In praise of Andy Viccars

[Guest MoJo]

I recently bought a pair of BB405's from 'mdc' Mike, one in it's original fretted form and one that had had an unlined fretless ebony board fitted. Both great basses but I fell in love with the fretless, so much so that I decided to get my favourite BB414 fitted with an fretless ebony board. Mike had told me that the 404 had been converted by a luthier in the Milton Keynes area called Andy Viccars.

I contacted Andy and he gave me a very reasonable quote for the work. A friend of mine works in Bletchley, Milton Keynes and kindly offered to take the bass to work with him. Andy made arrangements to collect the bass from my friend last Thursday. Considering the work involved, I didn't expect to see the bass again this side of the New Year so imagine my surprise when I received an email from Andy saying that the bass should be back with my friend on Tuesday!

My friend dropped it off today

[attachment=125467:bb414_fretless.jpg]

The quality of the work is superb. You'd think it came from the factory like this. All set-up too. I can't recommend this gentleman highly enough.

[bremen]

I love a happy story.

http://www.andyviccarscustom.co.uk/catalog.php

[Oopsdabassist]

Andy has done some setups for me in the past too, he used to work from home and it drove his missus up the wall with the phone ringing all the time, I honestly thought he had given it up, top bloke though, very helpful

[Sibob]

[indent=1]Andy is a top top bloke, I've had setups and refrets from him, top-notch work, great prices (imo) and really quick![/indent]

[indent=1]Si[/indent]

[chrismuzz]

I've had work done on a couple of my basses by Andy too. He's easily the best I've ever known. He's done work other 'luthiers' told me was impossible, at shockingly good prices. It's a shame I now live over a hundred miles away from the guy!

[mdc]

Hey Mark, glad you like the basses - always good to see them go to a good home, and it looks like Andy has done a good job for you. I'd never hesitate to recommend Andy to anyone - I've known him since the seventies when we played on the same pub circuit, and over the years he's performed several miracles on various instruments of mine. The most recent was a horribly twisted Stingray 5 neck where the truss rod had torn loose at the nut end at some point during two years in storage, and looked utterly beyond repair; Andy took a look and said he would 'see what he could do, mate' and the bass is now playing beautifully.

[Angel]

He did a very good job for me on knackered strat frets. Certainly go there again.

[Pentode]

Andy's an absolute legend!
I'd recommend him without hesitation .

[megallica]

Andy fitted a fretless board to my first bass about ten years ago and did a great job for a very reasonable price.
Had a chat about AC/DC with him as he was going to the Milton Keynes Bowl gig that weekend.
See there are benefits to living in Milton Keynes lol