S. D. Curlee
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S.D. Curlee was a guitar manufacturer from Matteson, Illinois, in the late 1970s and early 1980s before going out of business. For a while its electric basses were popular, much more so than their guitars. They were especially popular in Belgium during the late 1970s and early 1980s because of the poor products then coming from Fender.
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[edit] History
This small enterprise was founded by Randy Curlee, Randy Dritz and Sonny Storbeck in 1975 in Matteson. The name S.D Curlee came from the three original partners: Storbeck, Dritz and Curlee. According to Michael Wright (Guitar Stories), this independent entrepreneur built and sold around 15,000 handcrafted instruments, including 12,000 bass guitars, between 1975 and 1982. Recently Denny Rauen (SD Curlee production manager in the '70s) disagreed and said these highly exaggerated figures were solely used for publicity purposes. In truth Curlee was the businessman, and the builders in the Matteson workshop produced perhaps 25 instruments per month "...when things were running smoothly..." (source http://www.sdcurleeusa.com/yesterday.htm) With hindsight it’s safe to assume S.D. Curlee U.S.A manufactured around 2500 to 3000 guitars and basses in total. Curlee wanted to offer a quality built instrument at an affordable price. Advertising campaigns were rather scarce: only a handful of ads exist. A rather classy 8 page color affair from 1979 and a few black-and-white flyers were distributed.
During these years, the Curlee brand was applied to Curlee-arranged import versions and was also licensed to Hondo. S.D. Curlee was one of the first instrument manufacturers to use this approach to address the issue of unlicenced copies of premium brands. Many other instrument companies subsequently followed its lead, such as the Fender's Squier brand of Asian-manufactured products, Gibson's use of its Epiphone brand and, more recently, the OLP brand of licensed MusicMan products.
During the early 1980s, the climate for these 'all natural' instruments changed drastically. New composite materials such as carbon resin (used on Steinberger, Status, Modulus and other instruments) became the state of the art. Headless designs, flashy colors and an altogether different approach forced Curlee and his contemporary contenders into new grounds. He went to work for Yamaha instruments and died in 2005.
The sound of wood, however, did return. By the mid to late 1980s companies like Spector and Warwick succeeded in re-introducing natural finishes.
[edit] Construction
The Curlee instruments featured a unique design blend of neck through body and a bolt-on neck, which was anchored in the body with a heavy brass plate.
All of the bass models shared the same basic, almost symmetrical shape (inspired by the Gibson Les Paul double cutaway Junior), and were available in a fretless version. The models were:
- Standard 1 (1 P-bass DiMarzio, mahogany body, maple neck, originally equipped with a Gibson like humbucker located near the bridge)
- Standard 2 (identical to the above but 2 pick ups)
- Butcher (body made of butcher block maple)
- Liberty (liberty bell shaped body)
- Curbeck (body made of walnut, maple stripes)
- Summit (body and neck made of laminated walnut and Maple)
- C-30 (violin shape, walnut/maple body, maple neck) probably the rarest Curlee bass produced
- Yankee (active electronics ,walnut body, maple neck, small upper horn/lower bout inclination, ...sort of an 'updated'version of the Curbeck ) - released in the early 1980s. The Yankee was advertised with three different pick up configurations; 1 P-bass (Yankee I), 2-Pbass (Yankee II) and the rare Yankee II-J including 1 p-bas (bridge)/J-bass (neck). Most Yankees have a 2 p-bass pick-up set up (Yankee II).
Recently (April 2009) , a near mint, German carve Yankee II appeared on e bay, employing butcher block maple for the body. The headstock only stated "Curlee" and the DiMarzio P bass pickups were positioned in reverse placement.
Curlees featured state of the art hardware, usually only included on much more expensive brands: Gold Grover tuning heads, Badass II bridges, a brass nut and high output DiMarzios. All basses used a 32½" medium scale neck. Unfortunately, some basses had truss-rod issues. Later models introduced a German Carve body and aluminum instead of brass plates.
[edit] Cultural effect and availability
Although the brand nowadays enjoys a minor cult-like status, only a few famous bass guitarists were seen with Curlee models in the mid- to late-1970s. Former Mahavishnu Orchestra bass guitarist Rick Laird had one, R. "Skeet" Curtis played one (and still has it) while touring with Parliament, and Nick Lowe used a Curlee fretless on a few assignments. Jack Blades used them on the first Night Ranger album and played one on the "Don't tell me you love me" video. Recently, guitarist Adam McIlwee of tigers jaw can be seen using a vintage Curlee guitar.
By 2006, Curlee basses occasionally appeared on eBay for about US$400 and are generally considered a poor man's alternative to Alembic Inc. By 2008, interest in the USA instruments had increased and the value raised accordingly; between $500 and $800 in excellent condition.
On July 4, 2011 Scott Beckwith, owner of Birdsong Guitars, announced that his workshop will be hand making new SD Curlee basses with some minor but significant improvements to the original design. The 2011 S. D. Curlee basses are visually very close replicas of the originals, but not completely so. There have been many small refinements. Most apparent is the lack of the heavy trademark brass neck plate and the omission of the neck skunk stripe (new SD Curlees have different neck construction).
