George Martin

Hi BigRedX. Thanks for your message! We are trying to make things very individual and not just copy other well known basses. We are removing the front page competition banner in a weeks time when we do our prize draw and i will mention your thoughts regarding this to our web guy.

haha, seems on these forums you should read all the posts before posting.......... what a dicktum.......

Sorry to ruin this for everyone but the company Dick have changed there name to Dicktum..... still quite funny, i have had many hilarious conversations over the years with there phone operatives. They seem to like it when you tell them you 'love Dick'..........

Just saw this and thought i might be able to help. The main thing to remember about the top nut is that as soon as you put your finger on the string to make a note the height of the top nut becomes irrelevant so the height of the nut only affects the open strings. I find in most instances that all players like it as low as you can go. In fact some people have it so low that when they play an open string it can buzz a little but it makes pushing the strings down really comfortable and almost effortless when you play the bass. The other two factors are the height of the bridge as if this is very low then if you really lower the top nut you might get a buzz on the open strings, the other thing to take into account is the tension of the strings you are using. I have found oftern that i have to raise or lower the top nut if i change strings on basses as low tension ones will move more when played so are more likely to hit the board causing a buzz. With high tension arco strings i put the top nut litrally just a hair off the board on the G string moving up towards 1mm on the E side. Hope this helps. All the best George Martin

I gave a rough estimation of the costs going in looking at the bass from the outside. We went ahead and did the work, we came to the end and i added the hours up and it was more than i thought it would be, we also included an endpin at Dafs request that makes up for over £100 of the extra's. Also a large part of the extra is VAT which there is nothing we can do about. How long it takes to do something is very difficult to predict. Again i am sorry, i apologised many times to Daf, I did say at the start that the price was simply an estimate and what happens when we get inside is a different matter. As a professional company we can not do a half or rush job, things have to be done properly. When you get an estimate for work it is just that, an estimate, sometimes things take longer to make good. We as a company should not be penalised for wanting to do a good job and the right thing by the bass even if it takes longer than estimated. I think you will find that every luthier will only estimate and not put a fixed price on anything that has an unsure amount of work in it. Daf did not ask me to call him if the price was going to be different or try to fix a price, he simply wanted the work done to a high standard which we did. The fact that something else has gone wrong somewhere else in the bass that is out of my control is just one of those things. Appologies once again and you are very welcome back if we can help you.

Dear All The set up is warranted, i am happy to sort that out at no charge, the work on the front is also warranted, if anything goes wrong with the work we did down to poor workmanship, we will of course stand behind what we do, this is always the case. There was no buzz or rattle when you left with the bass, you said that yourself, the problems only arose when you went home and played for 20 minutes. I think that the buzz is something much more complicated that it would be impossible to predict while fixing up all the loose seams and also sorting all the cracks on the front. It would be impossible for us or anyone who works on basses to warranty an entire bass just because we worked on certain areas, i can not guarantee old glue. This is in the same way as if you go to the garage to get your clutch changed and you drive down the road and the electric windows stop working, you wouldn't go back to the garage and ask them to fix the windows for free if they had changed the clutch and not worked on the windows! I am so sorry about this whole situation Daf but i am much to old, much too tired and much to busy working for happy customers to repeatedly explain myself for things i can not control. Glue fails, wood breaks and sometimes things go wrong when you buy an old bass on eBay with the intention of making it good as is in your case. We tried to help, did our best, we are still offering our best and this is not good enough. We have worked on literally hundreds of basses for hundreds of happy customers from all over the globe and we will continue to offer the best service to our customers which is why we continue to be busy. As I say please feel free to contact us if we can be of any help. All the very best George

Dear Daf Please find a link to Flickr below..... i hope it works. http://www.flickr.com/photos/90536321@N04/8222884919/ Looking back at the photos the job we did was excellent and exactly what was requested by yourself. I am still very happy to go over and get the set up just right for you any time at no charge. Regarding the rattle that appeared after leaving, again we are happy to investigate but i think that it is either around the top brace or between the neck block and the rib. Neither of these things are predictable when repairing the rest of the bass and we are not able to second guess when something will start to buzz after you have left with a well working bass. As i say please do feel free contact me any time as we are happy to help in anyway we can. We really pride ourselves on happy customers and it would be nice to turn this round. All the best George

how on earth do i put pictures! I'm afraid that my basschat skills are not as good as my bassmake skills!

Dear Daf Thanks for replying. This whole situation is terribly saddening, at no point did i wash my hand of anything, i feel that is perhaps a little unfair. Here are the photos of the 108 plus hours work we lovingly did on your bass trying to help you. The new fingerboard, endpin and bridge cost us over £300 and we charged only £20 per hour or less where we normally charge £45 (much cheaper than our competitors) plus VAT. I did repeatedly apologise for the extra cost as it was so much over the estimate we did all we could to help because you were such a nice guy and i am very sorry about everything. I did happily offer to make the set up good for no charge at all. There are no cracks open on the bass and the arrows where areas that during the return investigation we glued up as the old glue looked like it was [b]possibly[/b] weak. I think that after the 20 minutes or so playing you did due to the open sound of the bass something has shaken loose inside. Im afraid that no luthier can guarantee that wood will not crack and that glue will not weaken and if something else goes wrong with a bass that is out of our control I'm afraid that we are not able to do anything for free specially as we bent over backwards keeping the costs of this seemingly small job which turned into being a big job as low as possible for you. I can not apologise enough for this whole situation and i wish you luck with getting the bass sorted out. As i said our door is always open. I am used to our hundreds of happy customers and dealing with this is very strange for me! Apologies once again. All the best George

Dear Daf I am sorry that it is under these circumstances that i am making my first BassChat post! We as a team at Thomas and George Martin Violin Makers feel terrible about this situation, customer service and quality of our work are absolutely paramount in all that we do here. I am wondering if it is ok if we post pictures of the restoration work that we did on your bass, we were very proud of the work and you were very happy when you collected the bass from us (apart from unforeseen extra cost). Perhaps this will give perspective and people can judge for themselves the quality of our work. All the best George Martin Luthier at Thomas and George Martin Violin Makers