Greetings! And here are a couple of April show-ers. “Show” as in “Stuff to SHOW you.” April SHOW-ers. Get it? Thank you, thank you very much. Honestly, I thought that was a whole lot more cute than it looks in print here, but we’ll roll with it. Tip your bartenders and waitresses, I’ll be here all week. By the way, did you hear about the guy with five dicks? His pants fit like a glove! Yeah, I’ll show myself out…
So, the SHOW-ers; both happen to be both of local (Texas) spalted pecan. Very different, though – as is every piece of this wood, at the stage it is to be “spalting” (what gives it the black lines and beautiful, rustic, inconsistent look). Even sections of a plank and spots on a blank can vary wildly. It’s beautiful stuff, all of it, and Birdsong’s location in the south/central Texas “Hill Country” puts us within easy driving distance (and beautiful drives) out to a couple of special mills we go to for sorting through and picking the right slabs. We look, move body templates around, think about how to get good looking complimentary body halves (or even entire 1-piece bodies occasionally) from it, knock on it, scratch a little to see if the wildest parts are still structurally good. Same with mesquite. We do have a history of using these wild native Texas and southwest woods along with the walnut, mahogany, poplar, etc.
That’s part of the beauty of being the small workshop we’ve always been, those wood day drives and the picking of the planks by the actual hands that will be crafting them into guitars and basses. We don’t need to source a train car load of something or secure a shipping container’s worth of anything. The next couple of planks for the next few builds past the handful we’re working on that are waiting to be started, to take their places on and across the benches, to make their journeys in their chapters of change; hands greater sculpting them into tools of creation to come to life in this new way and sing as our voices.
The 4-string in the field of springtime flowers is a Corto2. Birdsong began with a handful of prototypes but the Cortobass was the one that really worked. I mean, REALLY worked – it built the company, we just built them. Then a few years later came the Corto2 – our most popular bass. Twin humbucking soapbars in a J-like arrangement, the perfect marriage of the warm-and-woody Birdsong thing, the colors of more traditional tones, and extra fullness and fidelity with no noise. This one just came off the benches and Jake ran out of details to obsess over, gave it the thumbs up, and it headed on out to its home. We do care - we do obsess. You’re welcome.
And, the Bliss. Not just any Bliss, though even a more standard Bliss isn’t just any bass. It’s the flagship, our ultimate, our most sculpted art-as-instrument. This one stands out even from there as it’s a lined fretless six string. And that means no templates except what was made during the build to make it, improvised jigs because nothing in the workshop was set up for this upsized body or headstock or those tasks in those spots on this bass. A 5-piece body of extraordinary spalt, stringers of black ebony; it’s being finished up this spring for hand delivery to the client by me.
For more sneak peeks on what’s getting crafted, tune in to all of these:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100057190700974
https://www.facebook.com/goede.guitars
https://www.facebook.com/scott.beckwith.35
https://goedeguitars.com/birdsongs-in-progress-1
Friend, follow, finagle, fanabla, whatever it is hi-tech people do to ACTIVELY engage with us. We appreciate you! Thanks for reading my ramblings and staying up with our little guitar company for 20 YEARS!!! Catch you in a couple with another update… rock on.
