back. Electronics are Bartolini bridge and middle pickup, lipstick neck pickup, six way pickup selector switch, Bartolini NTMB three band pre-amp with volume,

mid, and stacked treble/bass knobs. There are some small finish flaws, and a

few minor wood working imperfections. The bass very reasonable resonant and sounds good unplugged. The Bartolini electronics sound excellent. Playability is great below B on the G string (16'th fret if it had frets). Above that the body cut away doesn\'t leave enough room for your hand and you need to use a modified thumb position. ToneSmith offers a 316 body style that alows better access to the upper positions, but I liked the 320 body shape, which is

similar to an ES-335.

Despite a few minor flaws in finish, I love the looks of this bass. The spalted top wood is very interesting, and the light flame in the top wood was completely unexpected. The birds eye maple in the neck is concentrated near the heel, and has an almost quilted look to it. The great feel and playability were exactly what I wanted in this bass. Hanging on your shoulder the bass is slightly neck heavy - about the same as my Godin AcoustiCaster bass - so it droops just a little. It is controllable with right forearm pressure.

The sound is pretty much what you would expect using the two Bartolini pickups, exactly how I want a fretless bass to sound, with the controls set in their center detents (flat eq?) and all tone controls centered on the amp. The bridge pickup solo'd is the traditional solo fretless bass sound - kind of honky but not objectionable. The middle position Bartolini can somewhat imitate a P-bass, but not quite and I'm not as fond of this pickup solo'd. I'm very happy with the range of sound I get from this bass with the two Bartolini pickups together. The kicker is the little lipstick tube pickup at the neck position. Solo'd it is kind of bla, no where near as interesting as on the fretted demo bass I played where it sounded a lot like the old tic-tac bass. Combinations are sweet. Position 2 (neck and middle) and 6 (neck and bridge) are really interesting sounding combinations, thicker than the two Bartolini's with great detail and growl, and position 6 is a scooped sound.

Ordering a bass from a small maker is a lot different from buying something off the shelf at Guitar Center. You specify everything you want on your bass,

and the price is set to reflect what is ordered. There were a few things I did not order to keep the cost down, perferring to put the money into better wood and electronics. My bass combines the features of the lowest and

middle ToneSmith offerings. Kevin Smith was great to work with, and very helpful in helping me decide what exactly I wanted. We ended up settling at $1500 for my fretless bass in a ToneSmith hardshell case (actually foam with balistic nylon covering, like most of the new fiddle cases you see). This was a little over my budget, but I was satisfied with the value and quality of the final product. This bass continues to inspire and I'm very happy I made the decision to buy from this small local builder.

Construction	98%
(Almost perfect, beautiful woods. )
Appearance	95%
(A few minor imperfections, very minor. )
Playability	98%
(Great feel, lovely neck shape.)
Sound	98%
(Very wide range of tones, inspiring. )
Customer Service	98%
(Kevin was very responsive during the build. No need to see him since. )
Value	95%
(Expensive, but worth every penny.)
Overall	98%
(A wonderful instrument, a gret company to deal with. )