Select the best woods, effective pickups and extremely careful detailing, but only in the barest, most understated way necessary. Put all that together, and it will surely look a lot like one of the finishes produced by MICHAEL TOBIAS DESIGN (MTD).
Michael Tobias (Mike)
This famous and affable American is highly respected and admired by an enormous number of musicians around the world. He has been involved in many activities, always related to the musical instruments he has designed throughout his life with great attention to detail, within his impeccable craftsmanship, always presenting designs that many people have found majestic and very effective.
He also frequently gives master classes, talks, lectures and interviews that you can find in videos posted on the Internet, in which he recounts in detail his experiences as an effective and experienced luthier, something that thrills so many instrumentalists.
Mike started out in 1974 working at a shop in Washington that specialized in guitar repair. There Mike learned the most essential secrets of proper construction and possible improvements. Instruments made by many factories and already well-known brands, such as Gibson, Fender, Martin, Ramírez, and so on, ended up at that establishment. There he also took apart and rebuilt other kinds of instruments, such as banjos, harps, mandolins and even sitars.
In 1977 he decided to launch his own designs from Orlando, Florida, choosing for them what he considered to be the best and most suitable selection of woods, both for the bodies of his guitars and for the necks, which he made separately and then joined very solidly with powerful screws, to keep the whole thing inseparable and strong. He then branded them "Tobias," and among them he produced a series of basses he called the "Omega Series," because their shape looked quite a bit like that Greek letter. He also came up with the idea of making them asymmetric to improve hand position on their necks. In addition, he fitted them with active circuits (which at the time only some Alembic instruments had), and such novelties made an impact on many musicians who became interested in acquiring them.
In 1980, he decided to move his business to San Francisco, California, naming his instruments under the "Sierra Guitars" brand, but he made only about 50 guitars there, moving again the following year to build them in Costa Mesa (also in California) and Hollywood, by then under the name "Tobias Guitars," where he also took up repairing guitars of other brands again. There he joined forces with others and managed to grow his business, so that by 1988 they were overwhelmed by the demand for products to build, and in 1990 they even joined forces with Gibson, creating at that time basses especially prized by musicians who lined up to get one. Although by then more people were working on building these in-demand products, being unable to keep up enough to supply the stores, they looked elsewhere for the suppliers needed to handle the matter properly, creating a set of standards (up to 400) to establish the best and most suitable characteristics these manufactured products should have, and creating new series that they labeled, for example, "Basic," "Classic," "Killer B," "Signature," "Standard," and so on. They had parts made in Japan that were then assembled by their team. An English luthier also made some other parts and another model for them.
In 1992 Mike moved to Nashville, where he continued building his much-in-demand basses until the end of 1993, when he sought independence after his commitments to Gibson, developing new models of musical instruments and establishing in 1994 the brand for which he is best known worldwide: MTD. There he builds various types of musical instruments, though his special basses stand out among them, with four, five and even six strings, also famous for their personal designs with asymmetric necks, somewhat distinguished from those of many other makers.
They reopened their international market intensively and, with that, MTD now, under his supervision and strict specifications, also makes its products in the Czech Republic and Korea, where other guitars and musical instruments are also made for him under the Kingston, Heir and Saratoga names.
He also serves his customers at a shop he has in Woodstock, New York.
Two of His Latest Basses in My Hands
I have in my hands two of his latest basses, which may be very representative of what MTD is currently offering.
Since 1978 Mike Tobias has preferred to fit his guitars with "Bartolini" pickups and likewise active circuits from that maker, in which he seems very confident given their excellent, effective practical results.
He chooses the woods he uses with great care, of extraordinary quality (maple, mahogany, rosewood, ebony, etc.), trying to leave the parts very polished, so that they end up looking very attractive with a strong sense of understatement, since he avoids anything he considers superfluous (labels, little plates, tiny numbers, even pickguards).
His basses usually have 21 frets (up to 24 on request) and are normally four-string, but he has gone as far as making models with up to seven strings (at the insistence of some customer, naturally). As for scale length, he usually makes them 34" (like Leo Fender's), but also 35", for example for his five- or six-string models.
"Kingston Artist" Four-String
In an almost transparent, glossy amber color, it looks very attractive with its finish, which appears impeccable.
Its scale length is 34". The body is made of American basswood, onto which a one-piece neck with an excellent satin finish is firmly bolted, which is a pleasure to play with the palm of your hand. The fretboard is pau ferro (it could also be maple), with a width at the nut very similar to that of Fender's Jazz Basses (1-9/16").
Its impressive dual pickup, with exposed pole pieces, is the MTD ALNICO HUMBUCKING type, very effective and with a low level of theoretical unwanted noise.
It has four in-line pots on the body top for the controls: one volume and the other three for active EQ.
The bridge is a typical MTD design, apparently simple, surely effective and easy to use, but simple enough to allow any new adjustments we might want to make; though in my judgment it comes perfectly set up from the factory.
On the back of this bass's body there are two plates: a small one held by two screws, beneath which a 9-volt battery is hidden that powers the active circuit. We'll only know that power has run out when we notice the EQ controls losing their effectiveness. But that battery will last a very long time, since its consumption is very small. When we're not using the bass, it's best to leave it with the cable unplugged from the input jack, avoiding unnecessary drain.
The other, larger plate, held by three screws, hides all the electrical and electronic circuitry, with easy access to the wires connecting its pots, making their possible replacement easy in the very distant future, perhaps due to wear or some other cause.
The neck contains a steel truss rod along its entire length (not visible to the naked eye)
Its price in our shops is €769, which seems reasonable given its quality.
On the Frequency Analyzer
With the bass's volume knob at maximum and the other three EQ knobs at their center positions (where you can feel a detent), so that the signal coming from the pickup is flat and free of any effects that would alter its frequencies, we ran that signal through a frequency analyzer, plucking each of the four open strings with a pick, collecting the data and plotting it on the graph attached to this text; keeping in mind that the spectrum captured would naturally have been much broader had we pushed it with those EQ controls.
The frequencies shown there are not exact, but rather zones approximating the figures noted. The graph shows coordinated behavior across the four strings in the neighborhood of 300 to 400 Hz, very typical of the most characteristic and abundant sounds in the bass clef that this type of instrument usually carries.
In practice, by ear, I could perceive pleasant harmonics, especially emphasized when using the EQ controls on this bass.
"Kingston Heir" Five-String
It has a very understated look. With five strings, its neck is logically quite a bit wider than that of the four-string, which takes getting used to, but in exchange for that inconvenience we get "extra notes," down to a fifth lower than those of the four-strings, which gives us a bass that's "deeper and more stately..." which we'll appreciate for certain musical pieces.
Its body has an ash base with a figured maple top attached. Its one-piece neck is firmly bolted to that body, also with a steel truss rod inside; it has a pau ferro fretboard and a pleasant finish on the back, with a good satin varnish.
This model I now have has a neck with a 35" scale length (an inch more than the model we saw earlier), and its body is a tobacco-like color with glossy shading around its outer contour.
Its pickups are also considerably more extensive than on the model we looked at earlier. On one hand it has a pickup closer to the neck, of the MTD ALNICO JAZZ-BASS type; but it also includes another "double" pickup of the so-called "HUMBUCKING DUAL" type with its ten pole pieces in view. Since it also has an active circuit that we can EQ with three of the pots on the body top, the sonic spectacle possible with this model is impressive. With the other two pots there, we control the balance of the signal coming from those two pickups, while with the remaining one we manage the overall volume we want from this instrument.
The installed bridge looks simple, but is without doubt very effective and easy to tweak if desired, as it comes perfectly set up from the start.
Through the Frequency Analyzer Too
For this new test, as in the previous case, we placed the three active EQ pots at their center detent (so the signal is as flat as possible), as well as, also in the center, the pot that lets us blend the signal evenly from both pickups in a more or less averaged way.
As a result of this test, we obtained this other graph, also attached to this text, which looks quite similar to the previous one and shows similar behavior in the 300 to 400 Hz neighborhood, very suitable for a bass like this one.
I may notice an excess of output on the fifth string (the low B), possibly because I also noticed a slight misadjustment, at least on this sample the distributor sent me, and only on that string. Perhaps its position or seating in the bridge should have been adjusted better, for which I would have needed the right Allen wrenches, which also weren't supplied with this unit. I get the impression that someone adjusted this before it reached me, since that string also doesn't intonate properly, unlike the other four, and so the fault may not lie with (or may even be unknown to) its own distributor (and of course the factory). For that reason, I don't give this much importance.
Other Models
He usually uses BARTOLINI USA electronics with three-band active EQ, very reliable and effective. Tobias has made other models famous, such as the so-called Killer B and, currently, some at the top of his range, which he calls the "Kingston Z" series, but which at the extreme never exceed €1,169, unless some other variant is requested from the maker to suit the customer's whim.
Pulling the volume control out gives access to a second sound, called SLAP CONTOUR, which results in a very striking and special character.
They use two 9-volt batteries to power the circuit, providing better voltage and avoiding the clipping that shows up on other basses that use only one such battery.
One of the excellent things about these bass models is that they offer a rich range of harmonics which, if you place your fingers on the strings in certain precise positions, stand out pleasantly with striking acoustic and musical effect. Jaco Pastorius used that kind of resource a lot to draw applause on stage.
