ubassman

Loving the yuggadugga spiccatto vibe - off to my local NCP for some practice!

Yes, keep the hairs completely flat so that you get full contact and master that first. Watch for the tip of the bow dropping and practice long slow legato notes to get quality movements going. Tilting the bow to us less hair is a widely used technique to soften off a note but till you get those long legato flat bows working and a nice rolling string, its something to develop afterwards. That said you may need tilt the bow a little to reach the G string easier (but as it is thinner it doesnt need as much hair to get rolling as the other strings anyway - so flat on the DAE is a good discipline to adopt - at all times the angle of the bow is 'square to the string' even when slightly tilted for the G). One exercise that I find really useful is to play long notes as close to the bridge and as slowly as possible. At first the tone may be very scratchy, brittle and glassy sound (a bit like low humming and buzzing of a high power electricity generator). But then for a split second or two you will get a tone which is different and due to rolling the string. The trick is to try and make that moment last longer and longer until the sound at the bridge is clean. Then when you go to playing in the normal position it will sound silky smooth and hopefully you will be on a roll there to. Hope this helps!

Could be a number of things:- Too much hardened rosin choking the hair . 'Less' is often 'more' and you can play out excessive rosin (especially once the bow gets warmed up a bit). Bow tension may way too high - try loosening off the hair right off. The tighter the hair the more finesse and control is required to grip rather than skid. Could be that you are 'sawing away' with a rigid wrist and arm ..it produces an arcing of the bow and the presentation of the bow angle where it contacts the string changes and the string never 'rolls'. The angle of presentation of the bow hairs needs to be constant square to the string rather than crossing at an angle otherwise you will never get any desirable tone or grip out of the bow. Could be the hairs - a re-hair should cost around £50 - £60 and may be well worth doing anyway . A lot of 'student' bows do not use the best materials so as to keep the cost down and it probably wont hurt to start from a re-hair and eliminate that as a cause. A lot of professional players re-hair a couple of times or more during a typical year. Good luck with it !

Great news! Did you go with the John Lott in the end?

Copy of a post moved to here from somewhere over there! [quote name='Fun-da-mental' timestamp='1392067623' post='2364386'] Hi all Although I've had my edb for a while now, it's not been out much. I regularly play in pit bands in theatre (usually on electric bass) and on the couple of shows where I took my stagg I was embarrassed by flat battery issues (usually accompanied by a loud tthhhhppp!) Anyways - had a night spare so thought I'd tackle the issue. Many years ago I completed a btec in electronic design and spent 20 years as an electronics service engineer -however please feel free to pick up from where I left off and let's develop this further. The current consumption of my standard preamp was 20ma It's now 3ma Here's what I did: 1. The first preamp chip is a tl072. Replace with a tl062. Still sounds good to me and no excessive hiss or noise 2. Disconnect the supply rails to the two LM386 power amp chips (pin 6 on each -heat and lift with a pin) 3. Put two cheap red LEDs in series with existing blue led With the mods the headphone socket will not work - you could introduce a switch to power up the lm386 if that was a problem to you. Personally I always found the headphone jack noisey and never used it. The series led mean that you get a true battery indicator. As the battery voltage falls from 9v the led stays full brightness until 6v - at which point it goes out. On my unit the preamp still worked right down to 3.2v so you would get plenty of warning. I have found that the tone at the jack output is unaffected by the modifications. I hope this is of help to someone. Cheers all [/quote]

Welcome! I have quoted your info in here which may be of interest with other modifications to Staggs http://basschat.co.uk/topic/6749-stagg/page__st__390__p__2330702__hl__stagg__fromsearch__1#entry2330702

Wish I could have gone - glad it was a good event. Fancy elaborating a bit on some of the ideas? Be great to open it up for a bit of discussion ( perhaps a new thread rather than this one! ) and to share the value of these masterclasses.

Perhaps his 'friend' drives around in one of these?

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1391185241' post='2354343'] My Dad's French. Must be why I've got guitar-playing in my blood. [/quote] Happy to take you word for it ...no demo's needed !

Only in France Doug ...only in France!

Try moving your whole arm from your shoulder , elbow and wrist.

You should pop down and try it out in person - seems pretty local?

Excellent stuff Geoff - pleased every time there is a new video!

CAPTION?

CAPTION?

Yes hoping to get there !

Usually about 3 hours max. The format in the past has been that 6 students get 30 minutes each to play through a piece and get tips and ideas from the guest Maestro on technical matters, interpretation, ideas to try. Rich pickings and little nuggets of information usually and the players at both the RCM and RAM play to a very high standard which in itself is enjoyable.