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Inner City Blues


Hector
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Hi all.

I'm moving to a block of flats in a few months.

I'm a bit worried about getting less opportunity to shed. Mostly because of complaining neighbours being a possibility - I'll be working a bit more, so might have to scrape together time when I can. I was wondering if anyone had some advice on how to manage it?

Three possible routes:. 1. Making my bass quieter acoustically? 2. Getting an EUB for silent practice. (This would need to feel as much like an actual DB as possible, in order to make any shedding on it worthwhile. Maybe less preferrable, as there might be some things about acoustic tone production lost when playing EUB with headphones?). 3. Finding another practice space - not hugely time efficient unless it was somewhere close to home/work.

Beyond that, I suppose there's talking to the neighbours and trying to arrange set times of day where they allow a bit of noise?

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Maybe some room for all three..? Find out from the neighbours when they'd be amenable to having the haunting strains of Debussy floating around the stairwell, and when they wouldn't support avant-garde jazz scales..? Reduce the db volume (stuffed with cushions..?, using a foam floor pad under the end-pin..? Don't 'dig in' so much..?). Use an EUB for those rare moments when your exercises would be less tolerable. In any case, tone will be affected by muffling the db, so create some space (week-ends...) for playing naturally. The ideal would be to encourage each of them to take up a compatible instrument (sax, tuba, kettle drums...) that could serve for your community concert evenings..?
Think yourself lucky, anyway; I play drums, and found the answer in moving to rural France. :mellow:

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What sort of construction is this block of flats?

If you're talking about a modern-ish place built of reinforced concrete, then the first thing to do is to establish whether or not there is actually a problem ... can your DB be heard through the walls/floor/ceiling?

In similar vein, who are your neighbours going to be?

If you'll be surrounded by rap fans with oversized stereo systems, it may be you doing the complaining ... :lol:

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May not be a solution that you would consider, however, I have a Thomann European thinline bass. I got exactly for this purpose as I have young children in the house who moan about the noise of even playing my acoustic guitar. It has all h feel an appointments of a regular bass but the body is about half, maybe 2/3 of the depth. You still get a nice rich acoustic sound but not as loud. I can play along to cd etc at quiet levels and hear myself acoustically but it is not loud enough to pay acoustically with someone else on guitar for instance. I also have an EUB which I like to play but tend to choose the Thomann because I don't need to plug in to practice.
Great value and highly recommended for around £500

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