JoeEvans

After a fair amount of research and some time with borrowed bows, I ended up with a Carbondix carbon fibre bow from Thomann. In my inexperience it seems as good as some more expensive bows I've tried. Now for a decade or so of practice to learn to play properly with it...

There are also various parallel discussions taking place in other threads in which double bassists talk about how they use magnetic pickups to avoid feedback even though they make their double basses sound more or less like electric basses, and agree that in the context of a full band, that doesn't really matter that much...

I've got one of Ben Bastin's wooden endpins, a walnut one. I got it to replace a rather wobbly 8mm endpin. When it arrived I swapped back and forth a few times between old and new pin to try and pick up the difference. It seemed to me to be a big improvement, a much more solid and focussed sound. My stepson (who does some music production and has quite good ears) agreed that the wooden pin was a clear improvement. The constant height is great, and I just went with the general consensus of nut at eyebrow height, which seems fine; it would be easy to cut the wooden pin down a bit if it turned out to be too long. You could also just hang on to your old metal pin for times when you wanted a different height (e.g. sitting down, low ceilings etc). The bass also feels a lot more solid although that's mainly because the old 8mm pin was so wobbly at full extension (I'm quite tall). I struggle to believe that there would be a big difference between different timber species, although I would be happy to be proved wrong...

It needs a video of the band playing, with decent sound quality; I would also make sure that there are some decent downloadable (i.e. not picture gallery) hi res pictures that people who have booked you can use to make posters (min 2000px wide). Purely from personal taste, I'm not that keen on the arrangement where the background stays still but the images and text scroll over the top, but maybe that's just me... But the site is very clear and easy and definitely does the job overall.

I got a bag of hide glue pellets on eBay for a few quid. You need to warm it up in a double saucepan (i.e. small pan inside big pan of water) with a bit of water mixed in with the granules and keep it somewhat below boiling point for a while. Good information here: [url="http://www.vanedwards.co.uk/glue.htm"]http://www.violins.on.ca/luthier/glue.html[/url] Do use the real thing though - the point of it is that all hide glue joints can be unglued later so that all repairs can be re-done if required. In theory you can take an old DB completely to pieces without damage to the wood, which isn't possible with any other kind of glue.

Hide glue is the only way to go for DB repairs. Easier to use than I had thought - I successfully glued down a section of the top of my bass after a bit of research. It looks as though you might be able to hold the bit in place while the glue sets with a big elastic band, maybe? Or some insulation tape, which doesn't stick very well but doesn't leave marks either... Hide glue doesn't need much clamping pressure, just to be held snugly in place.

Expensive but rather groovy. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/IBANEZ-Musician-MC30TH-Limited-Edition-4-STRING-BASS-GUITAR-6-of-15-BRAND-NEW-/161862626842?hash=item25afc3ae1a:g:yQgAAOSwZd1VVh96

I tend to think that for the purposes of everyday life, you can just work on the principle that if you practice loads, you'll get better, at any age and at any stage. Whether or not you will at some stage emerge as an international bass genius is not really worth worrying about.

I really liked the look of the tineo-wood basses from Thomann - http://www.thomann.de/gb/thomann_2w_tn_34_europe_double_bass.htm. Said to sound good too.

When I used to play in loud bands I tended to wear builders' ear protectors for rehearsals because they are so much easier to take on and off between songs, and they don't irritate the insides of your ears in the way that some plugs can. I found the sound / frequency response quite adequate.

Although any sound could be contextualised to make it form part of some music, I don't think I'd use the word 'musical' about a sound unless it had some suggestion of an identifiably tuned note or a discernible rhythm.

My cousin played in a string quartet that had (probably still has) about 20 members; the manager would take any booking that came in and pull together whoever was available. They were all expected to know the same repertoire. It was all about the wedding gigs and on a busy Saturday in June he'd have anything up to four quartets playing in different venues round the country at once, all using the same name... I've wondered since whether the same approach could be taken in other genres.

This book is really good and well worth buying if you're looking at purchasing a DB: http://www.contrabass.co.uk/about_the_double_bass.htm

[quote name='M@23' timestamp='1444664799' post='2884895'] If that's a reference to Ringo, without wanting to open this can of worms, he was quite simply the perfect man and drummer for the job. [/quote] I wouldn't want to make a judgement on Ringo's relative abilities, but I do think that John Lennon's oft-quoted remark on the subject was a pretty unforgivable thing to say of a band-mate.

Putting Bartolinis into my fretless Tokai jazz transformed it - it sounds absolutely delicious.

If it's not obvious which one you need for one purpose or another then it probably doesn't matter, so go with whatever you feel like on the night.

Nick Drake's 'Five Leaves Left' (Danny Thompson on DB, as mentioned above) remains my double bass inspiration. Clean, lively, rich and interesting without ever being intrusive.

I'd love to play in a salsa band, in particular that 50's New York big band thing - Tito Puentes kind of style.

[quote][color=#282828][font=helvetica, arial, sans-serif]Listen to it (or a recording of yourself playing it...), and try humming or whistling along. Then try to play what you've been humming.[/font][/color][/quote] This is really good advice too. There's a bit of your brain that turns out the music and it's very closely connected to your singing voice, so you can easily sing a tune that's in your head. The trick is to re-route it so that it's also connected through to your fingers and you can readily play a tune that you've got in your head. Some people recommend singing while you practice, singing the same notes that you're playing, or there's the exercise quoted above. Another good one is to sing a very short phrase ("be doobie doop dah") then repeat it on the bass, and improvise back and forth like that.

I think you need to ask the rest of the band for half an hour or an hour at a rehearsal to go over and over your solo moments. Tell them that you just need a bit of time to sort out your solos - they will understand, they will want to do a good show as much as you do. It sounds as though the problem is about not being able to relax into the moment, so that the musically creative bit of your mind freezes up when the spotlight is on you. Work out a few really simple lines that will function as solos in advance of the rehearsal and just go over and over them with the band until you feel more comfortable in the moment; once you get the right state of mind - relaxed but interested - the music will take care of itself. For double bass, my advice (as a beginner myself) is not to shoot up to the dusty end of the plank when solo time comes - if you're anything like me, you won't be especially comfortable or in tune right up there. Stick to your comfort zone from a technical point of view so that you're not worrying about bum notes. I think it was Don Cherry who said that if you know how good you are, nobody else needs to.

Thanks all. The general consensus online seems to be that carbon fibre bows in themselves are capable of being as good as wood at any given price up to a point, but can't yet match the top-end wooden bows, which I wouldn't be buying anyway. I'm thinking about carbon because it will go out to gigs in small dark venues with alcohol served. But from what you're all saying, I might try and squeeze the budget up a notch, maybe towards the £250 mark. There's a good selection on Thomann, which I find to be as good a place to buy music stuff as anywhere. I can always abuse the returns policy to try out a few different models...

What's anyone's experience of using different bows? I'm a relative beginner on the double bass, really enjoying playing arco; I currently have a fairly basic carbon fibre bow which I think would have been pretty much the bottom of the range, maybe £70 - £80 new. As I find myself spending more and more of my practice time using the bow, I'm contemplating investing in a slightly better one. I was looking at the Carbondix bows on Thomann, which are somewhere round £160. Will I notice the difference in playing, do you think? And is it ever going to be a good idea to buy a bow without trying it first?

Just bought an amp from jay-syncro. Arrived nice and quickly, well packaged and in great condition as described. Very quick and easy communication. Thanks!

Another superb band name / thread name event.

If it was double bass, I can really empathise - I've only switched to it over the last year and I've never played an instrument that needed so much active practice to stay fit. I had a rehearsal last week after only two weeks off my normal routine of scales and exercises, and my fingers seemed to have lost significant amounts of stamina and accuracy. A while back I played an accordion gig after more or less not taking it out of the box for a year, and it was almost as if I'd never stopped - everything was still there.