HE has just built the UK's first nine-string electric bass – a guitar with a six-and-a-half octave range – but Jim Fleeting has already been commissioned to create one with 11 strings.
Mr Fleeting designed and constructed the unusual extended range bass after he was approached by a customer who despaired of finding a UK guitar maker with the confidence to take on such an ambitious project.
Jim Fleeting Guitars, based at Ripon Ci
ty Music in Kirkgate, Ripon, specialises in making bespoke string instruments and carrying out a specialist instrument repair service, with folk legend Gordon Giltrap among his clients
Extended range bass guitars were pioneered in the United States and have gained popularity among musicians. They are larger than familiar four-string models. Some can produce the same range of notes as a grand piano.
The handcarved instrument made by Mr Fleeting is the first to have been successfully completed in the UK, taking months.
It was made for Ross Adams, a semi-professional musician from Castleford, who is delighted with it. "I had extremely high expectations and my new bass is perfect in every way. If I can dream it, Jim can make it."
The tulipwood and mahogany body is smaller than a standard-sized bass to reduce the instrument's weight. Its walnut neck has been engineered so that it does not buckle under the tension of the strings. The wide fingerboard is carved from purpleheart.
Mr Fleeting trained at the Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery in Arizona. He said: "Luthiery is the art of guitar-making and repair and in the UK it is all but lost.
"Guitar sales in the UK are at an all-time high: last year, nearly a million guitars were sold here and sales hit the £110m mark. However, all the famous guitar makes are American: Fender, Gibson, Taylor and Martin. I spied an opportunity.
"I contacted luthiers in the USA and learned that they only employed Roberto-Venn alumni. I scrimped and saved, sold poss-essions, left my job and went there.
"It was a strange, if wonderful, place.There were scorpions in the woodpile, a black widow's nest below the belt sanders and my workbench was also home to a praying mantis. It was very different to my life in the UK."
At a trade show in Los Angeles he met Andrew Bishop, owner of a small chain of guitar stores in the North of England. On returning to England this year he established a building and repair workshop in his Yorkshire store at Ripon.
"Word has spread and my business is thriving. My hand-built guitars are proving popular – in the past few months alone several have been commissioned. I make acoustic guitars, electric guitars, electric basses, dulcim-ers and more. Prices begin at £1,750 rising to £2,500 for a custom-made bass with nine strings."
He added: "If I have anything to do with it there'll be a famous UK guitar brand after all."
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