Gary: 0:10

Hey guys, gary and Dan, we're here with the BuildBass platform. We're also from Upton Bass and what we do is teach people remotely how to make this beautiful bass here. And Dan is our lead instructor, who meets with people on Zoom and answers questions on Facebook. Who meets with people on Zoom and answers questions on Facebook? And over there on Facebook it's a private group only for the people that are in the program. Everything has gone over and over right. Like what kind of stuff?

Dan: 0:45

Oh, everything from tools, fingerboards, processes, help with certain things like doing scarf joints and all that stuff, problems, mistakes, yeah, all kinds of stuff, and I'm there almost all hours, except for when I'm sleeping, helping people out to get through whatever hurdle it is that they've encountered in their journey building an instrument.

Gary: 1:07

So if you're on what Dan's talking about, if you're on the program or coming to the program, it's the first place I would start. I would scroll all the way down to the bottom of the Facebook group and I would just spend the afternoon reading everything, getting to know the questions. If someone else asked it, you're going to ask it. We teach you how to make this remotely no different than we would in person. To be honest, you sitting up with us here going over some of the tasks, you'd actually find that you might be a little nervous, taking time at it, practicing on other pieces of wood. It's huge. I'm going to kind of jump around. We're really excited.

Gary: 1:50

We have one of our students with their instrument playing on a gig for the recording. I think it's is that in the Facebook group, did you guys? It is. It is also on our Instagram and like that's our dream, that's awesome. That's like I feel like we're already done and we can shut it down. Someone made a bass and they're playing it. He didn't know how to make a bass and he's playing at a gig.

Dan: 2:10

Job accomplished and not only that, he did it in a New York City apartment on the sixth floor.

Gary: 2:15

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, which is amazing.

Dan: 2:18

He's a hero to us all, really. Yeah, yeah, and wasn't he the first one done? He was the first one done as well. Yeah, that's unbelievable.

Gary: 2:25

Plastic from the ceiling, like if you've seen Dexter, he had like a Dexter room, made a whole bass in there. Tiago, you're the man. Seriously, holy crap. With no diminishment to the other students, by any means, I get the inquiries, dan gets the inquiries, matias behind the camera gets the inquiries on the Instagram. Like, oh, I don't have a workshop. I live in New York City. Man, it can be done, it has been done and he's making beautiful music on the bass he made yeah, and my first bass.

Dan: 2:58

I made that in my bedroom.

Gary: 3:00

I I did not have a workshop, I made it there, so, like anyone, can do it and, and in fairness, I don't think that that bass would have necessarily been better if he were here and had every tool that we have. You know, know.

Dan: 3:14

Yeah, absolutely Like. Working your way through the actual process and learning the whys of everything is huge. It kind of demystifies how does this happen? So, like, this course really like walks you through you know your placements and your pickups and all that stuff, your carves. It really like takes it and makes it understandable for people. Because also, like, if you were to be here one-on-one, you know, working with us, it could be rapid fire information. Bam, bam, bam, bam, and it's almost too much to take on. Having like a video-based platform to actually do this allows you to take in as much as you can hold and let it simmer in and then understand it.

Gary: 3:51

Yeah, for those of you that might be listening to this, we're going to throw this on as a podcast and if you're listening to this, um, we had decided, like we put this up as a nice long podcast that you can listen, kind of as our pitch or you know the details that you're going to need to know about what the program entails. The thing that I would tell you you're taking on a massive project in a good way and, and the big biggest thing for me that people are learning to do is to join wood right. Like you're learning to glue pieces of wood together. Well, I can do that.

Gary: 4:23

Oh yeah, you want to bet, and with it being a neck through, for those of you looking at this video, there's some pretty serious joinery going on. Obviously, as Dan walks you through the pickups and Jack does the frets and Chris does the setup adjustments and I mean there's a lot more to it and there's neck angles and fingerboard radius. But like you're learning from the top down for me how to join wood and how to shape wood and then you're installing parts.

Dan: 4:51

Yeah.

Gary: 4:52

A little bit of finishing a little bit of electronics. You do learn. Part of sorry Danny's about bit of electronics you do learn. Pardon, sorry Danny's about to say that you do learn. Also, I had a complaint, not pointing at anyone, but I had a complaint that was like why don't you guys just sell us all the parts? Then you need to call me every time you want to make a bass? What we're trying to teach you to do is be self-sufficient, understand the parts, the wood, and you go and find in the marketplace all the stuff you need.

Dan: 5:19

It gives you the basics to really like Gary was saying, find whatever parts either you need or you see a part that you really like and you wanna use it. It gives you the basics to create this around that, because this neck height is proportional to this bridge height and all that stuff. It walks you through all of it. So like, say you get a completely different bridge. Say you get, um, a fender style, say you get some crazy single mono bridge, you can work through all of it and make your bass built off of that yeah, the um.

Gary: 5:51

I think something I want to bring up is the parts that I just referred to, and you were also. They are set by us. What we'd like you to get. They're about $400 for the parts the frets, the pickups, the electronics, the bridge Covers everything, yeah. And then the tools. If you have some tools or you have some friends with some tools or some friends with some tools, you might get clamps from him, him and hand plane from him, and so on and so forth. If you have nothing which we have students that have nothing Dan Matthias and I have put together an absolute MVP, meaning minimal, viable product like the stuff that will get the job done. You might be able to make what? 10 basses with the stuff we've given you. Maybe more if you treat your tools well. But if you were to get into the operation of making dozens of basses, you're going to want to upgrade the router, you're going to want to upgrade the $40 hand plane. I mean, we have planes that cost thousands of dollars.

Dan: 6:45

Yeah, you'll want to go from a jigsaw to an actual bandsaw.

Gary: 6:52

Even if it's a tabletop, one like you know something, a step up. And then in time, as you use a tabletop hundred $200 bandsaw, you're probably going to want to get yourself something legit and you could spend a thousand, or you could spend 12,000 like the one we have downstairs. Right, like you can spend as much money as you like geeking out on tools, and you should. It's fun as hell. But do it in time, because right now, if you're entry level, your skills will not be on par with the tools you're using. The tools will not be the problem. You know, let's say you're going to play the violin. Right, you decide tomorrow I'm going to play the violin. Well, we could get you a Stradivari for five, six, seven million dollars. We can find them in the marketplace if you're lucky. What is that going to do for you? That's the same as just right, it's you. You probably don't appreciate the japanese folded steel, you know from whoever, for eight hundred dollars for this.

Gary: 7:44

For the chisel set like, go with the marples thing that we sent. Or the the clamps where are they from? Harbor freight, harbor freight clamps. If you break them, they'll break themselves. You can go back if you pay for the protection and they'll give you new or the clamps. Where are they from? Harbor Freight, harbor Freight clamps. If you break them, they'll break themselves. You can go back if you pay for the protection and they'll give you new ones, yep.

Dan: 7:59

So yeah, it's also like going into. Like when I was learning, my teacher told me I'm going to teach you the hard way before I teach you the easy way. Yeah, and that's invaluable, like learning how to do it with almost nothing. Then, when you get all the upgraded tools and this and that suddenly you can go miles beyond what you where you could go if you just learned the easy way up front in quotations, uh, and just sent it you know, it gives you a foundation to grow off of we have a guy in the course that has not only never made a bass, he's also never played a bass.

Gary: 8:37

So it was interesting talking about dot inlays on the fingerboard which were givens for for us and most bass players three, five, seven, nine, twelve, so on and so forth. Well, he didn't know what those numbers meant or why he should do that or anything, and we're like oh, I know jack mentioned it as he's doing it in the videos, but it was an interesting thing. The course itself can be financed much in the same way. You could just go grab a credit card and give us your credit card number at buildbass. com. You can also use the financing that's on the website for a couple hundred bucks a month. The program's six weeks long, but that's kind of not been true. This one around. Most recently we had a little week break. A couple people fell behind. Then we had the Christmas-New Year thing. We kept spitting stuff out but said hey guys, time to catch up. Maybe we're finding it's eight weeks. We're talking finishing this all in six to eight weeks.

Dan: 9:32

Yeah, from nothing, just the wood kit and then the parts you get.

Gary: 9:37

And when he uses the word kit, I just want to clarify we're talking blocks of wood. Yep, nothing is pre-cut like that. The only thing we do pre-make is the neck.

Dan: 9:44

Yeah, we do the three-piece neck and then I cut the scarf joint in it. But it's rough. Part of the course is actually learning how to do the scarf joint yourself and making it a glueable surface. But like outside of that, it's block of wood, block of wood, block of wood. You get your three-piece neck, your headstock piece and then your top wood and your veneer. None of it is cut to shape, it's just too thickness.

Gary: 10:05

So a statement and a question Chris and Dan, when we were filming all the media, they made two basses. I shouldn't tell you this, but I'm gonna. I hope people can take us in stride and they had ancillary support from me and from Jack. And probably the hardest job was the camera guy, matthias, shooting all of his media as fast as possible. And we're doing all this stuff. You know, it's kind of like we had one cake in the oven and one on the counter and but those two basses were made in a little bit more than one work week. Just to give you context, two guys, two, so a guy got a bass done in a work week. Um, that was a rough start too, meaning like, where's the stuff? What do we need? Oh, my god, order this. That router bit's not here. Where's the fret wire? Da, da, da, da, da da.

Gary: 10:51

Part of what do like, if you go on the website and you click sign up and you're ready to do this with us and we're going to make sure that you succeed, like we will not let you fail, we have had students that have gotten really stuck. They show up and they've shown up here. That's okay. It's not like an open thing, but it's an open thing. We'll get, we'll dig you out of the hole, but part of the thing that we've seen correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's safe to give yourself about three weeks from the moment you click that button and you need to go to Staples or Kinko's and the depot local depot to get your MDF and you get your tools list and you make sure you've got your tools and your parts and then we've got to send you the wood about three weeks. Before you delve into video week number one, I would watch week number one and then go back and do week video one while watching it.

Dan: 11:40

And it might even be worth watching like week number two as well, because one of the things we tried to do with this course is each thing leads into the next thing, so if you see what's coming next, then you'll understand. Oh, that's why this part is like this It'll really help you understand what you're doing at each and every point.

Gary: 11:57

Yeah, and I mean you could hop on the Zoom. I would say it's a good time to listen. I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I would. I would advise people not to ask too many questions early on because you don't know what you don't know yet.

Dan: 12:11

And on top of that, even we have the Zoom calls that we've already done in the group and you can watch those. Oh, that's true. There's a lot of questions that have been asked in there, that have gotten the answers to them, and there's so much good information on there.

Gary: 12:24

Yeah, the reviews will soon. The process of the course will soon be the week. Zooms will be up there forever for you to watch and then we'll just do a general FAQ every week. That way I've had questions like hey, when's the next course starting? Like people can just get in whenever. That's the whole thing I want to know. Just get you in there, come into the FAQ, get on Facebook, remember, if you become a student, when you become a student to make this bass, ask the question on Facebook. Unless you've got a real embarrassment. You know something happened. It's okay, we'll keep that out of school for you, no problem. But if you've got a question and it's not been answered, I bet you someone else, even though they're going to be. Oh, I knew that they're going to learn something from it and we're going to learn what we weren't clear about in the video. We might make an additional video. Matthias might add a close-up to a video I know he's done that a thousand times or he's added a voiceover from us just to kind of clarify things.

Dan: 13:21

Yeah, we're constantly improving it. Yeah, so I did talk about the cost of the parts and the strings $400?

Gary: 13:28

Yeah, about $400 for the parts strings all that stuff, the cost of the tools if you've got nothing, $600-ish, it was about $600. Yep, a lot of. It's Amazon. The cost of the course that's the question, right, how much is it? And I notice people are like no offense, often just like trying to figure out why they can't do it. Well, how much is Luthier School? That's one of the questions we'll ask you if you start chatting with us on Instagram. How much is Luthier School? I don't know.

Gary: 13:52

Where are they? There's North Bennett in Boston. There's Newark Violin School in England. You can move to England for four years. There is the Salt Lake City one, roberto Venn, roberto Venn, there's some different ones and those range. Now I'm going to use a big number. If you were to move to Boston and live there for three years and go all the way through North Bennett Street School and pay for the cost of living, you wouldn't be able to work. You'd have to live in Boston. Maybe you could work remote, but it's a full-time gig that's going to cost you about 250 grand, never mind being away from your family or whatever it be. Yep, go to Salt Lake. Lower cost of living, lower cost school, good school 150,000. And then obviously, everything in between Our course is $2,500. You can finance it and we've got you've got the parts 400 bucks, 600 bucks. So you're investing about $3,500 in yourself and you will come out with this bass.

Dan: 14:55

And you're not just making a Martin copy or anything like that, you're making something completely custom. Yeah, this isn't like some off the shelf instrument you pick up at guitar center. This is something unique.

Gary: 15:06

Yeah, dan and Chris. Dan did the design, chris had input on it. It's. I like that. He made something that feels very Upton Bass-esque. It's not a snazzy green thing with crazy stuff going on. This is big leaf maple from a bass. We have walnut there. The maple of the neck is it's all stuff we use on basses and I did.

Gary: 15:29

I'm going to say an awkward thing. I had a guy because we're podcasting here I had a guy that was talking to me about the bass and the program and he asked the price. And I can always see when you guys are how the dialogue goes. I'm sorry. I've been selling bass stuff for the past 25 years.

Gary: 15:46

Don't take it the wrong way, I'm putting my foot up like we're in a meeting, but as the question kind of goes and we're talking more about what you're going to get out of it and that price thing comes up, I understand money's a thing right For everybody, and he said to me why would I spend $2,500 on a course to make a bass when I can take that money and go to Guitar Center and buy a bass for $2,500? My answer is I don't know. I mean, you don't see any value in learning how to make a bass which would ultimately allow you to make 100 of these. The only cost you would have to making these would be wood and parts. So bass number two again, if you take the wood that we send you and you write down the dimensions, you can go source that locally.

Dan: 16:36

You know well, plus, with the information that I give, uh, on the zoom calls and the group, all that stuff, plus the information that's just in the, the blueprint for the instrument, it gives you the, the basis to actually design your own bass from scratch right, the blueprinting process, the templating process, everything.

Gary: 16:55

Sorry to cut in on you, but like dan doesn't just say here's what you're making. It's like here's the blueprint, here's how the blueprint goes over here. If you design your own blueprint, you can then put it over here on a piece, and so on and so forth and also also beyond that.

Dan: 17:07

why? Why? For everything We've gone over that in one of the Zoom meetings and all that stuff. There is reason behind all of it, and you'll learn that. One of the key things with this that I really wanted to do is help artists create an art piece for other artists to create their art. That's one of my favorite things, so this gives you the basis to do that. If you have a vision in your head of an instrument that you want to build someday, this will get you the groundwork to start getting there.

Gary: 17:35

I think it's to what Dan's saying and as we go on a little bit here, it's like another question from the $2,500 type of person is like, well, I don't want to make a four string, I want to make a five string, I want to make a partial fretted with a fretless this and a six string, this and a that, that that and a body with these pickups, and that it's like okay, I love it. I agree, you should totally do it, but I think you should at least make one just like this, because what we're showing you we don't want you to live in the ether of, we give you a template, we show you what to make and you come in and man the edges and do all this stuff artistically. Right, because you wanted to kind of tweak things. No, we're looking for the ability to execute what we're instructing you to do. Right, if I say, hey, take this chisel and put it right here, that's the test. Right, can you take the chisel from here and can you put it here? And you say, okay, the test is this and this, imagine a child and they're like oh, yeah, watch this.

Gary: 18:37

It's like well, I wanted to see that you're capable of carefully moving the chisel over here and not seeing the bass and X, y, z and X. Oh, you had all those thoughts in the process of telling me to do this one task. Yeah, it's not sometimes just the why. There's a lot of why nots. And I've watched the students and listened to you guys talk and I keep hearing them say like every time, like just kind of just trusting you guys and going through the process, like I had this question and I had this question and I had this question, but I realized like if I just did it, those things would answer themselves Because I could tell you why not to. It's so hard. There's infinite why nots.

Gary: 19:22

Right there really is, yeah, like why you don't use a chisel to hollow out where the pickups go, why the depth of the pickup cavity is what it is and why I'm not going to tell you why it's not two inches. The reason it's not two inches is you'll have a hole for the back of your bass. Yeah, the reason it's not XYZ and you clean it up with a router is that a Forstner bit has a little let's call it a nipple on it and if you go too far, you're going to have daylight coming out the back of your bass. The reason it's passive and not active, the reason it's maple, and the reason there's book matching and the reason there's a veneer on here and the reason this is a kick plate yeah, this is a stock from a kick plate. So is the cover on the back of the bass. So you know there's a reason.

Gary: 20:12

It's not a piece of walnut on your first bass. Yeah, we think you should do that later. Oh, yeah, absolutely, make a beautiful burl walnut here and french polish it wait what's that you've?

Gary: 20:23

not done that yet. You're right. Simple oil finish on here. There's a reason for that you can eat off of this bass and you're not going to die. Yeah right, you're not spraying nitro yeah, absolutely again, you can do it in your apartment. So there's a lot of like the tried and true, like the tongue oil. There's a million reasons we're not using something else and one reason we're using that. So any other things I missed Dan.

Dan: 20:51

We've covered, I think, pretty much everything. I mean, yeah, it's a pretty awesome course and I'm really happy to see everyone's progress as they move towards completion, and it's really cool hearing like the first sounds out of someone else's bass yeah that's awesome I, I talked to a guy the other day.

Gary: 21:08

He's he's already, uh, he makes basses. It's made maybe like 40 basses and he's like I just I don't get the neck through thing. So I explained to him like the course is laid out in a way. But we promise you, like if you're one of those guys, or you're a violin luthier or you're, you're a carpenter or you're comfortable with joinery, you've made an acoustic guitar, but you've not done this, we'll make sure that we deliver. We're not just going to push you through, just force you through the ringer. The one way the thing happens like we're going to make sure you get a value out of there and it's the, it's the, it's the golden nuggets, the secrets that are the big piece through experience.

Gary: 21:47

Yeah, dan worked making electric basses for a long time, very nice basses for a very nice bass company.

Gary: 21:54

Chris is one of our top guys here. He runs the bass making shop. Jack's a top setup guy here and likes to take his hands to an electric bass setup. I'm Gary Upton. This is Upton Bass. Sorry, those are just improvised intros. I'm just trying to keep it quick and simple. But the years and years and years of mistakes and reasons for and the people that told me to do the things I mean, I'm a smart ass so I'm like I don't want to do anything because it's what? The way you do it and I've questioned which you should do to us. Right, we want them eventually. But learn wax on wax off first, and then you might realize why Karate Kid did that. Obviously that's a movie, but then he kicked ass. Any questions, thoughts. I want to make a guitar, learn the templating process, make a bass first. You'll see that once you've learned this process, you can make a guitar, and that's it. In conclusion, build something. It'll change your life. Thanks, guys.