For a bass nerd like me, it was great to be in an enclosed space with so many amazing instruments, talking to so many musicians about what they like best about their basses. I also got to geek out on some great rigs.

Some of my customers were in attendance, and they brought some of my custom basses along.  It was nice to see people enjoying my instruments; it’s always  great compliment when you see someone rocking out on a guitar that you have made.

Ross, one of my regular customers, decided that one was not enough.  Three Jim Fleeting Basses: 24 strings in total.  That should be sufficient for one man, surely?

The planned slideshow was not to be, but I think I managed to entertain this hairy crowd with my talk on luthiery.  It was technical in places, but I think I managed to keep the crowd.  I figured that an internet forum meet-up would produce at least a few people who are as nerdy as I am on the subject.

Dare I say it, these people seem genuinely interested!

The whole event was extremely well-organised and supported.  I am looking forward to the next one, and if you are a bass player I recommend that you get on Basschat.co.uk and see if you have a good local representation there. If if there isn’t a regular meet-up in your area, why not organise one?  They are great fun – but expect a throbbing headache the next day.

I built this bass in 2005. The koa top has a subtle flame and a rich, brown colour.

Koa (acacia koa) is a hardwood native to Hawai’i, and was used by ancient Hawai’ians to build dugout canoes. It is used frequently in making ukuleles, but is rare, due to logging. Most old growth wood now comes from stumps.

Old growth wood is more desireable then new growth and farmed wood, because of its figure. The reason why it looks so wild is because it has had a hard life. Growing from the side of a volcano in a rainforest with no protection from wind for 3,000 miles, it grows in strange ways; this causes a lot of the figure from within. If the tree is farmed and looked after, its grain will be more straight and true, and unlikely to be so beautiful.

I built this courting dulcimer in 2006. The back of this instrument shows how much variation can occur in one piece of wood. At one end, the flame is tight and even. After the waist, the flame suddenly gets much larger, and more irregular. This piece is typical of the most sought after pieces of koa, with its strong orange colouration and distinctive dark streaks.

The conservation of koa is a big concern. I am always careful to ensure that I only use FSC-accredited woods; when I build with koa, I use fallen or recycled wood, or stumpwood.

For me, the other tragedy of koa is that I’ve never heard a good-sounding koa acoustic. A customer of mine once told me about a Taylor built with koa that he rated, but most people feel that this wood is too bright. Brightness is something that you look for in a nylon stringed instrument, such as the ukulele. However, the challenge when building a steel stringed guitar is to try and build in some bass. This is because the nature of the instrument is that it will tend towards high end response.

This is my solution: koa binding! It works well against these cocobolo sides. I have also used it with rosewood, which provides another good contrast.

Apparently, mango wood has a very similar tone to koa, so I have braced the mango guitar I am building to draw out the bass response and counter the trebly predisposition of the back and sides. If this is successful – and my testing so far suggests that it will be – then maybe I’ll give koa another chance, and build an acoustic from it. A guitar with koa back and sides plus a great bass response is, to me, the ideal guitar.