It was on a impromptu trip to the London Music Show in 2007 that did 2 major things for me.
- It got me playing the bass with my old band again.
- I met Simon Lee, a guitar maker, and my road towards building a sustainable bass guitar was under way
Image courtesy of Simon Lee Guitar – Panola Bass GuitarI had just recently received an email from a friend I had known 10+ years ago, he had found this blog and sent me a tentative email. I had responded, quite gleeful at the thought of meeting up with the lead guitarist from the band I had played in during 1991 and that my blog had been found in the big old world.
We decided to meet at the London Music Show, and from there wandered around talking guitars and floating the possibility of playing as a band again.
Deeper into the show stands I stumbled upon a stand being run by Simon Lee Guitars.
I became excited and intrigued, here was a man that was claiming to make recycled guitars … just what i’ve always wanted !!
All I could see were 6 string Electric Guitars in a variety of shapes, but then I spotted the tall 4 stringed, low ended bass. It was his firs prototype bass guitar, now called the ‘Panola’, and it felt really nice to slap, pop, finger and pick.
So What makes the guitar sustainable or recycled:
- It uses an innovative sandwich design with recycled plastics
- It still uses wood, but a managed source of maple, is much kinder to the environment
- Materials are sourced as close to the UK as possible
I struck a deal with Simon Lee at the show and set into motion the building of a custom bass.
I will follow up posts with how the project is coming and what I had to do research wise to source the custom components.
Please do check out Simon Lee’s Website – http://www.simonleeguitars.com whose website I incidentally built 