TromboneChat

Very Happy Customer Report.

Ordered a black leather travel bag from Tom Rice, or "Greenbean" on the TChat, for a customer of mine from Spain, to go along with the instrument I had made for him.

Communication was quick, service was fantastic, and the product more than met my expectations.

I can highly recommend Superfine Cases for those looking for top quality gig bags.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tom at his shop yesterday in order to order a custom case for my wife’s harp guitar. I also got to meet Adolfo who worked with Glenn Cronkhite for many years. I was incredibly impressed by the thought and care that they are putting into their cases. They are combining Tom’s ideas with all the knowledge and skill from Adolfo’s experience to build even better cases. A huge amount of thought is going into these cases and Tom went through a whole series of issues that wouldn’t have occurred to me while measuring my wife’s guitar and designing the case for it. I’ll post again once it is completed (first she needs to pick the colors from the swatches Tom gave me).

BTW, I saw the new screwball case and it is definitely cool. The bell section case is really small and being able to split the slide off should make it super easy even on small planes. I have a really small Walt Johnson hard case for my straight tenor. The screw bell case would make it even easier and could carry an F-attachment too.

Cool to see another alternative for sourcing cases with the Cronkhite designs! These look well made and with a few improvements over the original designs too. Pricing looks equivalent to the Torpedo-owned Cronkhite brand (which has pretty horrible reputation for customer service). Nice!
I was lucky and ordered from Glenn shortly before he stopped production. Truly great design, compact, functional and stylish. Although that was 6 years ago and I see the prices have almost doubled since then (it was only 312$ for the small tenor case in leather back then, and no extra cost for 2-tone)

Tom finished my wife’s harp guitar case a few weeks ago but it took some time for me to be free to pick it up. This is a very unusually shaped instrument and so it was a fully custom case. And it came out just great. It fits perfectly, the quality of the work is flawless, and the colors are beautiful. He has navy blue cordura and leather that match really well. My wife added some hunter green around the sides of the accessory pocket.

I’ve been wanting to get a case for this guitar for a while. So I’m really happy with how this worked out.

It is hard to find bags for German trombones as the slides are longer (especially when having a friction joint). Since 2019, I was begging Glenn Cronkhite to make a trombone bag for me. No success. The communication with Glenn Cronkhite / Torpedo was extremely tardy. When contacting Superfine Cases with a specification of what I need, Tom essentially said “no problem”. Within five days my trombone bag customized for German trombones was ready. It is a very nice and functional leather case.

When I picked up the case (in Richmond, CA, essentially just around the corner), I asked Tom about double trombone cases which he does not offer yet. He is open for design ideas and would make them if their is sufficient demand. I would buy one immediately for tenor and alto (slightly enlarged for German tenor) the moment he offers them. If you are thinking about getting a double trombone bag (actually any trombone bag) but are fed up with waiting for whether and when Torpedo/Glenn Cronkhite sort out their problems, may be you want to get in touch with Tom.