NickA

My dadarrio hybrid strings are 20 yrs old, my Spiro's came with the bass 32 years ago. Only last year I upgraded to a 2nd hand set of Spiro's from a basschatter .. those may be less than 10 years old! They last forever really; only change them when they break or when I fancy a change of sound.

Off topic .. I have often wondered if the traditional wooden things with all those fancy and expensively carved curly bits really is the optimal design ... But got to beat that instrument of torture!

Wtf?

Yup

Whichever one @owen has is pretty much as good an eub as you can get. Does the big fretless sound with the magnetic pickups and a pretty good dB sound with the piezos, very playable too. Forget which model, perhaps the man will let us know.

We already had this discussion . My 4/4 bass fits easily in A Skoda citigo ( neck in the footwell method ) with an amp ( pjb flightcase) in the boot. Any car will do.

Check the weight of the kk mind. Nothing baby about it .. if that's an issue. Big solid body on them. Re dots on the fingerboard ... . No dots on a double bass as they were invented for classical music, and when you're reading music you can't look at your fingers. You don't really need them as the heel of the neck gives a good reference to where your hand is and muscle memory kicks in with practice. Can be harder on an eub as they don't all have that reference point ( you can add one though). Even us classical musos add pencil marks ( or even drill tiny holes ) on occassion though; used for finding a difficult note after a 45 bar rest!

In the orchestra we make sure not to change direction at the same time ... doesn't work if you're the only bassist of course! Helps to ease the pressure at the end of each stroke too. A slight variation in volume being better than loud, silent, loud, silent ...

A better use for the necks IMHO. That twin 5-string must be unliftable (chambered or not).

True. I stand corrected. Looked it up. His Eflat Bari goes down to A, which is really a C , so my double bass goes a whole sixth lower and the 5-string ebass a whole 10th. Proportionately, that's a lot of Hz difference.

Still wondering how @fishman came upon a pro 1e without its body or bridge! That carbon strip in the neck btw is unique to early Wals. The customs, mk1s, 2s, 3s and pro 1 reissues don't have it. The necks changed from hornbeam, mahogany and maple to just mahogany and maple at some point too. "Engineered" indeed.

Regarding double basses.. also not very loud. I think they have to be that big not so much to get the scale length as to get a body big enough to couple such low frequencies into the air and project them away from the instrument .. and THAT determines the long scale. Same reason a 1x15" cab will generally project better bass than a 1x 8" and why my not that loud pjb rig needs 10x 5" speakers. it's about impedance matching and diffraction to be technical. So yes I agree, depth probably isn't a major factor, but size of the table surely is. Hence a shortish scale but big bodied Mexican guitarra is louder than an abg and a double bass louder still. ...doesnt explain, though, how my mate's barritone sax has a bottom note lower than my double bass, yet is much louder, despite a bell diameter of less than 6"..

Look good. Bigger usually being louder. 6" or 8" depth! ( my tanglewood is only 4" at the top and 5" at the bottom. bet they're quite pricey.

Me too. Of everything I could find to try in shops, this was the best. The fenders only worked well plugged in. I'd have had an ovation if I could have found one ... the sort with the round hole very good acoustically and the b768 style great plugged in. The tanglewood is a big beast, so comparatively loud, but still too quiet to be heard against even a couple of guitars and a fiddle. Interested to hear I could use electric bass strings on it. Might try an old set of nyxls.

I shouldn't worry about the neck profile too much. There are bigger issues with playing a 5; namely: damping, fingering patterns and relearning coordination between the string you fret and the string you pluck! For one thing, with a five you can play most things higher up the neck, so though the neck is wider, the frets are closer together. Main probem i found with buying a 5 was finding one whose B string didn't sound like it was a different instrument from the other 4 strings (fenders and rays included to an extent).

Me too. Think the seller told me it was the only electric bass made by a Bristolian acoustic guitar maker. But a search of acoustic Luther's didn't help. Amazing "Smith plus" build quality and a great sound, but ugly as .... and not that comfy to play.