NickA

One of my major gripes about electric bass players .. even some quite well known electric bass players: Though in fairness ... my recent battle with Sibelius did involve a lot of cradling the neck and squeezing it in the fabled "bunch of bananas" technique. Mr Chancellor here may have been playing the same note for 30 minutes.

Explain please. My finger spread is limited by my short fat fingers, don't understand why my thumb is limiting it. Think bloopdad means the thumb pad ( the squishy bit opposite the thumb nail) rather than what is called ( I just learned) the "Thenar Eminence".

My thoughts too. I wondered about using cable ties, but getting them in place during a 5 bar rest would have been tough.

Your point being? I'm confused.

Well I love my bass. It sounds how, to me, a double bass should sound. Big, fat, rich and sonorous with lots of sustain. Glad I bought the best I could afford at the time. No big resale value as it's big, it has an Eflat neck and it's a bit beat up. But I'd have to spend a lot of money to get anything I liked as much.

Well, comments on the article said the live sound was not great and that he sounds better on recordings. I've never had the pleasure to hear him live myself, so I don't know. You tube recordings are not the greatest thing, but this appears to be one of his touring basses, so an example of what a really great bass player can do with a plywood bass ( one built to his spec, I believe) And here's his recording bass ( 3 wrong notes, bass solo 2:48 in) A lot of it down to the sound engineer of course, and I'd be very happy to sound like the first one 😂😂. Way off topic. Enough. 😉

I read ( talk bass?) that Stan Clarke tours with a ply bass ( teats them as disposable). But he records with a 100+ yr old carved one. In live performance what notes you play probably counts for more than the sound ..especially if there's a pa between you and stadium! horses for courses. I only have space for one double bass and ploughed all my savings into the German brute some 35 years ago so it has to do everything. Peter and the Wolf for a church full of children today. Mingus session tomorrow.

Well, I guess I am a bit of a "wood snob". but only because carved basses are more responsive and sound better. Or perhaps more accurately, the best sounding basses are carved. I doubt you'd find any laminate basses in a decent orchestra, or being played by a professional jazz bassist. Once you add pickups, amps, let alone effects, it's much less of an issue, and of course there are good laminates and bad carved basses. But I've never found a laminate that comes close to my 150yr old German beast for acoustic sound ( and it's a scruffy workhorse not some super valuable antique ) Good summary: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiUxNOWupaJAxW4Q0EAHYubHW4QFnoECBAQBQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoublebasshq.com%2Fgear_posts%2Fbuying-a-double-bass%2F&usg=AOvVaw2M-uFarhkTQhavbs1JuL9c&opi=89978449 Wood snob sadly 👍

I recall somone brought a 60s laminate czech bass to a bass bash one time .. best plywood bass I've played. That was from the Double Bass Rooms priced at £1500. Not sure this one is quite up there what with the visible neck repair, but forsure a dealer would be asking over £1k. Hefty ply made in China Eastmans at BassBags are £1400+

Guess that's not a double bass then! 😂. Tho left hand thumb damping the e string is somewhat unorthodox even on electric! Personally I aspire to thumb behind second finger ( on dB and electric) But that's maybe my cellist upbringing. With all the forward and backward finger extensions cellists use, it's essential to know where your thumb is as that's what defines your "position". Also from a sustain / tenuto / vibrato perspective finger 2 is usually considered the strongest so having your thumb behind it is handy. On a double bass your position is more defined by where your index finger is placed, so thumb is less important .. and I find that my thumb usually ends up between index and middle finger. At the neck, having the joy of an Eflat neck (😁) I have two options, but usually go for first finger on D and thumb behind 2nd finger, but can shift to first finger on Eflat and thumb behind first finger before going for thumb positions. However, if you plan on using (Rabbatt) pivots, you need to know where your thumb is! Exactly where might not be important, but consistency matters.

Eberhardt Weber's sound is not really that of a double bass. Very carefully adjusted EUB sound .. sort of turbo fretless electric; for what he's playing I think his EUB is better than a double bass and as his sound is very processed, it's the electric output that matters rather than the acoustic sound. After all if he wanted an expensive old italian antique I'm sure he could afford one! The NS ones are well up there for making "that" sound ..but also not very double bass like. Not that there is "one" double bass sound. Old and/or good quality fully carved basses have a lot more harmonic over-tones than laminates or heavily built hybrids and the sound of any of them alters with string type and setup. Then again, you get a real double bass, spend £1ks getting one you really like, hours getting the "right" sound by adjusting bridge height and position, type of strings etc ... then put a pickup on it and back to square one!

East German, 1970s or 80s. seems to have suffered major neck trauma at some point, cracked varnish along the base of the neck joint. does that black blob on the heel hide a huge screw perchance. Not a problem if it's solid. Hopefully you'll never find out. I dropped my bass and broke its neck earlier this year. Had to have a new one fitted. The old one proved to have the bit of neck that dovetails into the block, held in place with three large brass screws... which were definitely not from 1890 like the rest of it. NB mines German, external linings 🤞. Strong and protects the edges.

Tonight I played En Saga by Sibelius. Bars and bars and bars ...and bars of the same repeated note ( often F on the E string) I can only play it by clamping my hand around the neck and/or reinforcing my index finger with another on top of it. Technique be damned, sometimes it's just survival. ...and some music is better heard than played. Shan't be sorry if we don't do this one again.

I had never realised he was on hounds of love; I thought is was all Del Palmer... Also a wonderful bass player. But Weber is also on my favourite Kate Bush album, The Dreaming; he's the bass on Houdini. Tho for years I thought it was also him on all the love (that's Del Palmer 😂). I also thought Del Palmer was playing a fretless Wal... annoyingly it seems he gets that sound out of a fender. I digress. Weber, great man. Quote from that tiny venue: "people ask me why it is I tour this time alone with no band; well sometimes I think it is good to play with yourself" ... stifled sniggers from audience, straight face from the man.

I saw him at a tiny venue once where he did a lot of talking and explaining his bass and electronics. He said the neck of his bass was a quite old neck taken from a double bass, to which he'd had added a solid body and pickups. I guess that was the Paul lijsen one ( it was late 80s ). The electronics would probably fit in a tiny effects pedal today but were big and rack mounted. Nothing that fancy, some reverb, some EQ and, of course, a looper ( tape less! A thing of wonder....I'd only seen an echoplex before then). Great musician.

Because they make more instruments than any other company in the world and they have phenomenal buying power (materials, parts), and experience. Company I worked for called it "leveraging low wage economies" ... otherwise known as screwing the workforce and undermining your home economy. 😉

Is this all pointing to Cort making some nice looking basses but doing it in a factory where no-one on the shop floor really cares about the end product and the bosses just want fast work? Whereas ... go to a proper bass maker who you can actually talk to ( Shuker, Skelf etc) you'll get something practically perfect. There's probably a good reason Corts are "great value". "The 13-year labor struggle at Cort Guitars began with an abrupt layoff in 2007. Claiming financial troubles, the company fired its employees en masse and shut down its factory in Daejeon. The guitars that had been made there were transferred to a facility in Indonesia." Having said which, a mate has a cort single cut 5er which is rather nice..he used to run a guitar shop tho so probably got to pick one out and it might be Korean not Indonesian or Chinese. NB: I used to live in Seoul where there was a guitar market rammed with cort instruments ... they did an excellent ovation acoustic bass copy, but that was 1994.

Not really the right place. Try "Wal bass lovers of the world" on Facebook. Or call electric wood. Or this thread: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/436097-repairing-a-wal-pro-bass/ The pots are weird in that the shafts push into the pot rather than being part of it, they seem to break quite often.

Those kids in the NYO, who are better than I'll ever be, had evidently been well taught a particular style. Given any kind of lyrical pizz line at orchestra I dump my bow and go jazz... not possible for odd notes and snatches due to clutching the bow whilst pizzing, so symphonic plonk it is. I'd like to know more about different styles of pizz for different music tho. Eg I doubt Beethoven had heard of mwah or considered the concept of flowing pizz... Bernstein on the other hand...

Of course, but if it puts you a quarter tone flat or starts you playing before everyone else, your chorus isn't working very well!

I remember my first orchestra rehearsal, on my 1/2 size cello, aged 9. Quite an experience to play a note and not hear it! These days I'm used to it ...if you hear yourself too clearly, you probably miss counted and came in at the wrong place! Plus when you know someone is out of tune but aren't sure if it's you or the bloke sitting next to you ...and I'm frequently told off by our principal bassist for over-playing. Tuning is indeed considered as very important in orchestras ..... in my jazz band I'm always asking if we can tune up, and get funny looks; at orchestra no-one plays till everyone is tuned to the oboe's A. However, micro-tuning corrections are part of the skill. Fine tuning analysis of very good musicians shows that they also pitch correct ...they just do it much faster than us semi skilled amateurs!

We'll pull anyone's playing to bits here! At least you know you're not being victimised 😂😂

Right hand not great either. Manages to make a nice old( German?) bass sound like a thumpy laminate. I'm not sure enough emphasis is put on the plucking hand. Classical bass teachers seem to know nothing about it; pizz being "unimportant". My orchestra friends always pluck too low down the strings and straight across them, resulting in a thuddy "plonk". I went to a National Youth Orchestra concert a bit back and their whole bass ection did the 90o across the strings pluck, but with two fingers and well over the fingerboard..probably this is the sound that classical composers expect when they write a bit of bass pizz into their symphonies etc; but it won't help us play Jazz! Ron looks pretty good to me, both left and right hands; but his intonation on "piccolo" is awful, quite some hubris to release that.

Hardly anyone makes money by performing music. My dad and brother were/are both professional musicians and only make money out of teaching ..then lose it on the cost of performing. I count music as a hobby and expect it to cost rather than pay in the same way (eg) mountain biking does. On the other hand, done a couple of beer festivals recently ..and with the price of beer these days, the two free pints is nearly minimum wage! 😁