his instruments to go to a good home.
So, he sends me a contract type of document, I didn’t have to sign anything, explaining how the process would go and that it could take 3 to 6 months to receive my BerlyBass and that all proceeds would go to The Wounded Veterans association and I was not to bother him during construction time. He was open to what I wanted and to the finish and other details so I put together a list of everything that I was looking for and suggested a unique finish, a patina, old car type finish that you might find on a car that has been sitting out in the weather for say 70 years. I sent him a bunch of pictures of old cars to get an idea…here’s one I sent over…
So, I was expecting to be a month or so before he gave me an update and I wasn’t about to bother him..but wouldn’t you know the next day, he sends over a mockup of the bass with the finish.
I was shocked at how fast he was working and later discovered on his instagram account that the finish got him kind of fired up to work on it and he saw it as a challenge. Anyway, we went back and forth for a bit, I wasn’t totally certain of what the colors were..the actual names, I just knew I wanted a seafoam/copper/rust/blue type of thing….but how much of each and how to get that finished patina look was where his skill set would come in….he even told me in one of the emails that he may not be talented enough to do it and I could cancel the order at anytime, what a humble dude, no way would I ever cancel this order, lol! I quickly reminded him of his talent based on the other instruments I had seen and to just take his time and to trust his skill and it would all work out….so I felt kind of good about that…sort of coached him through it.
I got a bit nervous though after about a month because I stopped hearing from him and the updates were not coming. I didn’t contact him for a few weeks and one day just sent a quick email asking for an update…he replied saying he had to put the build on hold for a bit. OH NO!! I think he was working on some other orders that had top priority. Anyway, I was bummed and thought I might lose the Bass. I didn’t want him to get frustrated over the finish and didn’t want to continue the back and forth emails over the finish, so I sent one last email suggesting one last thing, adding more daphne blue and then said that would be the last suggestion and I would accept whatever he did. I was delighted when I received an email the next day asking if I wanted the bass still and I was of course delighted to reply in all caps “YES!”.
He asked me if I had looked at his instagram account which I had not, he hadn’t asked me to until that email, and there it was…the first one on the list. Wow! I was stunned at the beauty of the finish and overall look of the T Bass.
The bass didn’t have strings yet and he finished that up by the next day and asked for my address to send it over. He works and lives in Austin so I was hoping to drive to his shop to pick it up first hand…one, to save on shipping cost, and two, to try it out in front of him so we could go over everything and if there were any issues he could fix them right there and then. Well, he doesn’t work that way so I had to settle on FedEx. He shipped it on a Saturday so I had to wait until Tuesday to get it…then bam! next thing you know I’m playing my new BerlyBass…yahoooo!!
It looks, plays and feels great! There were a few small, very small detail type things that needed some adjustments so I regretfully had to pack it back up and send it to him.
Part of me just wanted to keep it and just live with the issues, instead of sending it off, but he sent a return label and I sadly took it FedEx to ship it back. I did see he received it today so I’m hoping he’ll work on it this weekend and send it back out on Monday or Tuesday…fingers crossed.
UPDATE: It took only a week to get my BerlyBass back from Kim over at Berly Guitars. Feels good to have the instrument back in my hands…although the guitar looks old, it is in fact a new instrument, so I’m having to “break” it in a bit. I think the bass still thinks it’s a tree so it’ll just take some time. I’m going to break it in this weekend at One2One with Marcus Morales so should be fun!