NickA

Eberhardt Weber's sound is not really that of a double bass. Very carefully adjusted EUB sound .. sort of turbo fretless electric; for what he's playing I think his EUB is better than a double bass and as his sound is very processed, it's the electric output that matters rather than the acoustic sound. After all if he wanted an expensive old italian antique I'm sure he could afford one! The NS ones are well up there for making "that" sound ..but also not very double bass like. Not that there is "one" double bass sound. Old and/or good quality fully carved basses have a lot more harmonic over-tones than laminates or heavily built hybrids and the sound of any of them alters with string type and setup. Then again, you get a real double bass, spend £1ks getting one you really like, hours getting the "right" sound by adjusting bridge height and position, type of strings etc ... then put a pickup on it and back to square one!

East German, 1970s or 80s. seems to have suffered major neck trauma at some point, cracked varnish along the base of the neck joint. does that black blob on the heel hide a huge screw perchance. Not a problem if it's solid. Hopefully you'll never find out. I dropped my bass and broke its neck earlier this year. Had to have a new one fitted. The old one proved to have the bit of neck that dovetails into the block, held in place with three large brass screws... which were definitely not from 1890 like the rest of it. NB mines German, external linings 🤞. Strong and protects the edges.

Tonight I played En Saga by Sibelius. Bars and bars and bars ...and bars of the same repeated note ( often F on the E string) I can only play it by clamping my hand around the neck and/or reinforcing my index finger with another on top of it. Technique be damned, sometimes it's just survival. ...and some music is better heard than played. Shan't be sorry if we don't do this one again.

I had never realised he was on hounds of love; I thought is was all Del Palmer... Also a wonderful bass player. But Weber is also on my favourite Kate Bush album, The Dreaming; he's the bass on Houdini. Tho for years I thought it was also him on all the love (that's Del Palmer 😂). I also thought Del Palmer was playing a fretless Wal... annoyingly it seems he gets that sound out of a fender. I digress. Weber, great man. Quote from that tiny venue: "people ask me why it is I tour this time alone with no band; well sometimes I think it is good to play with yourself" ... stifled sniggers from audience, straight face from the man.

I saw him at a tiny venue once where he did a lot of talking and explaining his bass and electronics. He said the neck of his bass was a quite old neck taken from a double bass, to which he'd had added a solid body and pickups. I guess that was the Paul lijsen one ( it was late 80s ). The electronics would probably fit in a tiny effects pedal today but were big and rack mounted. Nothing that fancy, some reverb, some EQ and, of course, a looper ( tape less! A thing of wonder....I'd only seen an echoplex before then). Great musician.

Because they make more instruments than any other company in the world and they have phenomenal buying power (materials, parts), and experience. Company I worked for called it "leveraging low wage economies" ... otherwise known as screwing the workforce and undermining your home economy. 😉

Is this all pointing to Cort making some nice looking basses but doing it in a factory where no-one on the shop floor really cares about the end product and the bosses just want fast work? Whereas ... go to a proper bass maker who you can actually talk to ( Shuker, Skelf etc) you'll get something practically perfect. There's probably a good reason Corts are "great value". "The 13-year labor struggle at Cort Guitars began with an abrupt layoff in 2007. Claiming financial troubles, the company fired its employees en masse and shut down its factory in Daejeon. The guitars that had been made there were transferred to a facility in Indonesia." Having said which, a mate has a cort single cut 5er which is rather nice..he used to run a guitar shop tho so probably got to pick one out and it might be Korean not Indonesian or Chinese. NB: I used to live in Seoul where there was a guitar market rammed with cort instruments ... they did an excellent ovation acoustic bass copy, but that was 1994.

Not really the right place. Try "Wal bass lovers of the world" on Facebook. Or call electric wood. Or this thread: https://www.basschat.co.uk/topic/436097-repairing-a-wal-pro-bass/ The pots are weird in that the shafts push into the pot rather than being part of it, they seem to break quite often.

Those kids in the NYO, who are better than I'll ever be, had evidently been well taught a particular style. Given any kind of lyrical pizz line at orchestra I dump my bow and go jazz... not possible for odd notes and snatches due to clutching the bow whilst pizzing, so symphonic plonk it is. I'd like to know more about different styles of pizz for different music tho. Eg I doubt Beethoven had heard of mwah or considered the concept of flowing pizz... Bernstein on the other hand...

Of course, but if it puts you a quarter tone flat or starts you playing before everyone else, your chorus isn't working very well!

I remember my first orchestra rehearsal, on my 1/2 size cello, aged 9. Quite an experience to play a note and not hear it! These days I'm used to it ...if you hear yourself too clearly, you probably miss counted and came in at the wrong place! Plus when you know someone is out of tune but aren't sure if it's you or the bloke sitting next to you ...and I'm frequently told off by our principal bassist for over-playing. Tuning is indeed considered as very important in orchestras ..... in my jazz band I'm always asking if we can tune up, and get funny looks; at orchestra no-one plays till everyone is tuned to the oboe's A. However, micro-tuning corrections are part of the skill. Fine tuning analysis of very good musicians shows that they also pitch correct ...they just do it much faster than us semi skilled amateurs!

We'll pull anyone's playing to bits here! At least you know you're not being victimised 😂😂

Right hand not great either. Manages to make a nice old( German?) bass sound like a thumpy laminate. I'm not sure enough emphasis is put on the plucking hand. Classical bass teachers seem to know nothing about it; pizz being "unimportant". My orchestra friends always pluck too low down the strings and straight across them, resulting in a thuddy "plonk". I went to a National Youth Orchestra concert a bit back and their whole bass ection did the 90o across the strings pluck, but with two fingers and well over the fingerboard..probably this is the sound that classical composers expect when they write a bit of bass pizz into their symphonies etc; but it won't help us play Jazz! Ron looks pretty good to me, both left and right hands; but his intonation on "piccolo" is awful, quite some hubris to release that.

Hardly anyone makes money by performing music. My dad and brother were/are both professional musicians and only make money out of teaching ..then lose it on the cost of performing. I count music as a hobby and expect it to cost rather than pay in the same way (eg) mountain biking does. On the other hand, done a couple of beer festivals recently ..and with the price of beer these days, the two free pints is nearly minimum wage! 😁

Ahead of you there ...I had TWO whole bass lessons. There's so much stuff on line now, I may not have needed those. But I do get a constant stream of advice and critique from the lady who sits next to me at orchestra 😂

No, you've lost me there 😂. I haven't a hope of using all four fingers anywhere near the nut on a dB. My bass has a (lovely imo) Eb neck. F# can be an extended 4th finger. ( spot the cellist). Though G is 3rd finger One of the great things about dB is that they are all different sizes and shapes, there is no one method of playing them. Heck, there are even 2 (or 3, counting the weighted sort) kinds of bow. So much variety.

Must have had huge hands and/or a tiny bass! Cello is several "frets" per finger so I adopted ofof on electric bass ( seemed a waste of a finger not to) then found simandl was an essential on ( with a few rabbatt style pivots now and then) on my huge 4/4dB. Now wishing I'd learned simandl first as it's proving hard to change my e bass technique and I'm always over stretching octaves with index and ring finger, therehy wasting the pinkie. The great thing about dB is the neck joint; when your thumb hits that you're up a 5th and from there on its 1,2,3 or thumb 1,2,3 ( anyone do thumb 1,2,3,4 like some advanced cellists?). No such "here is where it changes" point on electric. So they n some ways ebass really is harder to play 🙂. Now going to spend an hour doing chromatic dB exercises as I have a lot of Mingus to play soon, and it's full of Ab Bb, Eb flats in half position.

I get my 400w pjb rig, a double bass and an electric bass in a Skoda citigo! You'll manage! Some solo classical stuff I play goes into thumb position but my usual walking bass lines rarely do and I'm no fan of jazz double bass solos either. Orchestral parts rarely hit beyond G octave. I've found playing classical bass music quite useful as it forces me to play things I'd otherwise not ( thumb positions included) makes you think about positions and fingerings and requires good intonation; which all makes for better jazz playing. The Marcello sonatas are are good starting point ( grade 6 / 7) and I've a book of "solos for the double bass player" to hack away at. The repertoire is thin compared to that for the cello, but it's good for the soul (and technique) even if the music isn't that great! It got me up to a ceiling that I needed a couple of lessons to get through... and might need a few more very soon. For all the neighsaying, it sounds to me like you're doing ok! Probably hit one of those ceilings at some point... then find a teacher or fellow bassist to help make the next step. Meanwhile ...Jam on.

Double bass is physically hard work...you have to keep in training. And you won't go from root and fifth, or even Donna Lee, on electric to Bottesini on double bass with any speed. The only real similarity is where the notes are. But people shouldn't be put off by that. If you've been using simandl fingering on your electric, then the transfer is not too hard. If you've been using bunch of bananas on your electric, that transfers too...so long as you never want to be any good on either. I use ofof on electric and that doesn't work on DB at all. But I'd been playing the cello for 20 years before I seriously tried the bass and that was a lot more applicable than the 10 years I'd had an electric. It's not SO hard to get some notes out .. but the further you go on either instrument, the more different they get. 30 years on I'm still scratching the surface. @hpc364: what kind of stuff are you playing? How far are you intending to go with it?

Battery power eg from a Jackery Explorer works just fine. I've been using one for outdoor gigs and at work we use the big ones instead of petrol generators for powering scientific equipment ( £200k worth ) One thing to remember is that your amp draws average power off the mains and a 500W amp only outputs 500W peak when you play really loud. My 450W pjb rig draws a continuous 45W or so. So the amp doesn't suddenly want 450W and overload the battery. If the battery did die, then it's no different from someone pulling the plug out. It'll be fine.

Good point. Where does the OP live? Maybe we can provide some pointers.

Some jazz sessions it's pay to play and pay to listen ( a fiver). Covers cost of the venue and gives a bung to the local jazz organisation who subsidise pros to come and play for us. I also paid £90 for a 6 session coached rehearsal series and a performance with a pro trumpet player ( we did all of" kind of blue ") I Also pay £74 a year to be a member of the local symphony orchestra, which charges punters £15 a shot if they attend our mediocre concerts... Then IF there's a profit the b£&#@rs give it to charity. Mostly play for free tho. Occasionally get paid. ..evidently should have been a rock musician 😂

It was stuff full of battered old fenders last time I went in. Bit of an Aladdin's cave that place .... not that I want a Hohner OR a fender; always worth a poke about.

Where's that shop? Very Hohner heavy; I've never seen more than one of those in one place.

Probably nowhere near a grand to the factory that made it and far far less to the people who did the work. But the shop should have checked. One reason an ACG or Shuker would be 3-4x the price, despite no middle men.