Coming Soon from Sirena

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I spent the morning thinking about the new year, and I thought I’d post an image dump of a few designs I hope to get to this year. I know I haven’t finished this Pistolera I’ve been working on since June of 2021, but seeing how my first production prototype is proceeding to the finishing stage, I thought it would be prudent to plan ahead while I am inspired to make designs.

These drawings are just sketches and are subject to change. The headstocks, bridges and pickups are mostly cut and pasted from other drawings.

First, I have the Santo series guitar and bass. The Santo bass is a short scale. I actually have a half finished prototype in my garage, but I’ve already made improvements on the old design. I’m also thinking I could make a 6-string guitar version. The engineering challenge I want to give myself is to use some of the same tooling to build both instruments.

Sirena Santo Bass
Sirena Santo Bass
Sirena Santo Guitar
Sirena Santo Guitar
Sirena Cometa Bass
Sirena Cometa Bass

Expensive Basses

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An interesting article from Premier Guitar Magazine popped up in my news feed this morning. In asking what people are paying for when they spend money on expensive basses, it seems like they are not looking to pay for innovation.

This list is further proof that it’s the story of a bass—its origin, rarity, who owned it, or who signed it—that drives its value more than innovation. And, of course, it’s collectors and not players that spend that much cash. But what if all those efforts would have gone right into a musician’s practical or tonal needs?

Afghani Luthiers Face Death

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This article is more about luthiers than performers. In a hyberbolic sense, could image building an instrument as a subversive act, but I could never really imagine that building an instrument would be an act of sheer bravery.

War is evil. A musical instrument serves but one purpose; to create joy. To build instruments is to create the tools that make beauty. I hope that someday anyone in the world can find the freedom to build musical instruments and bring beauty to the Earth.

New Neck Blanks from the New Work Space

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Three neck blanks for Sirena Pistolera basses.

Here’s a small run of walnut neck blanks for my Sirena Pistolera basses. I just started subletting a shop space from my friend Bruce Johnson. I’m sharing the space with a few other transient luthiers. Bruce wants to move his heavy woodworking operations to this shop, and I’ll be doing all my big wood here as well. Prior to this, I’d always done my work at my home shop, and I was limited by space and amount of mess I could make. I’m really excited about this development because it brings me a little closer to building my basses efficiently enough to bring my ideas to more people.

New workspace.
Cutting neck blanks
2021 Selfie

Funktronic News | August 24, 2017 Weekly Update

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This week was mostly busy work. Most noteworthy, I took a few beginning steps to start a small production run of my Neodymium Sidewinder Bass Pickup. I dropped off some drawings of the parts with Bruce over at Johnson’s Extremely Strange Musical Instrument Company. Bruce is going to machine some nice masters that I can use to make molds for my parts. Basically, I decided that I have reached the point where I want to refine the design of my pickup and develop my production model. In the meantime, I’ll call around and get some quotes for getting the blades water-cut out of 430 stainless. I will start off with a few samples and see how they work with the molds. I’m feeling excited about it and I think it will be good to “finished” with my first design. As things progress, I’m sure I’ll be more excited about it.

On another note, I tried to take a few days off and give my brain a rest from pickup making. However, I failed spectacularly and came up with a drawing of a new sidewinder pickup that I think I can make reversible.

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