Beer of the Bass

There was a thread in the Double Bass subforum where people made a strong point for tripod-mounted EUBs as an innately dorky looking instrument. Not wanting to tread on toes, I couldn't possibly comment!

I've never bothered with a string winder, but then my century-old beech wood hatpeg tuners (with crude shoogly brass gears) are uneven and creaky enough that I'd be quite uneasy about winding them faster.

One at a time is good for keeping the bridge and soundpost in place. Spirocores settle fast in terms of tuning stability, but they have quite strong new string brightness that mellows over the first week or two of playing.

I've managed to get my piezo (a KNA DB1) working fairly robustly in loud settings somehow. I did a gig a while back through the house Orange 8x10" in a venue with notoriously heavy handed FOH volume, and with an HPF, phase switch and foam f-hole covers it went OK. It may just be some fluke of the bass/pickup combination, as other bridge wing pickups on the same bass have been more finicky, so I'm almost afraid to mess with it while it's working for me!

I feel like it's easy to overthink things with amplified sound. In situations with a drummer and backline amps, if the bass is reasonably balanced across the range, with enough clarity and body, and it's not feeding back, I try not to lose sleep over whether it's capturing all the acoustic characteristics of the instrument or not. At that point you're getting what you played across in a pleasant sounding way, and while chasing tone further could be worthwhile in the studio, I'm not entirely convinced that going down the multiple pickup and high end preamp rabbithole really makes you sound consistently better at the gig.

Seems like it would be quite an ungainly thing using their current technology, since the pickup housing has to fully surround the string near the bridge. I can't imagine people going for that as an add-on system for double bass, though perhaps someone could make an interesting EUB. And I believe their systems have a sneaky piezo to fill out the highs anyway.

The improv collective I still play with were playing a mini festival at a kind of artists' commune, big decrepit country house full of hippy arts types, with a couple of hundred guests and an outdoor stage. During our set, an entirely naked man first tried to pour beer in the monitors (there was a smoke machine and I think his tripping brain thought something was on fire). Then a few minutes later, he flung a child's bicycle on the stage. I was a bit taken aback but continued playing, and it turns out half the band were oblivious to it. After the set we spotted him with a blanket over his shoulders ranting to someone about The Conspiracy Of The Cows. It was the year of the foot and mouth outbreak (was that 2001?) and all the paths to the surrounding fields were cordoned off with notices. I think I still have a board recording of the gig somewhere...

A decent, well set up laminated bass would be fine for the job, but IMO if a well sorted carved or hybrid bass comes up in the right place for the right price, it'd be daft to pass on it, unless you're planning on some seriously rough gigging conditions. My carved bass has done outdoor festivals with camping, pubs, street performing and public transport and it's never caused me bigger problems than the occasional seam reglue, and that's a lightly built 100-year old flatback - something like a Zeller is built more solidly.

Is feedback really that big a deal for bluegrass settings? I always think of it as a style primarily played acoustically, and even when amplified there's rarely a drum kit or loud electric guitars pushing the stage volume up.

If you're watching the classifieds/marketplace etc at the right time you can often find something. Mid 20th century or more recent German/Czech/Romanian student basses (whether carved or laminated) would likely be fine for the job if you can find a healthy one, and even the carved ones tend to be at the sturdy end. Certain Chinese basses too (like the Stentors), but the lowest tier of basses from China tend to have problems and aren't good value in the long run. Used instruments bought from an active player have the best chance of not needing setup work when you get them - specialist retailers should be able to sort you with a reasonably set up instrument, but new instruments from large online stores will really benefit from being set up by a good luthier.

Trump also just pardoned the Silk Road founder, a marketplace site that facilitated a large volume of illicit drug sales to the US, which doesn't seem to me like the action of someone who cares deeply about tackling opioid addiction. I think he sees it primarily as a stick to beat Mexico with, IMO.

It'll be interesting to see what it does for my favoured Martin acoustic guitar strings, given that they're made in Mexico by a US based company. I don't know what their international distribution route is, but if they're coming via Martin USA and then sent out to UK and EU distributors, that could add a fair whack.

It looks like it's just a P-Bass pickup mounted on a plastic project box with volume and tone controls, and a bracket that attaches to the fingerboard underside with velcro. Less elegant than some, but it would save some tinkering if you wanted to go the P-Bass pickup route.

Perfect!

I would also settle for a man in an elaborate badger suit.