NickA

And if you're playing di into a pa, it's a bargain compared to a £1000 set of amps and cabs!

Usual thing...every step up in sound doubles the price ( and the insurance premium).

I have a paid gig coming up in July for which the venue have asked us to have "insurance". New thing for me. I'm told it's just public liability insurance we need but waiting to see how many millions they want to cover!! Any tips and/or recommendations? Quick scan on tinterweb shows a year of ins ( I only want one day!) is around £50 for £1m for a band of 5.

Much as I'd like a Stan Clarke pre to play with .. the input impedance of a decent modern amp is totally piezo friendly. PJB and Markbass amps both have a high impedance input ( gain switch to passive on PJB) and a built in HPF.. the rest is bass geekery (and nothing wrong with that imo). £340 tho...ooh.

Wing pickups ( shadow or Underwood) tend to clacky, hard to fit well, harder to tweak the sound once you've filed the wings out to fit them. Realist copperhead good, can be a bit dark but once it works it works. I borrowed a bass with both wing and copperhead and mixed the two; that was good, but a lot of faff. Not tried the full circle. I use a realist sound clip which sounds brilliant on my particular bass, very tweakable as you can change the position, the contact force and various counter-weights to lighten and darken the sound, and/or use a bit of rubber to soften any harshness. BUT you take it on and off and it doesn't quite always go back perfectly. Brill for people who like to meddle (IE me) less so if you want fit and forget. Mikes = expensive black art, but undoubtedly good.

Good price and will get you started. Hopefully so cheap for cosmetic reasons not due to it needing "work". At this price, the slightest bit of work will cost more than the bass Check it doesn't rattle or buzz and that all the seams ( joints between back, sides and front) are solid. Is the bridge straight ( IE not warped)? How are the strings? Maybe worth budgeting for a new set ..£200+ (!) but they last forever. Also check the size. Most basses are 3/4 ( 41" scale) and that's ideal. A 4/4 ( up to 44" scale) might sound good but also may be too big ( long scale, higher string tension, harder work). A 1/2 ( less than 39") is a child's bass and won't do deep notes well. Most jazz musicians tend to gravitate to something more responsive than a basic laminate bass, but as a starter...no worries.

Sub contra bass recorder! Sadly my house is too small, tho I guess I could play it at an angle, like an alpenhorn. Or buy the £8000 paetzold rectangular section jobby which is a bit shorter at a mere 2.5m or so. https://earlymusicshop.com/products/paetzold-solo-sub-contra-bass-recorder-in-f Does sound like a plumbing problem rather than music tho. Once school found I could read bass clef I was handed a bass recorder and never got to play a tune again ... so not sure I could face it anyway. Recorders have been my occasional respite from playing bass lines.

My big brother did recorder as his main instrument at music college... swears by boxwood. Prices have shot up though... von heune boxwood alto now £2500; a mere £1300 last time I looked. .... and all the fancy extended range altos and tenors with clarinet style keys all over them!!! Times change.

Think David Oistrakh came up with that. I use it whenever anyone tells me how great my fretless Wal sounds 🙂 ( Truth = it really is the wal not me)

How did I miss this thread! Yes I have an alto recorder ... Got keen enough to spend £500 on a lovely passander one by Feyr.... But it was always flat unless blown hard, yet I could only get the bottom f and g by blowing gently ... Sold on, with the intention of getting a moek rottenburg; but never did. Back to the placky Yamaha ( excellent but clogs with spit). Meanwhile diverted into bass viol playing. Do we have a bas de viol thread?

4 out of 4. top marks. Neater than mine for sure.

Another rabbit hole down which I just descended Inherited. I love the sound of well played viols but so far I'm strangling cats .. scratchy gut strings, upside down bow hold, up bows are down bows, enequal tuning and the good stuff written in a weird clef. Spent an hour this morning replacing a fret gut and more time tuning it than playing it. No wonder the cello was invented. But then I put on some Jordi Savall playing Anthony Holborne and off we go again. The bow hold is quite different from that of a German bass bow as you don't touch the frog and have a finger on the bow hair. But you can see how one evolved into the other. Long way before I'm buying it a better bow.

I have one side of a shadow wing pickup. It was a two sided jobbie but one side failed so I disconnected it. What's left looks a lot like the wing pickup of an RB PRO setup. Yours for free if you want it. Pm me.

I tried a £25,000 tubbs cello bow this year. It spoke to me. It said: "so much for your prejudice against fancy antique bows eh? ... I'm beautiful aren't I, and you'll never own anything as good. Now piss off you rank amateur you".

You can pay 25k for a new gold mounted wooden bow. A really good carbon one is £7k. Commissioning one from Andrew McGill in Banbury will be upwards of £3.5k ( and a long wait). You really want to spend that? Go bowspeed, with your bass, try lots and dont rule out old ones. They would send you four to try in fact, but you need to have a budget, so best to go in the shop and decide what your budget is The problem being that every time you double your budget, you find something incrementally better! Caswells have lots of mid range bows and probs better for new ones than bowspeed, they stock mid to high end carbon ones too. My £1000 arcus S3 is pretty good tho. Does me fine for orchestra and around grade 8 classical. I may upgrade eventually but that's "want" not "need".