Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
Listen, Build, Create: The Philosophy Behind Upton Bass
In this episode, Gary from Upton Bass gets personal and reflective as he walks us through the foundation of the company—from the original vision inspired by Good to Great, to the values that continue to shape how Upton Bass builds instruments and relationships.
He unpacks the deeper meaning behind Upton’s mission "to be the leader in designing and building American double basses and products known for their tone, quality, and ingenuity," and shares the thought process behind a clever acronym: DOUBLE BASS, which defines Upton’s core values—Dedicated, Original, Unique, Bold, Listen, Excellence, Build, American, Service, Smarter.
This is more than a talk about instruments. It's a conversation about creativity, bold thinking, customer connection, and what it means to build not just basses, but a legacy of music and trust.
🎙 Topics include:
- The early influence of Good to Great
- The origin of Upton’s mission and values
- Behind-the-scenes insights on design, innovation, and service
- Reflections on what it means to build American-made instruments for players around the world
If you've ever wanted to know who we are and why we do what we do—this episode is for you.
🔗 Learn more at uptonbass.com
Hey guys, it's Gary with UptonBase. So in like the mid 2000s I remember reading a lot of books, especially early days, my business kind of like trying to figure certain things out and different wisdom that people had established. And one of the classic books that's really really become a thing now and then was Good to Great and it's all about, like your core values and your mission. And so I took the time to like do the practice of the book and think about the core values and the mission and I think probably like 2005, 6, 7 is probably when I like put it together and I'll be honest, I haven't gone back and refined it. I probably should. But, that being said, what's really interesting? I've looked at what I've written and we've had it posted here at the shop and I've told the staff about it a little bit. But looking at it, I really like what we put together. So I've been reflecting on it and I wanted to share it with you because I'm like hey, we did a pretty nice job of like doing this kind of. If you don't write it down, you don't have a plan. So our vision that I developed was continually improving the tools that double bassists use to make music, and you know that's really what we've done. The tool, one of the biggest tools, is the instrument, but you know things like the pickup soon, the strings, things like rosin, and then all the accessories, like anything that we don't make, that we have, you know, developed and we've brought in, and we've got some other projects. I'd like to make every single piece, but that's kind of crazy, but probably something that will continue to happen. So, again, that vision is to continually improve the tools that double bassists use. So, going on with this whole good to great book, right, it's very I don't want to say it's an equation, but it does make sense. You know, you talk about, like the what and then you talk about the why.
Speaker 1:The mission for UptonBase is to be the leader in designing and building American double bases and products that are known for their tone, quality and ingenuity. I'd say that it's qualified by things like the crazy suitcase base that we stick in the box, the removable neck device. You know all the. You guys know the fun things we do. So we do that by providing exceptional services through our sales service and support. Now, this sounds like kind of like a, you know, a corporate line, but if you really think about what it says. In the concept it's we want to make cool stuff, cool bases, cool tools. They're known for sounding good, working well, being durable and then like bending the limits as to you know what is the norm and innovating some things, breaking some things, doing crazy things, like the bass that fits in a suitcase that some people love and use. I think it's still kind of a crazy product but the guys that use it are like hey, I couldn't live without it in certain situations. That's kind of the mission of Uptown Bass. So the core values I took from the word double bass and kind of wanted to hone in on kind of like examples of thoughts that make sense. So double beginning with a D, we were thinking dedicated. So we are dedicated to the bass players and we choose to focus our energy, our passion, our love on the bass and, as such, bass players as a whole.
Speaker 1:Original this one I really like, because I feel like if you have an idea, unless it's original it's useless. But that's not true at all. There's a difference between original and innovation, and then you know kind of innovating an original thought and innovating a non-original thought. But you know, original is very close to my heart. I like coming up with new concepts or taking something that already exists and refining it, innovating and making new and novel products and process. So that means like how we get a product built, how we do the product, or how do you get a base to the side of a river in Egypt and you can't bring a double base? Well, it's going to have to go in a case that is the size of a suitcase if you're lucky, and maybe it'll get tracked there on who knows what animal, but anyway. So process and products and making original concepts for both. So U for the U in double bass.
Speaker 1:Unique, being able to make unique products and concepts that stand out. You know let's not do the same old thing. An example is the Upton Bay Scroll. People don't notice it until I say, hey, check out the scroll or check out the C extension. You know there's a way we do our C extension without holes in the scroll. Our patterns, the different things we do, they're all pulling from other people's past work, from, you know, whether it's last century or recently or a long time ago. You know we're looking at what's in the marketplace but at the same time we want to be unique.
Speaker 1:Not everything can be unique. You know the bass consists of four strings, maybe five, maybe six if we're having a good time. But you know we do have certain uniqueness to every little thing we do. So a big one for Upton Bass and I might catch a little on this one. But people will say, if they know me, it's true Bold. So D-O-U-B, the B in double bass, bold.
Speaker 1:People want to hear our thoughts. People want to hear what we have to say and don't be afraid to tell them. So that lives for me in our products, in when we talk to you on the phone I'm often very direct with clients and I hear all the time like I love that you just kind of say it how it is and you want to get to the point and you want to come up with a solution. So I'm often extrapolating from my clients like no, no, I want you to be bold. Most of you that have been here can tell others I say be a brat man, say what you want. Like, if you tell me very clearly what you want, I then know what to do for you and that can involve what you don't want. So being bold is our thing. We want it to be your thing.
Speaker 1:Obviously, we want to be kind and gentle with one another, but boldness is what it's all about too, for me, and that's our concept at Upton Bass is we're bold in what we do. We're going to say here's how we do it, we know we do it well, come and check us out and here's a cool new idea. So that's the B in double bass. The L in double bass is really important and this is really important for musicians Listen, right, we want to listen to our customers best feedback we can get, and we want to listen to our bases. I want to know what's happening. You've got to have ears to listen. You've got to have really good ears to listen and you've got to want to hear. So the L in double bass is listen. And just like we would say to you, you know we want to listen to you, we want you to listen to us, we want you to be bold. We have some bold statements and we're going to go back and forth and listen to one another.
Speaker 1:Everything we do here has a touch of our clients on it, whether it comes as a constructive criticism, sometimes deconstructive criticism. Sometimes things go wrong. We're not perfect, we're human, we're using wood, we're building bases and how you listen and how you react. One of the things I like to say like you don't really know someone until things kind of go sideways and how you recover from a sideways situation starts with listening right and having the willingness to pay attention to what the person's actually saying. So listen is a huge one for me. We're musicians after all. If we're not listening, what the heck are we doing? So the E in double bass is for excellence Doing our best, and I don't want that to be a nebulous endless doing our best, because if you're never, ever, ever, ever, ever stopping, I feel like sometimes, wow, we're never good enough.
Speaker 1:No, it's not in that sense, it's just always trying to do our best as we go from one step to the next, as we carve one piece of wood to the next, and all of our collective learning from listening and doing all the different things we do. We're able to talk to a client with our best. Today I learned something about basses today and yesterday and for the past 20 plus years, and I'm giving you that best and I'll know more tomorrow and I'll do more crazy fun things as projects move forward and I'm bringing you that best of myself as I do that, and so is everyone here at Upton Base. We're at D-O-U-B-L-E Base, b-a-s-s the B in base is for build. That's building lasting bases, that's building lasting friendships, relationships with our clients and, just you know, really creating things together. Back again, with being bold and listening and all the different steps in these core values. We're building basis. That's obviously what we do and who we are, but we're also building friendships. You guys know this. I always say you know, I'm here to kind of teach people and show them what we do and guide them through where we are. Um, we build that basis with a person, we build that foundation with a person, often then to say, okay, well, I think this is where you should go and this is where you should go. The most important part of that is the relationship we create with you, the dynamic we create with you, learning and communicating and listening to one another, and then we're able to build a base, another base, another base. We have clients. We actually have a client that has five bases. Over the years, there's quite a significant number of clients that have three bases and they're still on the phone with us saying, hey, I love this base, they don't want a new base because they don't like something about the other base. They're like, yeah, let's do this project and we're here to do it. So that is the important part there Build, building relationships, building bases, building products, building stuff. That's what we like to do. That's why we do what we do.
Speaker 1:The A in base is American. We're here in the US, we're in Mystic, Connecticut, making bases. We all come from a really interesting background and our bases are American and everyone loves our bases. Well, great bases come from all over right Italy, england, spain. There's lots and lots of Germans and Czech, and don't be offended of any that I've left out. Interestingly enough, as much as we're known as like an American made company, and while I've lived here nearly my whole life, I was born in England and I am not an American citizen. Mattias behind the camera he's Swedish. I'm born in England and have a green card. My wife is a Puerto Rican, salvadorian. The people downstairs come from a very interesting background, but our bases are certainly American and by design they're very American, even though we go after Italian and English and German and a variety of different schools that we build after. They're true to American schoolmaking that we're always putting a little slice of something in there that makes them unique and special.
Speaker 1:We have made a significant number of instruments that are now in major symphonies on Broadway, jazz situations at the Grammys, in Bluegrass, in Newgrass they're all over the place and we are not the classical bass shop. We are not the jazz bass shop. We're not the Bluegrass, vintage Americana bass shop. We are all of those. If that music is happening, that is what we are doing on a bass. I wanna make sure that's very clear. You know we hear that from clients sometimes. Oh, you know, it's these stuffy orchestra players First off. Those guys aren't like that. They're bass players, and if you think they are, you probably don't know them. All my bass players are quite, very much so very, very similar people. That's why I like doing what we do. We have guys that stand on their basses. I'm talking about a guy with diamond plate and different crazy things on the sides of his bass.
Speaker 1:We have instruments being played in small Baroque settings and big symphony orchestras and flying on jumbo jets and big symphony orchestras and flying on jumbo jets and in all of the bases that are in little jazz clubs and down in jazz pits or in your basement that you're practicing on that you're hopefully aspiring to eventually go play with your friends. They're all over the place. That I love and that, I think, is what the American part means also to me is look at the blend. It's not this, it's not this, it's not this, it's all of it, and that is for me what America is and that is what making American bases means to me.
Speaker 1:So the second to last S in double base for our core values is service. If you guys know us, if you have a base from us, if you don't show up, we take care of you. We've got a lot to do all the time. We always take care of you. If you want to know what string sounds best on your Juzek and your G string is kind of pingy and you don't, you know, talk to me, talk to Jack, we're going to take care of you. We love to service our instruments, if anything, especially the basses we make. The more often we see them, the more we can service you, the healthier you and your base will be for a time. So we love the service, and that applies to shipping you out a cake, a rosin, whatever we're doing, getting the thing off fast to you, as fast as we can in a specialty niche market making an instrument, repairing an instrument, restoring an instrument. We are here to service you guys and we appreciate that you let us do that Smarter.
Speaker 1:So I was looking at that's the last S here in double bass for the core values smarter In smarter. I had originally written measuring our work by what we do, basically not by how long it takes us to do it, type of thing, and I think I want to change that one. I still like what I intended. It meant like when something comes in and needs to be done, it's not necessarily about how long it takes to do it, it's about how can you do it most effectively in the time that the client might need it to be done. So smarter to me means just because a guy doesn't know how to make a bass doesn't mean we can't do it. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:I heard that early days like oh, there's no way they can make basses in America for 10,000 bucks. Well, I feel like that's where smarter comes in. And I don't mean that in an egotistical way. I mean that in a confident, bold way that we have our process. You've been here, you've seen what we do old way. That we have our process. You've been here, you've seen what we do. We've made lots and lots of instruments and because we are smarter and we approach our work with that intelligence, we're able to give to you a smarter, more intelligent product and drive the price down and not have every base be a mortgage for a home. I also think that smarter means building back into our process the intelligence from listening and learning and working with you and having that dialogue. That's all smarter.
Speaker 1:And I think the fact these core values exist not to call them core values it was just fun to take the word double base, two words, double base and figure out some ways to say, hey, who are we and what do we do?
Speaker 1:Because at the end of the day, it's who are we, what do we do, why do we do it? What's our goal? Where are we going? And again, it's to make good stuff for bass players, things that last. It's to listen to you guys, it's to be supportive of one another and to, at the end of the day, be musicians together in our process here at Upton Bass, and that is why it means so much. I'm often the talking head here, right, that's what they have me for, but it means so much to everyone that's here being supported by you guys and you getting who we are and I hope these little chunks that I've tried to get out of my head to explain who we are and how we do what we do helps you get it and I again welcome your input. I wanna hear what you have to say and that's UptonBase. Thanks so much.