A New York bassist turned bass builder.

Ken Smith Basses, Ltd. makes electric basses in Perkasie, Pennsylvania, a borough in Bucks County north of Philadelphia, and is named after its founder, the bassist and luthier Ken Smith. The company states two starting years: its homepage says “since 1979” in one line and “since 1978” in the next. Its archived pages support both readings — a 1998 page announced “our 20th year of manufacturing,” a 1999 page sold 20th Anniversary neck-through basses with California redwood tops, and a 2016 timeline began with inlaid strap locks in 1978. We give both years.

Smith came to building from playing. On an archived page about the double basses he sold, he wrote that he had “worked as a Professional Bassist in New York for 20 years,” and that he had bought, sold and collected double basses — by makers including Martini, Dodd, Prescott and Juzek — and done some repairs and restorations himself. A 2007 company page described his “many years of experience as a studio professional in New York City.” Both are his own account. We could not find an independent biography, and English Wikipedia has no article on him or the company.

The workshop has been in Perkasie for as long as the company’s web pages go back: every archived version we checked, from 1998 on, gives a Perkasie address for the factory. We did not find when, or whether, the business moved there from New York.

Wide necks, low B strings and old wood.

Smith is best known for helping to make the extended-range bass normal. Bass Musician Magazine, in a 2020 history of the six-string bass, lists Ken Smith alongside Overwater, Alembic and Tobias among the high-end makers who built one-off five-string instruments from the mid-1970s, before Yamaha’s BB5000 of 1984, which it says is thought to have been the first production five-string with a low B. The company’s own timeline is more specific. It dates a wide-neck six-string bass and a low-B string design using .128 and .130 gauges to 1981, and a wide-neck five-string, its Taper Core strings and a compact quick-release bridge to 1983. It also claims printed-circuit-board electronics in 1979, a graphite-reinforced neck and detented balance and EQ controls in 1980, an 18-volt three-band circuit with internal DIP switches in 2004, and a combined pre-amp and practice amp, the PAPA, in 2009. The company calls Smith a “Multi-String Electric Bass Pioneer” and says these features “are now industry standards”; we give the list as its claim.

The New York connection shows up in the family tree of boutique basses. English Wikipedia’s article on Fodera says Vinny Fodera and Joey Lauricella launched their Brooklyn company around 1983 “after dissolving their working relationship with Ken Smith Basses”; Fodera’s own history page does not mention Smith.

Wood is the other constant. The company says Smith hand-picks the timber for every bass from an in-house lumberyard of more than 20 species, and its factory tour shows stacks of tiger maple dated 1999 and 2000, neck billets left to settle for years and parts started one to three years before a bass is ordered. Its pages say the methods are “inspired by the techniques of 16th – 19th Century European stringed instrument makers.” A 2000 page set out a waste policy, quoting the SoundWood guide, a programme of Fauna & Flora International: offcuts used for veneers and body details, scraps burned in the factory’s heating, and lumber below standard sold to local furniture makers.

Design and documentation.

The basses in this guide come from small workshops, most started in the 1970s and 1980s by a luthier or a luthier-and-player partnership. Several are connected: English Wikipedia says Vinny Fodera was Spector’s first full-time employee, in 1977, and that he and Joey Lauricella started Fodera after working with Ken Smith Basses.

Three are in New York State. Fodera says it has been in Brooklyn since 1983 and is now a family business with Laura Fodera as partner and chief executive. Sadowsky, founded by Roger Sadowsky in 1979, gives an address in Long Island City, Queens; since 2019, under a licence with Germany’s Warwick, its MetroLine, MasterBuilt and Custom Shop basses have been made in Germany, Wikipedia and Warwick’s Sadowsky website say. Spector, founded by Stuart Spector in Brooklyn in 1976, was bought by Korg in 2019, Bass Magazine reported in 2021; it builds its US basses near Woodstock.

Lakland, founded in Chicago in 1994, was bought in 2010 by a group led by Hanson Musical Instruments, according to the announcement of the deal. It says its USA Series basses are built in Chicago.

Ken Smith Basses says every instrument is handmade at its shop in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Dingwall, founded by Sheldon Dingwall in 1987, is based in Saskatoon, Canada; its own spec sheets list most models as made in Canada and a few lower-priced ones as built in China or Indonesia and finished in Canada. Alembic is run by the Wickersham family in Rohnert Park, California, the company says.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Handmade in Perkasie, and a licensed line made elsewhere.

The company’s claim about where its basses are made has not changed in a quarter of a century. In 1998 it said its models were “100% Handmade in USA at our Perkasie, PA Factory”; today it says “All Smith Basses are 100% handmade in USA at our shop in Perkasie, PA,” and that Ken Smith “supervises the production of each bass and still does the final set-up” — a line that appeared, in almost the same words, on the 1998 site. We give these as the company’s statements.

The exception was a cheaper line. In the mid-2000s the KSD (“Ken Smith Design”) Proto-J basses — 1960s- and 1970s-style jazz basses with Smith’s active circuit — were, the Smith site said, “Made and Distributed by Brooklyn Gear,” a Brooklyn company, with quality-control checks on selected samples in the Smith shop. Neither company said, in the pages we checked, where KSD basses were built, and the line no longer appears on the Smith website.

Today’s range is narrower than it was a decade ago. The website lists a Tiger Elite series — the Black Tiger, figured walnut over a figured maple core, and the White Tiger, tiger maple over a walnut core — and four BT and BSR bolt-on five- and six-strings; in 2016 it also listed neck-through, MS Pro, Fusion Elite and several other bolt-on series. Shared specifications include a 34-inch scale, a five-piece maple and shedua neck with graphite bars, soapbar humbuckers, a solid-brass bridge and an angled headstock with a carved “Smith Coat of Arms” on the back, which the factory tour calls “a Classic Smith Trademark,” alongside an “S” inlay on the face. Smith strings, including Taper Core and Burner sets, are sold separately, and the company says it does not supply the chains Sam Ash or Guitar Center. We found no record of a sale or an outside owner: every page we checked, from 1998 to 2026, names Ken Smith Basses, Ltd.

For a design guide, Ken Smith shows how a maker’s marks — a coat of arms carved into a headstock, tiger-striped wood — can carry a brand further than a logo. Compare Fodera, whose founders once worked with Smith, according to Wikipedia, and Aguilar, a New York bass-amp maker. For this guide we use black walnut, tiger maple and brass tones with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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