Spector Basses

Spector Guitars was founded in Brooklyn, New York in 1976 by Stuart Spector and Alan Charney, both of whom were members of the Brooklyn Woodworkers Co-op that shared space in an old factory building. It was there that Stuart learned machine woodworking from Billy Thomas, a friend and founder of the co-op. Business started in 1976 with sales to Gracin Music on 48th St in NYC.  Both G-1 electric guitars and SB-1 basses, designed by Stuart, were in the original product line.

Among the other members of the co-op was Ned Steinberger, who had recently completed training in furniture design at Cooper Hewitt museum. He became interested in the work Spector was doing and offered to design a bass. Ned had learned that “form follows function,” and used that philosophy in designing the NS bass guitar, with an elegant, ergonomically-curved design and the neck-thru body construction that Spector was already utilizing. The first NS-1 bass was built in March, 1977, and was later followed by the two-pickup model, the NS-2, in 1979.