~1971 Bunker Pro Bass natural

This is a very cool, very innovative and very uncommon instrument. I had never heard of Bunker until 5 or so years ago, when my buddy Petey traded this in- he had purchased it in Seattle, or that area. Good bit of history out there on Dave Bunker, and his unique instruments. Extremely well crafted, and somewhat mind blowing, to be honest- we love bizarre instruments, and when we dive in the lake of wacky, we dive deep. They use the Bunker Guitar Tension Free Sustanium Neck™ which removes the tension off the neck, letting it sustain more- way back when we sold the Trekker guitars, with the Bunker designed necks, and Ibanez used them as well, a way of isolating the tension off the neck. I can't go into detail on it, but should you wish to look up Bunker guitars there are several sites that can. The bridge on this was missing, and couldn't get Mr Bunker to get us another one (he has since passed on) so made one with 4 individual bridge pieces, tried to be true to the original design and look, and footprint- an original could be reinstalled, we kept that in the back of our minds as we were working on it. We immediately sold the bass to a collector locally, maybe 4 years ago, who dug it, until he was ready for something new. Has a very nice hard case, wood with leather ends, fits well inside and is built like a tank. These don't pop up very often and everyone should have at least one. Thanks for looking!

In the 1970s, the Bunkers introduced guitars with their patented tension-free neck design and a fine-tuning system. The Bunker Fine Tuner was "a slotted chunk of brass through which the strings passed with thumbscrews that allowed micro-adjusted tuning. Unfortunately [Bunker] didn't patent the idea, and it showed up years later on Floyd Rose" locking tremolo devices for guitars made by Seattle guitarist/soundman Floyd D. Rose (Wright, 74). The tension-free neck was a design concept that evolved from discussions Bunker had with some friendly engineers back in the 1950s during his Boeing days. Guitar necks have long suffered from twisting, warping, and compression due to the pulling of the tight metal strings attached to their two ends. Bunker called his initial design the "floating neck." This later became the basis for the tension-free neck, which solved the problem via "a metal rod that ran inside the length of the neck [from the body to the nut] but was not attached to it; in other words, the neck itself was totally floating with respect to this rod and the nut. That was the idea; the nut and rod supported the string tension" (RickC), "thus eliminating strong-tension stress on the nut-to-body length of the neck" (Roberts, 30). Bunker's son later explained the advantages of his father's new system:

"[The] tension-free neck has a lot of benefits. Our design takes the pressure off the wood so it can resonate better than other neck systems. Other systems' truss-rods and graphite systems put pressure on the neck to keep it from warping and staying true for really good action. Many other systems inhibit the neck from resonating. Our system frees the wood up to resonate and thereby increasing the overall sustain, improving tone, and making play more consistent anywhere on the neck. All the time holding the neck true and stable" ("Builder Profile").

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Coleman Music
1021 South Main St.
China Grove, NC, 28023
(704)-857-5705