NickA

Watching kids struggle with full scale basses (they cant reach far enough to play in proper positions and have to move their whole hand up and down) ... this is SUCH a good idea. Sold for £74 to some lucky (young .. one hopes) person.

I love controls 15= "singer mute" and 16 ="drummer tempo". Brill.

eBay pernambuco is likely not pernambuco but some generic tropical hardwood aka "brazilwood" that's less dense and less springy. I have two cello bows and a bass bow that all claimed to be pernambuco and I think one of them really is; none of them that special and I prefer the carbon one.. but I do like a bright, clear tone. Go try.

There is a HUGE variety in the quality of fiber bows - and bows make a surprisingly big difference to your sound: .... from cheap chinese ones (which may not even be actual carbon, more "composite" and sometimes with a metal core) up to the Arcus S8 which is nearly £6000 of hand made, hollow carbon tube, with gold trimmings. I used a cheapish but OK ish (I thought) "brazil wood" bow for years then ( hovering around classical grade 7/8 standard ) decided I needed a better one and bought an Arcus S3 (£800 from Bassbags), which is fantastic and was a revelation. It is so nice (well made, comfortable to hold and a clear bright tone that's perfect in an orchestra), my teacher went out and bought one himself! To be fair the old wood bow was much improved by better rosin (Nyman) and would be improved more again by new hair (which it's not had in 20 years!), but it's too soft and it dampens the sound too much. Now, I'll admit, I've never played an £800 wooden bow so can't really say if my carbon bow was good value. Some people swear that a £500 carbon bow is the equal of a £2000 pernambuco one; others say carbon will never be as good as a good piece of wood. There is really no substitute for going to a bass shopp(e) and trying a load .. but even in Middle England, it's hard to find anywhere with a decent range, and the people who stock antique wooden bows (eg Turners, Tim Toft) don't stock carbon bows (I wonder why!!). So in Stirling you may be faced with buying a few on trial and sending most of them back ... I really should have done that, but the Arcus was just .. perfect for me, really; so I stopped looking. PS: Why German? I've always played French as I'm also a 'cellist and German bows seem just ... weird to me.

Hey folks look at the knobs on this!!!!!!! https://www.ebay.co....ckAAOSw0xRZoy7F Ebony, carbon, ebony, yet more ebony and more electronics than you could shake a soldering iron at. Bit pricey tho.

Stan Clarke manages it and I've seen Victor Wooton do a complicated slap and pull move on the G, this guy too: 1min23s in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZoZ7bDv7Gc You can thumb slap all over the instrument. Never works as well as on the lower strings, I think because the lighter upper strings haven't enough momentum to bounce off the frets. I can do it on my dolphin, but not sure quite how .. I think it's a matter of hitting hard and fast with the boney bit of your thumb joint and letting your hand bounce off again before the harmonics set in. Go for a fret that doesn't have a natural harmonic if poss (fret 27 on the dolphin is pretty good that way). The main problem is probably damping the other strings whilst hitting the G which is helped by the Mark King style of wearing the bass in your arm pit and angling your thumb up onto the strings from below (looks terrible IMHO and makes switching back to fingers too hard). I'm now having your harmonics problem trying to tap (ie hit the strings with finger tips) which allows for great percussive chords - but get a totally different chord from a a tap than from a pluck ...

Could you get it planed flat - ie take some of the scoop out of it. I guess it depends on the quality of the fingerboard wood - but if it's dyed pale wood (I doubt it's ebony on a laminated bass) then I guess the planed bits could be stained dark again. I remember when I bought my bass (many many years back) the "shot" the board (which IS ebony) to make it work better for jazz (flatter now .. but still quite scoopy).

Wells bass workshop!! I've been trying to find out about this but can't find anything on line at all (apart from old listings of past events that is) David Heyes appears to have gone nomadic with workshops in York and Glasgow ...but no info about 2017 / 2018. Anyone got any links? Wells is a way from my house, but maybe worth making a weekend of it. April 15th in the diary ..but it's still a long way off and who knows.......

Well, nice to know I'm doing all the right things ....but still don't sound anything like Christian McBride :¬( he doesn't move his hand much and says not to pull the string back like you're firing an arrow ...but the string certainly moves a lot! Big strong bass player. Love it.

Dolphin Pro1s DO generally have pesky little dolphins up and down the fingerboard, and the fingerboard is usually wenge. This one has an ebony board and no aquatic mammals. Bloke who sold it to me reckoned it was a custom shop special. As it's all ovangkol and ebony I wondered if Warwick were fresh out of wenge when they made it. However, other basschatters who examined it at a bass bash reckoned it started life as a fretless (there is a tiny shim under the nut and the frets are stainless not bronze). Whoever put the frets in did a magnificent job and I do like the ebony board, so it doesn't bother me in the slightest. Sounds great, huge range of tones, sustain forever and very comfortable to play (though my stubby fingers struggle with half position a bit). Wish the hardware was black not gold tho. ... and I promise I only play it with my shirt on ;¬)

1. Here's My Dolphin Pro 1. 2. Never heard (of) Ryan Martinie before today ... what a great bass player and how good to hear someone playing a great bass well. 3. The ebay corvette looks very good indeed. It's "only" a bolt on of course ... but then, so is my Wal! Anyway, it's good to find people saying good things about Warwicks, as I've spent too much time on Wal forums recently, where Warwicks are considered the spawn of the devil ... probably 'cause the Wal owners are worried they paid so much when a beautifully built pro-shop warwick would have cost so much less (2nd hand, anyway)! The fact that Warwicks do not hold their "as new" value is a constant mystery to me .. but whilst that is bad for collectors, isn't it great for those of us who want to play them :¬)

Well my double bass weights 10.1kg (equal to the Wal and the Warwick added together), but I guess that is cheating. The Wal is very comfy to play, the neck is wide and it lacks many ergonomic curves but somehow just hangs nicely and the joy of the tone over-rides the ache in my shoulder (Wide padded leather strap helps).

If you hold one I will come. If it's in Derby again, better still, as I live there and missed the last two!

Hmm plywood. Good for rock n roll, less so for Jazz .. not good for classical beyond grade 5. Whatever floats yr boat. Essential to try (as many basses as possible) before buying tho. If it were me I'd go for something like this: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Zeller-Solid-Wood-3-4-Double-Bass/172865629446?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D46150%26meid%3D41388e888de84aac8caf554d1bc00772%26pid%3D100623%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D162668616952&_trksid=p2047675.c100623.m-1 and forgo the 5th string.

Main thing is ... it just won't sound very good. You could adjust to the scale length so long as you don't get suckered into using four finger technique on a 1/2 size, then move to a 3/4 and find it's impossible and have to learn a whole new technique. .. that said, I use four finger on electric (34" scale) and three finger on my 4/4 double bass (46" scale); but it feels like playing related but quite different instruments.

Guitars stolen from a neighbour in Derby on Friday 15th Sept. Keep your eyes peeled: 1984 Carvin DC 150 (White), 1993 Carvin DC 200 (Natural) and a 50th anniversary US Strat (sunburst, cream scratch plate, maple finger board) they took his bike and his car too .. but its the guitars that matter!

I've only once seen a 5-string actually performed upon; a lady from Lancaster turned up to sub in my local orchestra with a conversion in which a fifth string had been put down the middle of the finger board, re-spacing the strings, refiling the bridge and fitting a new nut. Sounded OK. 5-strings were getting popular in the 1990s, there were several East European ones (Stentor etc) in Footes back then; I considered commissioning one from a couple of builders who were not at all fazed by the idea, but presumed that for Jazz I'd want a high C rather than a low B - the low B just doesn't pluck well and when it does, the audience can't hear it! I played a few in shops and had to concur that the low B was OK for bowing but didn't work well for Pizz (though presumably if you got heavy enough gauge strings it might). Meanwhile a lot of people have those extensions (which come in different kinds) and most of us just tune down as required (Low D for Peter Maxwell Davies Orkney Wedding, low C for Elgar's sea pictures and anything written for Violone). Most Jazz and Rock doesn't go below E (to suit guitarists) or F (to suit sax players) .. so mostly it's OK. A bottom Bflat might be nice!

I have an experimental J-bass that I keep meddling with. It recently acquired a series parallel switch; with the two pickups in series it does sound quite precision-ish. Sort of solid and thumpy. The pickups are no longer loading each-other so you get a "sum of" pickups instead of a kind of "average of" that a standard J-bass has which changes the frequency spread. Takes a bit of a re-wire - but interesting results. It will never be exact because the P's pickup is in a place that the J doesn't have one (see below, which also shows why a PJ doesn't sound like a J either).

This (or similar) has been up before - think we all decided it was a far east made Fakera. Passive for one thing and has the wrong pickups (should be EMG). The knobs are wrong and not quite in the right place either. A real one would say Fodera on the bridge. Here's the real one: http://www.fodera.com/yin-yang-standard/ Not a bad visual copy.

If you want more roll off, just put a bigger value Capacitor in ... or another one in parallel. Each time you double the capacitor value you will halve the roll off frequency (ie bring it down an octave). Better still ... go active and put a double or more pole filter in ;¬)

Well over priced. You can get a nice shiny wood one for that much (and less). Bit of a mystique about these "original"/ "JG" models as there aren't many (in fact this is odd as it's got a JG number but is a pro2e - so a very early pro2 .. but the neck looks more recent. Anyways I'd rather have a "custom" (aka Mk1) with the final version of the electronics and the mahogany body.

you could make one out of a bit of stainless steel maybe? Or keep all the pots but only connect up the ones you want. (I have a home build that started very active and is currently passive - the blend knob is there but does nothing)

I would sell my soul to the Devil to be able to play like Tom Barney in that clip. Understated, perfectly matched to the music, spot on timing and not a note out of place. No fair.