NickA

Looks like they've tweaked the standard cobalt flats to compete with Thomastik jazz flats. If you get cobalt flats performance at thomastik prices then it's a poor deal 😂. I'm surprised to learn that pino uses flats but found that indeed..he's been using EB cobalt flats and thomastik jazz flats .. so, lively sounding flats. Well, on my two fretless basses, I currently have some eb cobalt flats and they're ok but have quite a distinctive tone that may take over the sound of your bass... and some thomastik jazz rounds ( not the flats) which are nice but very thin and rather floppy...and I'm not sure I like them, subtle and supple but flap against the fingerboard. I sure wouldn't blow 80 usd on strings for an 80 usd bass!

Is this a thing to do? My viola da gamba has natural gut strings but I never oiled them, so I checked it out and found it's not normal but some folk swear by it: https://www.joshlee415.com/blog/2019/7/28/oiling-gut-strings Almond oil recommended in another post.

https://maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/338769-bow-wood-identification/ You could ask this guy!

A couple of "fine pernambuco" bows. The top one is at least 80 years old, probably a lot older but it was made so thin that the wood cracked near the top. The bottom one is lovely wood, but it feels like lead in the hand! The thing to note is that thin even grain.

I think "Brazil wood" is a catch all for lots of woods, sometimes including Pernambuco, but mostly Abeille Some bows are called Pernambuco but the wood is not from the heart wood so less dense.. "Brasil wood" probably better. Some bows are made of snake wood... Yours is not heart wood Pernambuco as the grain is not dense enough, it looks too light to be snake wood. It's been stained, so it's hard to tell the original colour. I guess it is some kind of generic Brazil wood. Light weight is not necessarily a sign of high quality wood .. cheaper woods are usually lighter weight. The thing with Pernambuco is that it's very dense and evenly grained so you can remove a lot of wood and make it light (if you want), better balanced and springy are the real aims, rather than low weight. I inherited a gold mounted fine Pernambuco cello bow which is the same weight as my ( generic Brazil wood ) student bow...but in the hand it feels like a sledge hammer. Waste of nice wood according to a local dealer 😞

Not for me for sure. Too much string noise. Kinda thuddy. Sticking to spiros ..or Eva's if there's bowing to do that week ( usually)

👌. Thrilled to see a "skippable" bass brought back to life. Chickens and all.

About £300 new. Maybe £200 used. It will likely beat a £200 wooden bow with ease but as you can buy new for £300......

3 of my 5 bass guitars are fretted ( counting the acoustic one) but it's one of the two fretless basses ( and my double bass ) that get 90%+ of the playing time. Took my fretted 5 to a jam session last week and found I'd forgotten how to play it.

Never seen the point. Ebony works fine for me.

Non serious rattle = barrel of jack plug in pickup is loose. Medium rattle = tuners, end pin. Slightly serious rattle = seam needs glueing and clamping Serious rattle = something loose inside and the front needs to come off. Value ... maybe £800 at a dealer, with no rattles and decent strings; significantly less as a private sale ...but £275 is not a bad price....if you like it.

As proven at the last em bass bash, I can fit: A 4/4 double bass, two electric basses and 450W of amplification In a (manual) Skoda Citigo 😁. no drummer tho....

Basic laminate bass. Very shallow body. Likely to be short on tone, sustain and projection. Still, some of those 1960s east European factory basses are quite decent. Especially if youre going to use a pickup. I'd say make sure to play it first, but for £275....just buy it and see. Bear in mind that new strings will be £200+, a new bridge similar (tho it looks to have a good and well fitted one), and the cost of repairing any internal rattles will be way more than the value of the bass. But being plywood, it's likely just fine in that respect.

Ouch indeed!! 😬 Kind of glad to know it IS worth buying expensive bridges! Strange height adjusters.... what stops the bottom bit spinning round? I hope they didn't tap the thread into the top of the bridge and expect the bridge to go up and down on the threads. Surely that would be impossible to adjust under load.

What's a good laminate bass worth? I played a nice old one that was £1500 and have a friend with a rather nasty new one that cost her £1300. This one needs a new neck really and unless you're The Guitar Weasel, that's going to be expensive. So given the ongoing costs bloopdad seems about right with the pricing! At least the seller is being honest about the condition.

Not heard of "chestnut" ..tho I guess it's quite a common horse colour. I've black on my best ( arcus Carbon ) bow and white on my spare (wooden dorfler) Not a deal of difference, but new hair and good rosin are useful...and when bowing spiros you need all the grip you can get. Amusing fact... Stallion hair is apparently grippier than mare hair as the mares piss on their tales which polishes out the grip.

The issue with long leads and wet ground is that your body is at one voltage (that of the ground you are standing on) and the earth of your kit is at another voltage (either an earth spike in the place the power comes from or more likely via the neutral wire to a local substation many meters of cable away). The resistance between those two earth points is likely quite high so the current that flows through you is too small to trip an RCD .... BUT you will still feel it. My house is very poorly grounded and you can easily get a tingle if using power tools in the garden in bare feet (!!) or off the stainless toaster or microwavestanding on the damp kitchen floor. TBH there isn't a lot you can do. Using one of these portable battery generators (eg a Jackery Power Station) is one way to get around it. Another way is to use an isolation transformer and an earth spike near where you are standing (getting a bit techie at this point). In any case if an extension lead is the only option, do use an RCD - you may still get a tingle but it would trip before you got electrocuted. Try not to play in bare feet on wet grass 🙂 (PS: I'm an electrical engineer, I'm not making it up)

if you're happy with it get it rehaired. It's 10s of pounds not 100s. they'll replace the wooden wedges and who gives a monkeys that the tip is super glued on. still if you fancy an upgrade, nows an opportunity, but you won't get much improvement for under £200.

Good left hand technique from a teacher or ploughing through Simandl, (possibly the world's most boring book) is useful..helps you find the notes, stay in tune and play what you're thinking not what your hand will let you. But you can't learn everything from classical or (even) jazz musicians. Nb: using "the evil 3rd finger" is de rigeur above the neck joint, as is using your thumb. Rabath is all about whether you can move your hand without moving your thumb ( Simandl says don't), it doesn't involve using your ring finger below the neck joint... does it? Most people's hands are just too small to reach a semi tone with every finger. Rabath is useful for some things and worth adopting at times at least .eg the bass line of boogie stop shuffle which is easy on a 34" scale electric but a workout on a 46" scale dB ( unless you have massive hands)! Pivots make it easy again. Sorry thread drift.

Anyone teach slapping? Right hand technique ( decent pizz, let alone slap) is a mystery to most classically oriented bass teachers. Being a classical and mainstream jazzer ..It's not something I'd ever wanted to do ( tho I admire the skill of some people who do it) but was in a big band playing Mingus' music this year and the parts were sometimes marked "slapped". Well I tried but with highish tension strings it didn't work well. Back in the day there were no amps, strings were gut and most of the players had to slap to be heard ... by the late 50s it was applied ironically or nostalgically, but those guys could do it. Dying art?

Only 2 of my electric basses ( and an acoustic bass and a viola da gamba) have those. I find they make things more difficult tbh. We are!!! Don't go!!!

I play electric bass one finger one fret as I can reach..though 1 2 4 would be more comfortable in lower positions. I play the double bass 124 with some back and forth extensions. Really, they are quite different instruments with different techniques. The only thing in common is the tuning of the strings. Technique does matter if you want to expand what you play. Lack of technique or a personally derived technique will likely limit you. It sounds tedious and snobby, I know, and there's a lass in my town who plays in "Americana" bands by just clamping her whole hand around the neck at a root note..then up a string for a 4th, down a string for a 5th.works ok .but she's kind of stuck playing only that style. Nb: that very nice " realist sound clip " pickup whilst excellent for jazz and for classical players wanting occasional amplification....probably not what you want for rockabilly. Stick it up for sale and put proceeds towards that shadow system probably.

Great strings. Awful! Actually they sound ok, bit brassy but solid fundamentals. They just take ages to start sounding, the bow kind of skates over them. You can bow them if you have to but they're not really intended for it.

That pickup is £300+ worth. Go for it, but factor in a new bridge and probably a decent set of strings down the line ( another £250 ) It won't get you in the LSO but decent to learn on. Nb: my own bass (£10k worth of antique German timber) has a fingerboard bevel. You don't need it but it's pretty harmless and I've never needed to get it altered - they were for bowing with floppy gut strings.