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History
In
the beginning...
Tobias Guitars
was started in Orlando, Florida in April 1977. The first serial
number was 0178 - January 1978. After 578, I went back to 179. My
first shop name was The Guitar Shop. I sold that business in 1980 and
moved to San Francisco to be partners in a short-lived manufacturing
business called Sierra Guitars. We made about 50 instruments. I left
S.F. in May of '81 and started a repair shop in Costa Mesa, Ca.
I stayed in
Costa Mesa for several months and then moved to Hollywood. The first
California serial number was 240 and it was a solid mahogany 6 string
guitar. The first South Cal number was 250. It was one of four
mahogany LP junior style neck thru.
Tobias Guitars
continued to repair instruments and build custom basses for the next
several years with the help of Bob Lee and Kevin Almieda (Kevin went
on to work for Music Man). We moved into 1623 Cahuenga Bl. in
Hollywood and after a year quit the repair business. We added Bob
McDonald, lost Kevin to MM and added Makoto Onishi.
The business
grew by leaps and bounds. In June of 1988 we had so many back orders
that we could not accept any new orders until the January NAMM show
in 1990. (For another view of the California years, see Bob Lee's
story on the Articles section.)
The
Gibson Buyout...
After several
attempts to move the business to larger, better equipped facilities,
I sold Tobias Guitars to Gibson on 1/1/90. The first Tobias Gibson
serial number was 1094. At that point, Gibson was instrumental in
moving us to a bigger shop in Burbank and setting us up with a great
spray booth and dust collection system. We finally met So Cal safety
codes. Basses built during 1990-1992 era were built initially by the
same crew that had helped establish Tobias Basses as one of the most
sought after basses on the planet. We added several people during
1990 and ended up with a great 10-man shop.
Business was
still very good and we were not able to make anywhere near enough
basses to fill the orders. Instead of trying to jack up production,
we tried to get outside vendors to build for us. We had 110
"Model T" basses made for us by a very fine builder in New
England, and then we got the Terada factory in Nagoya, Japan to make
the "Standard" bass for us. This was and is a great bass,
but the $/yen ratio killed the project. There were about 400 Standards.
Late in 1992,
it was decided that in the best corporate interests, Tobias would
move to Nashville. After much deliberation, no one from the original
Tobias Guitars crew went to Nashville. The final LA Tobias/Gibson
serial number is 2044. Despite Gibson's ownership of Tobias, all of
the basses made up to 2044 were built by the my regular crew. The
first production from Tobias/Nashville consisted of about 60 basses
that were not numbered or finished by this crew.
I left the
company in Dec '92 and was a consultant for Gibson for the operations
they set up in Nashville. They had some trouble at first, but have
since done a fairly good job making Tobias basses.
The
new instruments...
By contractual
agreement, after my consulting agreement with Gibson was up, I had a
1 year non-competition term that ended in Dec.'93. During that
"down" time, I moved to the Catskills in upstate NY and set
up a small custom shop. I started designing new instruments and
building prototypes in preparation for my new venture.
The first
instruments were named Eclipse. There are 50 of them and most all of
are 35" scale bolt-ons with 3 neck thrus. I finally settled on a
MTD as the company name and trademark.
I currently
build about 10 instruments per month. Along with the MTD electric
basses, I build acoustic bass guitars and a few electric 6 string
guitars. I have two part time helpers: Chris Hofschneider, who has
been working for Stuart Spector off and on for the last 15 years and
has been a guitar tech for a great number of bands including Bon
Jovi, Richie Sambora, Skid Row and White Snake.
I am also
doing design and development work for other companies. These projects
include: the Lakland hollow body bass, the Modulus Genesis bass, a
series of acoustic guitars, baritone acoustic and ABG for Alvarez,
(with Joe Veillette) and a project for American Showster (with Chris).
My newest
products are the Kingston, Heir, and Saratoga basses, which I have
manufactured to my specifications in Korea. |
