Beer of the Bass

Hmm, it's nice to see that Bowspeed stock as many German bows as they do, I'm used to just never seeing them. I remember reading an older British tutor book (might have been Eugene Crufts) that simply said "in Britain we play the French bow", but my first couple of lessons were on German and it stuck with me. I'm still playing a very basic student bow that's probably not economically worth another rehair, so something even slightly nicer is on the wish list.

I mention Newtone because the Martin strings I like are monel wound, and there are only a few companies offering monel strings, Newtone being one of them.

I can make bass strings last a long time, so the strings I buy and change most often are my acoustic guitar strings. Currently I like Martin Retros, made in Mexico for a US company, and it seems like buying those in the UK might be quite badly hit by the tariff arrangements. I might start looking at Newtone again...

Trump didn't display a lot of respect for the democratic process after losing in 2020 - l suspect the only reason there wasn't a successful coup at that point was that their plan was simply to win the election and they hadn't prepared for the possibility of a loss. They will have learned from that, I'm sure, and the lesson will not be to allow an election loss and transfer power peacefully.

North Korea has elections (after a fashion), as do Rwanda and Putin's Russia. There are a number of ways democracy can be compromised while keeping some semblance of an election for the optics. Those aren't much better than no elections, but I wonder if they might want to keep the claim to legitimacy that "winning" a compromised election would offer.

I can't see Vance winning in a free and fair election, at least. I can't see what charisma, personality, appeal etc that Trump is meant to have, but it's clear that many people do see that in him. Vance, not so much! Though how the integrity of the next presidential election will look, I would not like to say.

Interesting mix of quite quirky and more conventional styles there. I'm enjoying the looks of the one in the first post with the Austrian/Hungarian style scroll and the unconventional wood choices, very individual looking.

17 basses? With the size of the market in the UK, that would be slow to move however well advertised they are, unless a dealer takes them at a job lot price to resell over a few years themselves.

There must be some shops in your area who would take at least some of them on consignment - it can be slower but the returns are usually slightly better than auctioning with limited info and it gets you a professional opinion on them. If it's a large number of basses, they're likely to only want to take the better ones, but it's worth enquiring.

The shape, size and panel layout look identical to a FAL combo that used to be kicking around at a scruffy arts cafe I frequented, and I think FAL were also a Leeds company. I wonder if Linear (on the back panel) are the same company as the older Linear Concord valve amps.

I would usually have the nut at around my eyebrow height in playing position, the range of movement for both hands works best for me there. Some go lower, especially in roots music styles where you might stay in the lower positions more. Harmonics are harder to sound than on bass guitar - bright steel strings help, as does playing with your right hand down at the very end of the fingerboard. Re finding the notes higher up, putting a pencil mark or a sticky dot at the octave can be helpful as a temporary measure. Keeping markers on permanently is a contentious topic, but as a short term thing to help learn your way around it probably does no harm. And on most double basses the heel position helps with orientation around the 7th/8th "fret" region, but EUBs don't all recreate that. The string heights you're aiming for are probably in a reasonable ballpark. 5mm-8mm is not uncommon for modern jazz styles with steel strings. It's at the low end of the range you might see on double basses in the wild in the UK, but I'd probably do the same on an EUB where unamped projection is not a concern. (I have my double bass down there currently, but with an adjustable bridge I retain the option of going up a little for specific gigs)

The Putin administration have a habit of imprisoning political opponents and having them disappeared in dubious circumstances, as well as having civilian observers in elections beaten. I can understand the reluctance to invite them to participate in other democratic institutions.

If you've got the synthetic E in the house already, I'd absolutely try that first.

Most likely an Underwood. It's an old design, they've made them since the 70s, but people still like them. There's a similar looking Shadow from Germany, but I've only seen those with moulded jacks, not metal ones.

Thinking about it, the only bass I've owned that I felt self-conciously nerdy gigging with was a DeArmond Ashbory. Something about strapping on this tiny, goofy looking bright blue bass with rubber strings, with my little bottle of baby powder sat on top of my amp to stop the strings from sticking to me!

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.