[Bass of the Week] Vagner Estéban

The feature bass for this week comes from the Czech Republic.

Jiri, owner of the bass, writes:

My name is Jiri and I live in the Czech Republic in the middle of the Europe. Some four years ago, I was thinking about buying another bass and Gibson Thunderbird used to attract me a lot.  But then I realized that the contemporary elaboration of the T-birds is not fully to my taste. I miss the chrome hardware including the chrome pickup covers and the pickup frames, the chrome bridge and the tailpiece, etc. I was also afraid of headstock diving.

Browsing the internet I found that the old Thunderbird models would correspond with my taste but not with my budget. Then I spotted custom made basses based on the T-bird design from Mike Lull and other boutique luthiers and I understood that a custom instrument will be the right way. So I contacted Adam Vagner who is not only a good friend of mine but also a very good luthier (Vagner Custom Instruments – from mandolin to electric guitar) and the result is a bass we call Vagner Estéban.

It is a 4 string neck-through body bass guitar with 9-ply mahogany-maple-walnut neck and mahogany body with flame maple top. Body and neck are well balanced to avoid the headstock diving. Madagascar rosewood fretboard with ivory (ivory from old Austrian piano keys) inlay blocks is accentuated by flame maple binding. The nut is made of bone. Locking tuners are made by Sperzel. It has two Vagner hand wound passive humbuckers, 1x tone control and 2x push-pull volume/split coil controllers. The finish is nitrocellulose lacquer. The sound of the instrument is more into music man and it was the target. I have to say that I am a very proud owner of the bass.

Well done!

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