NickA

"....the peg-end silk IS important, but the bridge end isn't?" I'm not sure about the peg end silks to be honest. I'm guessing that the peg end silks traditionally protect wooden tuners from the sharp wire. But some string designs taper down to just the core at the peg end, so the silk is keeping the end of the outer winding in place and stopping the thin end of the winding from coming un-wound. On the other hand my electric basses have d'Addario NYXLs on which have no silks at either end and work fine. I've also had to fix the odd snapped string on my double bass, which has brass tuning pegs .. and on my 'cello, which has wooden tuning pegs .... with bare un-silked bits of string now and then with no harm done. Depends on the string design then! But surely you could trim back the bit that protrudes over the nut.

Fair nuff. Mine's a full 4/4 so a 1/2 would feel like a toy. Try some, report back. Meanwhile, good comparison chart and advice on the always excellent gollihur site: SIZES_DOUBLE_BASS_SIZING_FAQ.html

Yes you can, yes it will unravel, no it doesn't matter. The silks are purely decorative.

Why a half size? Mostly played by children and hard to get a good sounding bottom E due to the short scale. All the same, if you want one ......Carved or Laminate? New or"Pre loved" ? Budget? Check out bassbags.co.uk they have a good range of smaller sized mid price range basses .. many in stock to try out.

When I bought my dolphin, the seller sent me a photo of nirvana with a dolphin and a Trace Elliot gp12 combo ( which is what I then had)... apparently they'd had a load of gear stolen and had to borrow replacements to record nevermind with. Not what you'd expect .. but the dolphin / trace combination was pretty good. Jazz on steroids is one of the sounds it does ( both pickups, bridge one single coiled )

Good comparison here: https://forum.warwickforum.com/threads/dolphin-pro1-vs-pro2.15701/ Different shapes it seems .. as well as different woods, pickups and neck/body construction.

There is indeed a dolphin 6, not included in the official price list, but I bet you'd need a mortgage to buy one.

Don't own a 5 .. .. but my dolphin 4 is very comfy with excellent balance. Lovely feel to the slim, wax finished ovangkol neck. Needs to be worn unfashionably high to take advantage of the concave back, and the comfort is somewhat biased to playing in higher positions ... it's a long reach back along that endless neck to find a bottom F. The through neck merging into the body is lovely too .. knocks the ergonomics of my Wals into a cocked hat. Heavy .. 4.6kg ..but I have heavier basses. all in all: looks weird, feels great, sounds "distinctive" ( though less so than a thumb )

There's a knob missing too. You'd have to solder in a new pot with a fixed shaft then find a matching knob. Mr Morewood has an enviable collection of basses and sometimes sells some beauties, but his Wal descriptions are generally cut and paste and often plain wrong. Barge pole, touch with, probably not.

More power to your elbow .. looks good as new. Had to buy both my Wals 2nd hand. Wouldn't even contemplate a new one at "prices FROM £6050". 2nd hand is definitely the way to go with these exotica .. you don't even lose out when selling on, so effectively free! Not that I could bear to sell on.

Less than a Fodera or a Wal ... or anything but the most basic of alembics. Bit of a bargain ... relatively speaking.

Salt and Vinnegar??? To what end? Do you do cheese and onion too😁

I've a bass like that, spent a fortune on it over the years ... market value = ziltch. Think we just have to keep them and get them out now and then for a bit of reminiscence .. finally handing them over to a grandson or nephew ... who will go " yeh, whatever" and stick it under a bed.

Blasphemy, It's BACH, The BEST music there is! Though frankly it does sound better on a cello 😁.

Did try a Marshall in a practice studio .. didn't like it. You generally need something quite "HiFi" and with no rough edges for double bass and with a nice high input impedance. Then again .. what kind of music?

You play that thing like THIS: . No you don't ..... The link keeps rotating to all kind of random and not Smith related vids. It was John Patittuci playing a Bach cello suite on a 6 string Smith. How do you delete a you tube link?????

This thing of beauty entered my life on Friday afternoon. I've never owned a 5-string before and had thought to buy either something sensible, like a decent Stingray, or a bargain, like another Warwick Dolphin (half the price, most of the quality) ... but in the end I knew my eventual aim was to trade up to a Wal and with the cash sitting in an ISA earning almost zero interest, this MIGHT even be a sort of investment (I told my missus). Following dismantling and reassembly of the stiff tuners, tweaking of the truss rod and bridge heights, adjusting of the internal pots, new NYXL strings and replacement of the battery (dated 2001) ... it's sounding pretty good and unlike any other 5-strings I've tried, the B string is "just another string", there is no "flobbiness" or change in tone as you play below the E-string (the exception being a Sandberg VM - but that was a 35"). Admitted, there are sounds I can make on the dolphin that this can't do, and even my project Jazz bass has a few advantages (clear harmonics from single coil pickups) and whilst a fretless Wal (I have a 4-string) is probably the best fretless bass in the world ... a fretted one is perhaps a bit more ordinary, but once I find the right settings I'm sure it will be very great indeed.. Now I need to learn how to play it!! Having played 4-stringed instruments for the last 48 years, a 5th string provokes some unexpected difficulties. Not the string spacing, which is quite wide for a 5er, and not the new notes (I've worked those out and often play my double bass tuned "scordatura" to C, G, D, G etc anyway) .. the thing is, I'd never considered the difficulty of plucking the same string as I am fretting - having learned it on 4-strings from age 8 it became natural ... UNTIL suddenly the A-string is smack in the MIDDLE of the fingerboard instead of being a "low" string - sometimes find myself fretting string 2 (now an E) whilst plucking string 3 (now an A) or fretting mid way between E/A or A/G. String damping is a thing too - those extra strings can ring on, so having only used left hand damping for years, I probably need to master "the floating thumb" .. yes? The other issue is new positions for the same notes - part of my reason for a 5-string was to be able to play more sequences of notes without position changes; and as pointed out to me whilst trying out 5-stringers - there is a lot to be said for NOT sitting in 1st position when you can get all the way from E-flat to D in one position by basing your left hand with finger 2 on the B-string E = more notes less stretch. Anyway - what advice do you 5-string players have? Any exercises or studies to try (right now I'm hacking away at Bach flute and cello suites for some dots to follow that go down to C and D). All advice welcomed. Cheers.

"Did you get to play one last time you were at BD? " didn't dare ask! I was after my first 5-string with a budget of £2k ... then blew twice that on a 2nd Wal. Also, to be honest, didn't know much about them until I got home did a little research and then remembered I'd a recording of John Pattitucci playing a Smith bass. Brighter than a Wal ..but I guess it depends which knobs you turn (totally changed my 5-string by tweaking the internal trim pots). The Smith's series parallel switch is a nice thing to have .. anyway, up there with Alembic, Fodera (and Wal of course).

Bass direct had a whole bunch of new Smiths in last time I visted and often a second hand one or two. They evidently sell quite well as they have none at all right now. Yet I've never seen anyone playing one (you-toob aside) I just love the build quality, especially the unecessarily wonderful way the neck is swaged into the body.. makes my Wal look a bit basic (though the sound seems not dissimilar ........ through my poxy laptop speakers, anyway). Anyway - thing of beauty. Hope you enjoy it.

It seems as though b&h carried on selling much the same basses after the merger as Hawkes was selling before ... And those are well regarded; BUT most of them now very beat up having spent time in millitary bands ( and in the hands of the army repair shop - hence the weird tuners). A good Hawkes bass can cost £1000s .. My guess is this is a good bass that's had a hard life and which needs £2000 + of work done on it ( my bass had the front off, repairs replaced and a new bass bar in 1999 at a cost - to the insurers - of £1500 - but it been dropped and had started to rattle ). THEN it might be worth .. £4000 + ? Worthwhile for a dealer / repairer to buy and do up, but maybe not something you'd buy to play. Hawk round a few dealers and they will probably tell you it's worthless, restore it and put it up for £7000. An independent restorer might be more honest if you say you want to keep it and ask about repair costs.

Sold away from ebay or withdrawn .. we don't know. Would have been a bit of a bargain for <£1500. Probably pop up again if we keep watching.

Given what you'd pay for a Wal, a Smith or a Fodera, and despite the silly new build prices, Warwicks remain amazing value 2nd hand. It's just fashion I guess ... just looking at these recent prices made me wonder if fashions are changing, but streamers have always been the Warwick for people who don't like Warwicks much 😉

Well I'd never DO it, but it would nice to be ABLE to do it. Amazing right hand work ... despite appalling left hand technique, (classic bunch of bananas stuff). Weird how slap double bass is cool again, whereas slap electric bass is currently a hanging offence😁