JoeEvans

We are not worthy! We are not worthy!

The Weichs will definitely help. When you're playing up near the open notes, the nut height makes more of a difference than the action. People talk about getting it so that you can just about slide a business card under the string next to the nut, but I found that the right height varied string to string. Taking the slot a little deeper - maybe only 0.5mm or 1mm on the E and A strings - made an immediately noticeable improvement in ease of playing. I found it very important to practice playing more on the tips of the fingers of the left hand, so that the end joint of the finger is coming up and away from the fingerboard not lying flat on it. Try hooking your fingertips onto the top of a door frame and putting some weight on, and you can see straight away how much more strength your fingers have like that.

Is it primarily the left hand that you find hard work, or both hands, or the whole physical experience - shoulders, back, legs?

I've never tried that - it doesn't sound especially likely but worth a go! I think I'd be working with a wide, very sharp chisel and a piece of plywood, cut to the right size and chamfered at the edges, with sandpaper wrapped around it.

I think I'd be inclined to clean out the socket on the body and get it to as smooth and flat a finish as possible on all faces, even if that means making the socket a mm or two bigger all round. Then trim back the neck on all the areas that will contact the body, again aiming for smooth, flat mating surfaces, even though the block will end up a few mm small. Then glue veneer of appropriate thickness onto the mating surfaces on the neck, to leave it a few mm too fat in all dimensions. Glue on the veneer so that the grain runs the same way as in the neck. Then you can plane or sand back the neck block until you get a perfect fit with the socket. I would personally use an epoxy glue to fit the veneers to the neck, for maximum strength, then a conventional hide glue when you fit the neck back to the body. You'd need to get all the PVA off to get good adhesion for hide glue. I wouldn't bother with screws myself. A good glue job is much stronger and if the glue job isn't good you're doomed in the long run anyway. I'd glue a bit in to fill the v-shaped gap.

When I bought my current DB from the Double Bass Room it was really interesting to see a room full of basses of different ages all together. They're so lacking in standardisation compared to violins! Different heights, depths, widths, shapes, colours and of course sounds. I'm not really convinced that they fit neatly into 3/4 and 4/4; it's more like a spectrum. My choice was mostly down to the sound (with an eye for condition obviously) and I came away with an instrument that's getting into 4/4 territory for height, but perhaps on the slender side in terms of width and depth compared to some 4/4s. I guess most people choose for similar reasons - which bass sounds the best to the buyer's ear? As for convenience, any double bass is a massive pain in the derrière to move around and I don't think a few inches here or there make much difference...

What are you guys doing with your basses to get them so filthy?

Best thing would be a small, decent quality active PA speaker with a frequency response that goes down to maybe 40hz. Best option will depend heavily on budget!

Ouch, that doesn't sound ideal... Hope it gets better soon.

To my mind the problem regarding cost of living isn't that it makes it harder to make music - it's cheaper and easier than at any time in history to record an album and make a video. The problem is that so many people are struggling financially that it's harder than ever to get an audience out, especially for ticketed events as opposed to pubs. Venues are closing down, audiences are falling and you can't make up for the low fees by selling self-published CDs any more. It's live music that's suffering, not music within digital media.

Is the focus of the pain and swelling around one side of the fingernail? You can get infections down there which result in swelling. If so maybe rub neat tea tree oil (super-strong anti-bacterial) into the edges of the nail. In due course it will open up and release all the pus, which isn't that nice but feels a lot better... A visit to the GP would be good if nothing changes soon. I don't think a German bow would help much, the forefinger does a fair bit of work there too. Pizzicato can't be much fun either I would think?

@Beedster goodness knows... I looked into the whole after length issue when I was doing it, but there is, to say the least, some diversity of opinion on what's desirable, and very little hard information. So I set the loop lengths just to make sure the washers didn't rattle against each other, and otherwise didn't worry too much. In practice I feel like it made the bass slightly more responsive to light touches and maybe a slightly richer tone. I think it's to do with reducing vibrating weight so that the strings are less damped.

@Beedster pics of the Dyneema tailpiece replacement here: It's been in place for a year now with no problems - the bass went a bit flat for the first month as the cords stretched a bit, then it settled and it's now very stable.

I'm wondering whether having the silks running over the nut would affect smooth tuning - with extra friction over the nut, would you maintain equal string tension on each side? A loop of 2mm Dyneema between the tailpiece and the string might be one of those quick, temporary solutions that turn out to last for years. I actually got rid of my tailpiece altogether and used a longer loop of Dyneema going round the endpin for each string - it improved the tone noticeably, although it was a very thick, heavy tailpiece, so possibly a lighter tailpiece would have generated the same improvement... You do need to use the right knot with Dyneema though, a water knot is good but there are other options too.

It would be a bad year for my car to cost me £2.5k ex fuel. I reckon on more like £2k a year for MOT, service, repairs, VED and insurance. No depreciation for me, the car was very cheap five years ago so nothing left to depreciate ...

Looks like an all-plywood instrument, can't see any damage from the soundpost incident. I would suggest getting a professional to put in a new soundpost and get the tailpiece, bridge, strings etc on. I think it would give you good rockabilly thumping, especially with a pickup on, but I don't think it's worth much - if it was well set up with new strings, a cheap pickup and a case it might be worth £750 maybe? If you were interested in working on a double bass yourself for the fun and challenge, this would be a perfect one to have a go on - with ongoing incremental improvement it could end up sounding pretty good for the purpose you have in mind.

I love orange basses myself and I reckon yours would look great in the right kind of orange with a cream pick guard...

I think Fender have an online thing you can put the serial number in to check model and year of manufacture.

My goodness... That's quite an extraordinary situation.

Have you just inherited this whole collection, or just the Hoyer?

Definition of a professional musician: someone who earns more money from music than they spend on equipment.

This is probably more a discussion about accordion playing than double bass playing - as a bassist, I don't think you need to do anything different or special in accompanying an accordionist. But as an accordionist, especially one with an electronically-augmented left hand capable of big bass sounds, you definitely need to leave more space down there for the bass. Depending on the musical genre, one easy change if playing a conventional left hand pattern (root-chord-root-chord, with the roots generally alternating I - V) is to only play every other riot note while still putting a chord on every off-beat (root-chord, chord-root-chord, chord).

You can give a super-subtle but convincing relic effect by dulling down the whole body (I'd recommend stripping everything off it then using 1000-grade wet and dry, dipping it regularly in a bowl of water to stop it from clogging); then using T-Cut to polish up just the areas where your right wrist and thumb would touch the bass while playing.

I also feel like the EMGs ought to give you respectable output levels, is it worth getting the pickups and wiring checked by someone? I guess I'm wondering if there might be a problem with the volume pot or something ...