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Archer "Professional" double bass


OutToPlayJazz
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A few of you have mentioned the "Archer" professional double bass available for £750 from Gear4Music in York. Well I went up thee yesterday and bought one.

I've been looking for a cheaper bass for jazz and pit work (I'm increasingly worried about leaving my Ron Prentice bass in pits for a week, etc.) for a while and didn't want to go down the cheapo orange box route. Some of the laminate/ply basses can be pretty horrid as you know, but the Archer appealed to me on a number of levels.

So what're they like? Well, the woods are very nice - The bass is a carved instrument with good fixtures and fittings and the tone/volume is huge. I picked between two examples and the one I bought had the best sound, which is what counts at the end of the day. For a £750 instrument the fit and finish is fine and the only fault as such that I can find is some over zealous glueing on a couple of seams.

The instrument comes with two cases, a pretty useless gigbag & a vastly huge styrofoam semi hard case with wheels, which I need to go and pick up in my partner's van, as it wouldn't fit in my car & a reasonable quality perambuco German bow which will make a reasonable spare.

So I've been out and spent £120 on a set of Dominant strings & am now waiting to get the bridge cut down for a low-medium classical/jazz action by a local luthier that did some work on my violin recently.

So allowing for some extra costs of a setup, a decent case & a set of strings, the Archer fits the budget bass bill perfectly. Go have a look!


Pictures later...

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Now that actually looks like a real DB, not one of those pretendy ones at all :)

For those of you who hadnt guessed, I can write my entire knowledge and experience on DB on the back of a postage stamp, in wax crayon, with my feet....

The real deal for me OTPJ, is, is this going to work for classical (arco) and jazz, for a chap who is learning (in the BHYP and looking to maybe get some grades later this year), who is super keen and works hard? I'm guessing from your posts so far that it would, I think he uses a French bow at the moment, so I'd guess we'd have to get one of those too, any reason that would be an issue though?

Edited by 51m0n
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I was going to get one of these, but had no way of carrying it from ireland to England. ow im stuck with a bass that rattles.

Very nice looking though. For 750 and what you get it seems a bit of a steal.

Can you keep me updated though, im planning to get ma second student DB to learn nicely on so if this is good, it might be worth the travel over.

Edited by fatgoogle
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The bridge is now done. Decided to be brave and do it myself, as my luthier down in Derbyshire is away this week. Nice little session with the power saw, some needle files and sandpaper has it feeling a lot better.

I do my own violin & cello bridges usually, but this was my first attempt at cutting a bass bridge. Luckily, the maple is really soft, so it was an easy job. :)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unfortunately, I haven't had any free time to record the bass yet, but I have been gradually updating it... Here in new non-flash daylight pictures showing more of the true colour.




After doing my own cut off the top I still wasn't happy with the standard adjustable bridge, so I took it to my luthier (Paul Holt in Derbyshire) and he spent three hours cutting a new solid bridge from a fresh blank and now it works a treat. It's lost some of the overt boom, but the tone is very nice. While Paul was cutting the new bridge, I re-filed the nut grooves which needed to go down a fair way. Now it's a highly playable jazz bass with a seriously low action and no buzz. Just what I was looking for.

I also got another spare French bow. My best bow is being repaired as it has a large crack in it, so I picked up another nice pernabuco bow by G.Werner (manufactured by Dorfler - I've had their cello bows in the past, so I know they're nice things.)

I also got a fishmanB100 pickup which sounds awful through the bass cube (feeds back a lot), the bass sounds fantastic through the Genz Benz rig, so no need for another amp. It's actually the first time I've looked seriously into mic-ing up a double bass as I've always either played them classically or plugged in an electric or my Triumph EUB in the past. The sound is excellent, but I do have to turn the horn units off & lose nearly all the treble.

So the total cost?

Well, the bass was discounted down to £650 for me in the end (I sold them the silly hard case back!), Fishman preamp £125, new bridge/setup £60, Dominant strings, £120 & the spare bow, £159. So just over £1100 to get a highly workable bass on the road.

I'm still looking at one of the full size basses at Thomann (the Romanian Hora produced Thomann bass 44) and may get one to compare and sell the lesser instrument. Good news is that someone will get a well set up and equipped good quality bass for peanuts.

Also of course, my good bass doesn't have to be left overnight in theatres any more. :)

Edited by OutToPlayJazz
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My other bass is a very large full size and I've been using it orchestrally for the last twenty years or so. Playing a bigger bass is no problem for me. Basically I wanted to try the Hora bass to see if it's significantly better than the Archer. If it's not, it can be returned to Thomann easily enough.

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[quote name='fatgoogle' post='747823' date='Feb 16 2010, 10:26 PM']Can you keep me updated though, im planning to get ma second student DB to learn nicely on so if this is good, it might be worth the travel over.[/quote]


Caught my eye too. At that price, looks as if it would be worth driving over. Haven't heard of anything like it over here yet.

My problem is, I wouldn't know a good example in the shop from a bad one. :) I imagine the variation is huge?

Wonder what a courier would charge?

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You reptty much cant ship a double bass, i was going to get a gear4music for my first double bass, but they dont ship to ireland so i thought ill have it sent to my aunty in london and ship it across from their.
A whole day on the phones to couriers,
750 was the cheapest i could find to have it shipped across.

Theirs not much over here im afraid.

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It is doable (my DB came from the factory in Bulgaria directly) but the people on the sending end need to know what they're doing. Mine basically came in a bloody big box and a shitload of polystyrene. Don't know who would do it here though.

Edited by velvetkevorkian
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