NickA

Nice. Carbon bows are amazing value at this price point I think. Waterproof and almost unbreakable too. Love my Arcus S3 but inevitably wondering if an S4 would be nicer still 🙂 Adict.

1&2 what a shame. Sorry if I gave you a bum steer there. They were great with my cello bow. But whilst in their shop I did notice their double bass stock wasn't exactly top class. 3 What did you go for? Crack cocaine indeed. Bowspeed's stock goes to £7500!!

It's just normal. Shows you're playing in tune anyway 🙂. Bit of left hand damping will fix it. Had helucore hybrids for years, now switched to Eva pirazzi. Much the same vibration wise.

Giblins Zon Legacy had lines but there are photos of him playing unlined too. What did he use on babooska? Unlined Wal I think. I don't think Nigel Kennedy has lines on his violin either, and his intonation is not so bad ;-). Personally I'm not bothered either way. Being a cellist before a bassist, had music to read and no way to see my fingers. Then in the 80s, when I first got a bass guitar, fretless basses were rare; had to buy fretted and rip the frets (a la Jaco!) and fill the holes ( with plastic wood!), but they always buzzed and wore un-evenly. I gave up and had a new ebony board fitted to my jazz; fret lines cost extra so I did without - after all, the cello had none. When an unlined Wal came up in my local guitar shop the lack of lines was no obstacle. Percy Jones, Pino, Michael Manring, Mick Kahn... some of my favourite bassists playing unlined (yes Mick's tuning was dodgy to say the least .. but that was part of his sound). Each to his own. 🙂 You likely have a better memory than me and don't need to look at a chord chart or sheet music. Rarely get a chance to look at my left hand. And the unlined Wal does look nice hanging on the wall.

Doesn't cost much to get an unlined board fitted to a standard neck... you get to choose the wood (!or wood substitute) too.

Well you can . Ryan Martinie does it too and you can find Jonas Helborg and Michael Manring using slap techniques on a fretless .. but they never get the twang of Mark King, Stan Clarke, Marcus Miller or Ryan on his fretted thumb basses. I spent much time and money trying to configure a slappable fretless .. ( bright strings, slap plates, brass plate under the bridge, active electronics) but now admit that frets work better! Anyway slapping is so out of fashion it's almost illegal, I don't dare in public, So not really an issue. Makes sense now. 😁

That fretless is rather nice too 🙂 Natural stingrays = my favourite kind.

Bass bags is very close to me. I bought my Arcus bass bow from them ... had it on trial for a week then bought it. They don't have a huge range and had to send out for the bow they recommended. Caswells have a huge stock and will post you 4 to try out. Choose a price range or a bow you fancy and they'll send several of similar cost. I got a cello bow from them. Beware, if you try a more expensive one you'll probably buy it! I went £400 over budget by "just trying the next one up, for comparison". Not tried bowspeed. https://www.thestringzone.co.uk/categories/double-bass-bows do the same as caswells, but the range looks a bit thin, I didn't try them as they didn't stock the bow I wanted to try.

I really don't understand that. Being a bit thick perhaps. The only thing you can change is the position of the bridge cars, so you could use those to shorten/ lengthen the scale so that you get a perfect octave at OR slightly behind the 12th "fret" line. Ok. But if the lines were put there assuming AT the fret tuning and you adjust for BEHIND the fret, won't all the other fret lines be out of tune? For years my fretless was slightly sharp at the dot ( so tuned for behind the fret?) but apart from the dots not lining up with notes, it put the bridge pickup too close to the bridge car, so I tweaked it to get the exact octave at the 12th fret dot. There are no lines so it's not an issue. Ps: no lines on pino's stingray either.

More tonal options. Portamento, pulled harmonics, easier vibrato, Microtuning ....There is so much more to fretless bass. You lose slap, sustain and some attack of course. I often take a fretless to jazz sessions if the double bass seems too much hard work; the other players prefer the DB, but I can "get away with" the fretless. People often think it's going to be hard, but really it's the same as playing fretted. If you find you're out of tune you maybe need to work on your fretted playing too. I admit to struggling a bit with frets ... Accidental fretting of the g when reaching for a note on the b, not pushing hard enough and getting fret rattle. 1mm too far up the neck = wrong note rather than right note a bit out of tune etc. My fretlesses have side dots only. Sometimes need a quick glance, but only in the same way as I do on a fretted. The fret lines on my fretted bass don't add much.

I don't know any pro players 😁😁 But this bloke seems to think it's ok. ll Depends on the size of your hands I guess. And his are BIG

Not really. I've only played a thumb ( an NT five) a few times and it goes from dolphin on bridge only to somewhere beyond that. Sure, they overlap a bit, but the dolphin ( my 2001 one anyway) is much more "polite" / "refined" sounding.

It won't sound ANYTHING like a Wal. Wrong pickups in the wrong positions, wrong body wood, wrong "electronics", wrong bridge. It's just a neck with some dodgy extra bits bolted on. Either they know it and they're crooks or they don't and they are too I'll informed to be selling basses.

Me neither! Usually have the dolphin set as a jazz ( balanced bridge and neck, eq knob out) 🙂

I've two Wals, bought at random. The MK2 was disappointing at first, but much tweaking of the setup later, I really like it. Every "post pro" Wal I've seen for sale has stated much the same weight and mine are both 4.8kg. I conclude that a lot of these "differences" ( from good to dead as) are either perceptual or down to setup (eg tightening up the neck bolts does wonders for sustain and clarity). Still, I wouldn't buy one at today's prices and they don't do everything. My Warwick beats it hands down for some things ( ergonomics for one). Aggressive sound needed? I'd probably use the dolphin with both bridge pickups in.

The pro 1 is real, but he doesn't even know if it's a passive or active one .. and anyway it's the type with the p position pickup which won't sound like Wal very much. £3000 tops. Have you seen the other one? (See my post). A Wal neck on a bitsa .. bought for £520 and he wants £7000. One of our number queried the prices of these and was told "we'll let the market decide". Hopefully the market will decide they're scamming barstewards.

Bought at auction for £520. For sale for £7000. Skim down to the video, it's really quite amusing. https://reverb.com/item/49175471-1979-wal-pro-bass-rare-plain-face-earliest-example-frets-removed-to-play-fretless Almost everything said in the ad is untrue. Though the neck is genuine. Sorry mods, it's not eBay but still weird ( and maybe wonderful in terms oof advertising spin)

"I always set up my basses with straight neck and very low action. The lower the better" My fretted Wal has 1mm of neck relief and a relatively high action. Everything I can do to eliminate fret noise! Tbh I'd like a lower action but, after 30 years, the frets need flattening.

Some people play their Wals with a tight truss rod and low action so the strings smack the frets .. loud and clanky. See vids posted by Joe Tischler and Vic Monte on YouTube and the Wal Facebook page. "The Geddy Sound". Also there's a lot of range in the filter electronics too; pull out the filter knob to engage the high Q filtering and you can pass through a lot of midrange. Depends on setup and playing style. They're distinctive but tweakable too.

I guess my electric bass technique is based a lot on my cello playing. That is pretty formalised with named hand positions which are defined by where your thumb goes, that's because there are several places each finger can go in each position and the thumb is the only static digit. Hard to explain. Doesn't that immobilise your hand? my fingers would be too short to manage it, especially on the 5-string's wide neck I'd never reach the b string. Owning a fiver made me switch to floating thumb right hand damping .. bit of a revelation that as I'd never understood the need for right hand damping when I only played a four string.

Still trying to imagine any situation in which anyone would do that ... unless they had no 3rd finger. That video is a pretty good explanation of combining simandl and 1f1f. But his thumb IS fixed for each hand position, except when he's showing what NOT to do, so not quite sure what you mean. Thumb pivoting ( Rabatt technique on a double bass) is also viable, but again uses defined a thumb position for each, ( now much larger) set of notes. Personally I do tend to keep my first finger down in case I put it back in the wrong place next time I use it. Probably comes from playing fretless instruments ( And starting with the cello .. which has a short scale). Going to experiment with that. Clearly, whilst violins, cellos, double basses, classical and flamenco guitar all have formal techniques, the electric bass is too new an instrument for things to have settled down. Good discussion.

That's a " position change" ie you've run out of fingers and a rotation / extension is too far to reach, so you move your whole hand, plant your thumb opposite your second finger and access a different set of semi tones. If you move your thumb when in a particular position you'll lose track of where you are on the fingerboard and have to look at your hand! Heaven forbid!

But then you will have to stretch back again, with a good chance of the finger landing in the wrong place. I know I do it though, especially on fretless if I want some vibrato,; the key thing is keeping your thumb in a particular place for each set of notes.