Carl Thompson’s Custom Basses by Tom Mulhern Guitar Player Magazine Above: Carl Thompson with black walnut 8-string bass flanked by two views of a stunning 26 fret 4-string with a mahogany body, a maple neck and two Schaller pickups. Note ebony “half moon” insert at the neck/body joint and distinctive sculpted horns. During the mid… Continue reading Guitar Player Magazine, March 1985
Carl Thompson Every Carl Thompson instrument is unique; there are no models, per se. Carl builds about five or six of these uncompromisingly personal, custom-order instruments each year, most of them 6-string basses. Carl moved from Pitcairn, Pennsylvania to New York City in 1967. To supplement his income as a musician, he worked in Dan… Continue reading American Guitars by Tom Wheeler, 1992
by Tony Bacon and Barry Moorhouse Pages 56 and 57 Carl Thompson was a jazz guitarist who in 1967 began working in Dan Armstrong’s guitar repair shop in New York. When Armstrong closed down some years later, Thompson says that many of the local players he’d worked for suggested that he should open his own… Continue reading The Bass Book
Carl Thompson Veteran Bassbuilder With Vision by Michael DuClos Bass Player Magazine Wearing aviator sunglasses and a tattered baseball cap and cradling an old arch-top guitar, Carl Thompson holds court in the back room of his shop in Brooklyn, New York. A small group of young apprentices listens intently as Thompson breaks down an old… Continue reading Bass Player Magazine, February 1996
Carl Thompson: On building Les Claypool’s “Rainbow Bass” Bass Frontiers Although I did not meet Les until 1989, he told me he had been playing the converted 4-string piccolo bass for about 10 or 12 years before that. During that period, due to illness, I had all but given up building instruments. Gary Kelly, a… Continue reading Bass Frontiers, Volume 3, Number 4
Cool Hand Carl By Rex Miller When a real live musician turns to making instruments, the quality is already built in. One day, Carl Thompson, who used to play guitar and bass with Billy Ward and the dominoes (who put the legendary Jackie Wilson on the map in the fifties), got sick and disgusted with… Continue reading Brooklyn Bridge, July 1997
Taken from “Jurassic Basses” by Mikael Jansson & Scott Malandrone Bass Player Magazine Further electric trails were blazed in 1934, when James Thompson, father of custom bass builder Carl Thompson, built a solidbody electric guitar for use in his homemade studio. James – born in 1902 – was employed by Westinghouse as a coil winder… Continue reading Bass Player Magazine, July 1997
Carl Thompson The Evolution of a Bass Maker by Joy Portugal Carl Thompson grew up in Pitcairn, Pa., a little town about 25 miles east of Pittsburgh, and has been playing the guitar since he was seven years old. Early in his professional career he was the guitar player with Billy Ward and the Dominoes… Continue reading Allegro, October 27, 2000
< Back to English Am 19.05.2001 fährte uns Dan Jackson zu dem Bass-Bauer Carl Thompson. In der kleinen Werkstatt in Stadtteil Brooklyn, am Fuße der berühmten Brooklyn-Bridge trafen wir Carl Thompson, als er Arbeiten an Dan’s beneidenswerten 6-Saiter vornahm. Der 62 jährige war mit der Justierung des Sattels beschäftigt und ließ sich anfänglich nicht von… Continue reading LeftyBass.com
We knew Carl had fans internationally, but Volkmar Arnecke took it to Germany! Click here for proof. – Aaron On May 17th, 2001, Dan Jackson took us to the luthier Carl Thompson. We met Carl Thompson in his small workshop in the Brooklyn district, near the famous Brooklyn Bridge. He was just working on Dan’s… Continue reading Arni’s Lefthand Basses
