NickA

Rumbles are not great with double bass. You can spend out on preamps and tweak eqs till the world ends and still not get a great sound. Or count your pennies and go Markbass, pjb, aer, acoustic image..... Chances are the audience won't notice, but you get a nice warm feeling from sounding good.

Silver wound gut = expensive, short lived, poor tuning stability, turn your fingers black, the outer windings wear through, come unwound and cut your fingers. Sounded wonderful on my dad's 18th c cello.... but even that has gone to it's new owner wearing tungsten wound steel. If you have a really fine bass, unlimited funds and are hunting for that last 1% ..then go for it. But for ordinary mortals with sub £50k instruments, there are probably more cost effective ways to improve the sound. My own bass (1880s German) has wound synthetics on it and my cello (1900 french) has gone tungsten. Just fine. Miss the attack and woody tone of the eudoxas I used to use... But not at today's prices.

Seems some confusion about the alloy. Warwick ( in translation ) say brass but everyone else says they are "bell bronze"... including in this Warwick / framus video: https://youtu.be/sbzmWEDXX3s?feature=shared But they're all copper alloys with various amounts of zinc, tin, aluminium phosphorus etc etc. Normal brass would be very soft and it tends to chip easily, so if the frets really were standard brass I'd worry about stainless strings. But I'll bet they're not!

On my other fretted bass. Like NYXLs but a bit brighter and slightly lower tension. Last well too. Nowhere near as bright as new rotosound or elite stainless... but those aren't bright for long.

I think they're bronze not brass ( copper + tin not copper + zinc) and really quite tough. Lots of people use stainless rounds with their Warwicks. Though they are usually quite bright for an already bright sounding bass. My dolphin has stainless frets which are super hard, and I've those nyxl (nickle?) strings on it ...so I can't really speak from experience.

Wish I had space for another bass.....I'll keep spreading the word tho.

Firewood. What a shame.

Dead strings and a copperhead ...gonna be dark and thumpy ☹️. Cruise ship tho... Will anyone be listening?

Spiros or Eva Pirazzis . Spiros are best for that modern long sustain mwah sound ( Eddy Gomez), less good if you like a more old school thud (Mingus).

Like happy jack says .... You're more in tune per mm error but more likely to be more mm out. It's all about learning good left hand technique.

You can run high or low tension strings as you see fit without needing to change the set up much if at all. You may need a slightly higher action with lower tension strings. Don't worry about making a change if you want to. Hard to be sure what you have from just the silks as spirocore mittel and weich are both dark red and Eva pirazzis are all green. If you don't have the packet they came in you can only feel the difference, not see it. I'm using full weight Eva pirazzis on my 4/4 bass as I was told the light (weich) ones were not good for arco (I do orchestral stuff). My bass sounds great but it is HARD WORK. Played the local pros bass a while back with lower tension ( thomastic super flexible?) strings and it lacked the heft of my bass but was nice and easy to play. Also got a go on pro bass player Liran Donan's bass once, a 3/4 with spirocore weich on; also easy to play. I might be unnecessarily hardcore in my string choice 😂. Do you have an issue with your strings? Do you find the tension too high for comfort or the sound a bit weak? ...or just curious?

If I were going to clone the Wal sound I think I'd improve the ergonomics rather than copying the look. Ie go the full two octaves and improve the neck joint / upper neck access. Maybe slim down the neck. I'm with funkles attitude of cloning the sound but not the actual design. A look alike seems a bit pointless tbh. It's a great looking bass all the same. Love the ebony facing.

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.