The $250,000 bass guitar, The Ritter Royal Flora Aurum, was built by Jens Ritter, a luthier, or stringed instrument maker, from Germany.
This luxurious bass has a body carved from a rare, solid piece of maple while the nut is carved from 10,000-year-old mammoth ivory.
The fingerboard is decorated with a floral inlay pattern made of 24-karat gold. There’s even a black diamond set in platinum decorating each leaf.
The bridge, tuner buttons and knobs are cast in gold. The knobs hold an additional embellishment: they are both topped with brilliant-cut diamonds (3.3 carats).
Ritter began as a musician who couldn’t afford his own instruments, buying broken guitars and fixing them. When Madonna’s bass player rang his doorbell and asked to see his collection, he realized his hobby might be his life’s work.
Ritter makes about 60 handcrafted guitars each year. His line of custom-designed Ritter Royals is being sold by Wynn & Co. Jewelry in the esplanade at Wynn Las Vegas.
The Ritter Royal Flora Aurum bass guitar is f*cking gorgeous!
Would you happen to know who much it would be, price wise now?
And are they actually up for sale?
F*CK
IT’S BEAUTIFUL
How many did he make tho cos i really want one?
its 250000 dollars. I dont think your going to be buying one any time soon.
I stopped at my 100000 dollar bass. This is just too expensive. I know its beautiful and all that but really, who would pay that much for a bass. It only has 2 knobs and its not a string through. It probably doesnt even sound that good. The strings look awesome though.
How good are these BLACK strings? For the price, can they be compared to Alembic strings?
I don’t need a black diamond in my bass. Hell, I’d take a Warwick Thumb-Bass (5 string) It is very pretty though. :)
Personaly i dont belive in buying the most expencive bass that you can buy i and hoping that it sounds good. i go out and play in every music store that i can till i find a bass that suits my sound/personality/funcionality and man i dont think i could do it any other way
you’re an artist…
This is a beautiful piece of Art. The sound , though it may be good, is secondary.
There’s a million bass guitars….there’s only one of this Jewelry/Art/Instrument in this world built with such style and craftsmanship. Ritter is the …the Entwhistle of Elegance….the Beethovan of Bass…the Mozart of Musicical Instruments.
Yea i agree with 2 comments up, I would much rather buy a 400 dollar jackson 5 string that sounds amazing than buy a 250K$ bass that sounds like a fender starter set… I would never buy this bass even if i had the money. BTW heard it sounds bad bc the gold and diamons mixes with the sound and gives it a super brite rattly sound
Lets face it, you don’t spend this kind of cash to buy the best sounding/playing instrument, which is by the way impossible to find anyway.
There is allways something else that fits a certain kind of music/playing style better, there is no such thing as the absolute one bass does all.
And there is certainly no price ticket that will garantee something like that
You’d probable buy this piece for other personal reasons.
Mind you I have played many of Jens Ritters basses and also have owned one.
And I can tell you that I have never encountered a bad sounding Ritter. This is very personal it’s a taste thing, but there are of course certain values that a quality instrument should have.
String to string balance, frequency respons and range, passif tone etc.
Trust me that the tin layer of gold (or a smaal diamont for that matter) will not effect the tone to such an extend that it will become noticable.
The same goes for the better known Fender style block inlays that most Luthiers nowadays have as an option.
They are so thin that you actually won’t hear them.
I think Jens is one off the few Luthiers out there that sticks his neck out to create something that is totally different and does this in great fashion.
Cheers Frederic