NickA

My orchestra has 12 first violins, 10 second violins, 6 violas and 12 cellos (National Viola shortage). However we only have 5 basses ... we could have 7 from time to time but our venues are too small. Mostly bowed not pizz of course. You really do need something double bass sized to adequately transmit those low notes - same reason electric bass players use big speaker cones (or lots of small ones in the case of my PJB stuff). We have been banned from one local church for being too loud ... but I blame the heavy brass for that 🙂 This Bace thing, discomfort aside, will never be usefully loud enough without its pickups and amplification.

Saw Roy Babbington with Soft Machine a few years back. He was playing a Squire P J into a line 6 amp. Nothing fancy except for his playing!

Pickups. Amp. But tis true, a plucked cello is not loud.

Dum idea. As a child I would put my half size cello across my knees and strum it pretending to be George Harrison. Never worked. Shape all wrong. Just get a double bass.

Don't buy new. Check the marketplace every day and bag a bargain .... EG Squires are decent workhourse basses and probably better 2nd hand than a new HB at the same price.

there is but one answer. k&m. I went for the fabric seat without the pneumatic riser and no back rest. £165 from Thoman I think. Massive improvement on previous stools. Got a k&m music stand too, also very good quality ( heavy tho). I did manage with an IKEA bar stool for years tho. Hard on the bum but surprisingly good.

Nice. Bet that's fun. Still not seen a 6er DB..but it will probably happen eventually. I was close to commissioning a violone once, but reckoned there wouldn't be many opportunities to use or, having already failed at viola da gamba.. teachers to show me how. NB these DO come in 4, 5 & 6er versions.

Now, here's a thing. Playing the double bass in an orchestra I often have to retune (aka scordatura) as the notes go below E, often to a C (thanks Elgar ..who seemed to think it was a big cello. Thanks Bach, who was writing, probably, for a 6 string violone). A few people play 5-string DBs. Despite some Jazzers using EADGC, there are no 6ers ( bar Violines). Some people have 4s with an extension on the E that goes back to C ( ugly clanky things). So D, A, D, G. C, A, D, G. C, G, D, G. I guess you can avoid the width of a 6 strings fingerboard by retuning your 5. Drop D and BEAG tuning aside, doesn't seem popular with electric bassists.

Well that's a non refusable offer surely! Looks like a decent bass too. ..might spoil the op for an £1800 Stentor tho.😉

Better a decent EUB than an substandard Double Bass I think. Bass Direct has a couple of nice NS design EUBs right now for a bit less than the more expensive of the two Stentors (https://www.bassdirect.co.uk/bass_guitar_specialists/NS_Design_CR4.html)... and offer 0% finance. Bit harder with a double bass I think. A brand new cheap Gear4Music / Caswells bass is likely to be short on tone and sustain and I've found the bottom end of modern lamianted bass a bit quiet (though an amp could correct it to an extent). Also you can assume that a Gear4Music bass will come with cheap strings and poor setup; you'll end up spending £100s to get it up and running properly (good jazz / hybrid strings are £200+ new; though a kind BassChat member might sell you some for much less ). Remember to factor in £150 - £300 for a pickup (unless you have friends who play really quietly!) Also, it might be hard to pass on when you want to upgrade (and you will) at anything like the purchase price. And finally.. I really wouldn't buy a bass before trying it out and comparing to a few others. At least with Caswells, you can go to their shop and have a go (though their stock is limited). Bassbags near Derby have these: https://www.bassbags.co.uk/product/eastman-vb80-double-bass/ it's very much a beginner bass but I guarantee it will come with nice strings / bridge / setup. Plus the proprietor will insist you try a load of (more expensive) other basses (in the hope you will buy one) .. but even if you stick with the cheapest you will get an idea of the variety and what you'd get for more money. Also he'll take a trade in against a better bass later on. I don't think they do finance (ask) but they would lease you one. My best advice is to save up the £1800 and take it bassbags or better stil to the doublebassroom in Hastings and try a load (eg https://www.thedoublebassroom.com/product/1950s-west-german-bubenruth-3-4-size/). If you can, take another double bass player with you, to advise and to listen from a distance (the sound "under the ear" can be deceptive). If you have doubts about what to look for ... well really it's a matter of do you like the tone and feel of it. Does it buzz or rattle (hope not), is everything sturdy (hope so), does it make a sound you like on all four strings, open and fingered? (must do). In my own case, (back in 1991), I tried new Stentors etc (they were about £600 - £800 then) in a london shop (now gone), talked to a couple of makers (too expensive, a George Stoppani was £4500 and a Ronald Prentice was £5000!!! ... both would be worth >£20k now!) and eventually spent my entire £2000 savings on the nicest 4/4 I could find; an 1880s German "factory bass". I still have it. Still play Jazz and Classical on it every week. It's needed some work over the years ... new strings and end-pin from bassbags, bridge modification from Tim Bachelar) but sounds better than ever - I've never regretted that £2k.

I've been waiting for that one to show up. Wonder if he can play Chromatic Fantasy on it too? tbh it doesn't look a bad proposition as although there are a lot of position changes, there are far fewer string crossings!

A 5 is useful if you need to go below E and some patterns that don't go especially low are easier to play higher up the neck across 5 strings. But the necks are wider so less comfy to play than a 4 and there's more risk of fingering or plucking the wrong string. I've not played a 6 but I guess the pattern thing is better still and the neck and mistake potential worse. 5 may be a good compromise. If not, why stop at 6. Get a 14 course theorbo or a Chapman stick.

Many years ago ( decades in fact ) a mate of mine had his 1960s Burns guitar repainted ( in a Springsteen stars and Stripes way) with a union jack covering the whole front. When he spun round at the start of a gig, revealing the paint job, there was a collective sharp intake of breath as people decided he must be a member of the national front. He wasn't, he just liked the Britishness of his old Burns. Sad really. Think I'd get that nice old Stingray restored.

Nice to know that the massive dent my wife put in our car has given it extra mojo. 😁 There's a garage opposite my workplace that fixes bashed super cars ( dented Ferraris and lambos roll up every week), strangely the owners want them to look like new. Relic Bentley anyone?

Is this just for appearance or some perceived tech reason? I guess they used to put those covers on for extra screening of the single coil pickups.. and maybe to hide the "ugly" look of naked metal and plastic. I was also told that the bridge cover was a handy place to stuff some foam for extra damping ( noone having invented floating thumb or left hand damping in the 50s). But it blocks out so many places you might want to touch the strings. Playing right over the pickups gets the best sound IMO and the screening effect is small I think. Just ...don't. or, if you must, use tape. 😁

I reckon. Looks like a previous owner decided to " improve" the body contour. Kudos for not caring about the resulting appearance, I guess. I once "improved" a cheap jazz bass copy by stripping the sunburst, pulling all the frets out and chiselling new pickup holes. Turned a £90 bass into a worthless bit of scrap wood.

Hmm. I'd love a pre Ernie stingray, but I think I'd like one that had been looked after a bit better. My oldest bass is 1986 and has "signs of wear" but it doesn't look to have had a fight with an angle grinder. Still, if it sounds good and not going to fall apart it's not really an issue. And if you like it.... lucky guy.

I'm not p- bass fan.. but we found a fender jazz and a squire p in a rehearsal studio a while back; the squire was the better bass all round. In the end they're both mass production factory basses made from pretty cheap materials... just a different headstock badge. You'd think fender would up their game to keep ahead of their "low wage economy" partners; but in fact they're just resting on the name snobbery.

If you can plug your mobile or a cd player into it and it sounds the same as listening through decent headphones then it's pretty clean. My first bass amp was an old valve job ..not a hope. Then a carlsborough cobra, sounded transparent but you couldn't play a cd player through it. Harsh and middy. then a trace gp12smx ... great with electric bass but only worked LOUD, just about HiFi though. Now a pjb flight case that's so linear that when I loaned it to an acoustic guitarist to play through, her mum said "oh, I thought she was going to use your amp"...she was using my amp. What goes in comes out and there's not a lot of EQ to change that. Great with double bass, perhaps a bit "unexciting" with electric bass. But I love the raw sound of my bass so that's fine ( not going to be playing death metal or slap tho).

PJB all the way. AER is OK and amazing quality..but sounds a bit lacking in sparkle if you put an electric bass through it..quite heavy too. No-one quite as double bass focussed as AI tho 😞

Someone at the last bass bash had a GR cab. Unbelievably light for the size of it. Couple to a little class D amp and it might be very light and pretty good -- though the Elf, Gnome etc are all a bit on the under powerful side at an optimistic 200W into 4Ohm. I've a 150W PJB flightcase which is OK for rehearsals and a Jazz trio, but add an electric guitar and an enthusiastic keyboard player and it's not quite loud enough. Depends who you play with I guess.

Had the pickups on my mk2 up and down trying to make it produce a bit more high frequency ... only makes it louder and quieter, and more or less likely for the strings to hit the pole pieces. Very bassy bass that mk2 5er; doesn't seem to have the mid range "quack" of the mk1 whatever I do with it. I'm loathe to believe its the shorter wider body, the longer neck or the different face wood ... different pickups I guess.