Creativity Quote by Mike Gordon

You can hear the quiet pride of a gearhead who refuses to romanticize the tools of his trade. Mike Gordon isn’t delivering a grand manifesto about artistry; he’s narrating the never-ending, wonderfully fussy relationship between a working musician and a handmade instrument. “Second bass” immediately signals commitment: this isn’t a one-off indulgence, it’s an ongoing collaboration. Paul (left tantalizingly uncontextualized, likely a luthier known in Gordon’s circle) isn’t just a vendor; he’s part of the sound.

The telling line is “Sometimes I think of changes that could be made.” For a player of Gordon’s caliber, “finished” is a myth. The subtext is obsessive refinement, but not insecurity. It’s the pragmatic curiosity of someone who knows that a millimeter of neck profile, a different pickup voicing, a slight tweak in balance can alter not only tone but decision-making onstage. He pairs “sound and the feel” because musicians don’t experience instruments as abstract audio machines; they experience them as bodily interfaces. Feel dictates risk: how hard you dig in, how long you sustain, how adventurous you get rhythmically.

Then he lands on “definitely a beautiful instrument,” a phrase that reads almost deliberately plain. After all the tweak-talk, he still grants the object its own aura. Beauty here isn’t museum polish; it’s the satisfaction of an instrument that invites play, that rewards attention, that makes the endless pursuit of “better” feel less like dissatisfaction and more like devotion.