I have been thinking about the [i]sound[/i] of the double bass lately and listening to those players who I am sufficiently familiar with to be able to recognise their sounds pretty much instantly and who I like to listen to in performance.
Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Marc Johnson, Dave Holland, Eddie Gomez, Charlie Haden, Miroslav Vitous, Eberhard Weber, Milt Hinton..... the list goes on.
The point is, there is no definitive sound and the sonic range from say Vitous to Hinton or Weber to Haden is probably wide enough to cover almost ever possible option I am sure we all have our preferences in terms of the players we love but I don't think any of us would argue that because we are not particularly enamoured of any one player's sound that his or her sound amounts to a deficiency in their playing? Ergo, whatever sound we have, is likely to be, at worst, perfectly 'satisfactory' in terms of audience perspectives. So why do we obsess over this element of our playing? I am wondering whether we are missing the point?