NDBD The Strunal has landed **feelgood update**

[SubsonicSimpleton]

I got the call from Thomann's freight people yesterday to arrange delivery of my DB today, last night I hardly slept, both excited and anxious that it would arrive undamaged.

About an hour ago, a big curtainside lorry pulled up my street, and with a bit of a struggle finding a gap in the parked cars we managed to manhandle the pallet off the wagon and indoors. The driver was a really nice guy, and helped get the packaging off so I could check the bass for transit damage before signing, thankfully everything looked in order

I decided to move the DB out of the hallway and find a safe place to completely unwrap the bubble wrap, everything looked pretty good

Turn the DB on its side to extract the last of the wrapping and notice a rattling noise

Realisation dawns that the soundpost is down and my chances of stringing it up for a quick noodle before it goes to the luthier for setup is zero

Quick phone call to the luthier - "I'm up to my eyeballs atm, call me next week"

Frustration level - pretty f***ing high.

Anyway here is a quick pic of the current state my curvy blonde aquisition is in atm, I'll update the thread with further pics and and impressions once I have it in playable condition, but I think a proper nights sleep is in order before making any attempt at standing the soundpost back up.

Edited November 6, 2014 by SubsonicSimpleton

[TheRev]

Oh man, I feel for you - that's the definition of fustration....you can look but you can't touch!

[Highfox]

Feel for you also. Mine arrived last week from Thomann and luckily for me the post was still in place.
Going to be a long wait, but well worth it in the end.

[artisan]

Had the same thing when my Duke arrived,luckily my local luthier sorted it out straight away for me.

[Clarky]

If you are near Harrogate, BC's Mr_Bassman (aka Keith) might be able to help you out or point you in the directin of another luthier? I would drop him a PM. He's a total gent

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Thanks for the suggestion Clarky, I was contemplating bodgineering a low tech knockoff of this expensive soundpost setting tool so that I'm not up $hit creek without a paddle if it happens again and I need to be able to rescue the situation myself - it's sod's law that if it happens it will be on the way to a gig or somesuch.

http://geminimusical.com/sound-post-setter.asp

Lack of sleep probably means it isn't a good idea to attempt anything right now either driving or fabricating.

[stingrayPete1977]

Aww man

[Mr Bassman]

Whereabouts in Sunny Yorkshire are you?

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Shipley

[Mr Bassman]

That's about 35 minutes away if ya want me to have a look at it

I've gigs on Thursday & Friday nights but the weekend is free

There's also an instrument repairer in Harrogate who did Artisan's sound post a few weeks ago, I've forgotten his name

Edited November 5, 2014 by Mr Bassman

[artisan]

[quote name='Mr Bassman' timestamp='1415226109' post='2598255']
That's about 35 minutes away if ya want me to have a look at it

I've gigs on Thursday & Friday nights but the weekend is free

There's also an instrument repairer in Harrogate who did Artisan's sound post a few weeks ago, I've forgotten his name
[/quote]
Andrew's Violins

[Marc S]

[quote name='SubsonicSimpleton' timestamp='1415208144' post='2597926']
Thanks for the suggestion Clarky, I was contemplating bodgineering a low tech knockoff of this expensive soundpost setting tool so that I'm not up $hit creek without a paddle if it happens again and I need to be able to rescue the situation myself - it's sod's law that if it happens it will be on the way to a gig or somesuch.

[url="http://geminimusical.com/sound-post-setter.asp"]http://geminimusical...post-setter.asp[/url]

Lack of sleep probably means it isn't a good idea to attempt anything right now either driving or fabricating.
[/quote]

Sorry to hear of your bad luck and frustrations Subsonic.....

Actually, I was wondering what happened with basses imported from people like Geddo etc
I wondered whether the soundposts must be fixed in position somehow,
so they stayed in position while in transit.....
This of course, effects the sound of the bass

I guess most of the time there's not a problem, and the post doesn't move or fall....

Hope you get it sorted asap
It's a lovely looking bass

Thanks for the link to that tool as well
Useful to know where you can get such things....
Or it might be a useful guide to making your own

Cheers
Marc

[stingrayPete1977]

My Gedo one was still in place without the strings holding the bridge during shipping, maybe they are fitted too tight? Maybe the bass is still settling in and drying out when new anyway so until it's a few years old it can't really be perfect straight away? I don't know?

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Despite feeling like I was born under a bad sign yesterday, I decided to exercise my ingenuity and extend my middle finger to the gods of misfortune.

Having established that the baseline soundpost location should mirror the positioning of the bassbar east-west and be slightly south of the bridge foot, I proceeded to my recycling and the carboard sleeve from mondays lasagne provided a ready source of template material to map the relationship between the bassbar and f-holes.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/kOjAqxD.jpg[/IMG]

As I don't have a flat cap or a whippet, I determined that I should strive to maintain the stereotype of Yorkshire people during this endeavour, so a quick rummage through my scrap bin in the man-cave provided some scraps of copper pipe which I proceeded to fashion into a low tech but effective version of the expensive american tool I linked earlier in the thread, a bit of nylon fishing line rounded it out. An old flexigrab tool made retrieving the soundpost a piece of cake.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/JIY3TTF.jpg[/IMG]

Not pretty, but as my skip diving pikey bodgineering skills just saved me $145 plus shipping & import taxes, I'm feeling quite smug . The 22mm copper pipe is an almost perfect fit for the soundpost which is 3/4inch diameter, so it is really easy to control the soundpost. For anyone wanting to make one for their gigbag, the handle on mine is a little short for having an ideal amount of leverage, but that piece of pipe was a bent offcut, so I figured for an experimental prototype I might as well put it to use as it matched the offset measured from the f-hole template.

Refitting the post was reasonably straightforward, but the post is a very tight fit even with no tension on the strings, so I needed to gently tap it perpendicular with piece of bar after protecting the F-hole edges with some rags, I used a second card template (basic strip with a slit in the middle) to check that I had the top of the post in the correct position and made fine tuning to vertical by eye.

It looked OK, so I put a folded towel under the tailpiece, slackened the strings enough to let me lift them onto the bridge, then very carefully checked that everything looked to be lining up correctly - carefully I tuned the strings up individually to the point where the DB was starting to sound happy making defined notes rather than flubby rubber band noises, which was about a fourth below normal tuning. Speaking length of the strings was measuring a little short at 40.5", and where the D should be on the G string was sitting short of the neck heel as a result, but I elected not to attempt repositioning the bridge away from the position it was wanting to sit in.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/SKtu6R7.jpg[/IMG]

The setup really needs to be taken care of, but I am an extremely happy bunny right now albeit with sore fingers. Whether this example is representative of an average 50/4 or I got a good one I couldn't say, but it is immense - far louder than any of the other ply or hybrids I've played(which isn't that many tbh but whatever), and it sounds nice too despite wearing cheapo factory strings at the moment. Top of my wishlist was to have a DB that would work well for purely acoustic playing, it also sounds better tonally than I expected it to(based on the other DBs I'd tried), so I'm well chuffed considering the gamble of buying blind.

Right now I feel that any further improvements resulting from the spirocores and setup are going to be icing on what is already rather delicious cake .

[fatback]

Now that was impressive!

Great you're finally able to work on those blisters.

[stingrayPete1977]

Excellent, the whippet is optional but you really do need a hat now, it's DB law don't you know!

[JPJ]

Lovely bit of guerrilla engineering Sir, I love to see this type of thing and that looks a lovely instrument too.

[geoffbassist]

Great job and congrats on the new bass. It looks awesome!

[AndyBass]

Glad you got it sorted. I have it on two good authorities that Strunal ship their sound posts over-length so as to give a tight fit and minimise the risk of falling in transit. You got unlucky with yours but it does mean that with a bit of a setup, your already-immense bass should sound even better.

Get some Innovation rockabillys on it and slap the hell out if it. Blondie 50/4s rule!

[TPJ]

Nice bit of Rube Goldberg there Thomann sell [url="http://www.thomann.de/gb/gewa_stimmsetzer_bass.htm"]these types[/url] of things too.

I work in Shipley so if you want to compare double basses let me know and I'll drag mine to work one day

[PaulKing]

Ah you're gonna love that bass. I had exact same model direct from factory. I think they all sound like that, really powerful. I think in 10 yrs they will sound amazing. If I hadn't got into fancy vintage nonsense I'd still playing it....
What strings you going for?

[SubsonicSimpleton]

I chose Spirocore Weichs to give me the option of using a mag pickup, and because of their reputation for longevity and improving as they play in.

[Marc S]

Hi SubsonicSimpleton,

Great to hear you've sorted the soundpost issue
Well done sir!
A stroke of genius, I think

I'm looking at your home made sound post tool with with huge admiration
Also, I'd like to have a go at making my own (just in case)

Could you do me a huge favour, and post a photo of the tool, from the other side?
I'm just wondering how it works exactly?
Apologies for not quite fully understanding,
but does the loop of fishing line around the copper pipe, to help "catch" the soundpost?

I think that's my understanding of it?

Thanks for posting,
oh, and by the way, you may not have a flat cap and a whippet,
but this Welshman doesn't like sheep, doesn't particularly like Rugby, and can't sing.....
.... and I don't carry a giant leek around with me either

EDIT: But I am not averse to skip-hunting, if it provides me with what I want..... and for free

Marc

Edited November 12, 2014 by Marc S

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Marc, here is a quick pic to show how the tool works - rather than take a photo I've just drawn a simple cross section in MS Paint

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/WGmEvQ3.jpg[/IMG]

The fishing line pulls the soundpost into the tool - it would also work using an angle section instead of a piece of pipe, which would accomodate soundposts of different diameters (the 22mm plumbing pipe I used just happened to be a perfect fit for my soundpost, but the tool would be ineffective for use with a smaller diameter soundpost).

After reading the building a bass thread that Owen linked in this thread http://basschat.co.uk/topic/249155-too-few-conductors-understand-their-bass-section/

I had a look through the first few pages of the violin making forum on maestronet and found this thread which contains a different and IMHO elegant solution to the same problem

http://www.maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/331364-homemade-sound-post-insertion-tool/

The wire tool could be scaled up for double bass and made from a wire coathanger quite succesfully, although the design might require a little modification to make it stiff enough due to the increased size.

[fatback]

[quote name='SubsonicSimpleton' timestamp='1415891702' post='2604902']


I had a look through the first few pages of the violin making forum on maestronet and found this thread which contains a different and IMHO elegant solution to the same problem

[url="http://www.maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/331364-homemade-sound-post-insertion-tool/"]http://www.maestrone...insertion-tool/[/url]

The wire tool could be scaled up for double bass and made from a wire coathanger quite succesfully, although the design might require a little modification to make it stiff enough due to the increased size.
[/quote]

The method in that link looks do-able too for someone without much of a workshop. Haven't had the problem yet, but my day will come.

Did a double-take when I saw the post was signed 'jesus.' Obviously it's the poster's name, but I read it first as a heartfelt comment on the pain involved in anything to do with soundposts.

Edited November 14, 2014 by fatback