zbd1960

I booked it about 6 months ago and although it's not a big drive for me, an overnight stop would give me a rare chance for a night out and be able to have a drink. Unfortunately, hotel prices for the weekend are quite high (possibly due to an LFC home game meaning a lot of Irish supporters about).

I will be going at the weekend - it's an hour's drive, or a PITA train journey via Crewe. Large venue event hire costs etc will be horrendous... I suspect they're worried about gettign enough support to be viable with it likely that many people will be reluctant to attend busy places. I went to a non-bass event a couple of weeks ago, which was crowded and it has to be said, I felt very uncomfortable about it. I'm goign away for a few days soon and the last thing I want is you-know-what... Unfortunately, I think these issues will impact on all sorts of events for a while yet.

Yes, 32" scale, 24 fret, 20" radius

Took a lot of digging... I think this is one of the pieces for the top... I seem to have thoroughly buried the e-mail with the images, so I've had to dig through the photos app on the Mac....

OK This is the Wenge for the fretboard... I seem to have buried the walnut pics, so bear with whilst I try to find them....

Time for a confession.... a few months after I commissioned the ACG Krell... I commissioned Robin at Manton Customs to build a six string... (yeah, I'm nuts). There are various aspects of it which appeal. I'm an early music aficionado (Renaissance and Medieval) and I play the viola da gamba(tenor and bass). The "Titan" model has attributes of the viol about it. I have gone for mostly English woods this time. The top will be walnut and the accent layer will be yew, and the body English sycamore. The fretboard will be Wenge... I need to dig through e-mails and pull out more details on it... but it should be ready in a few months.

I'm very pleased with the ACG Krell. I don't have particularly long arms. I've always found the Fender Jazz a bit of a handful - it's a bit of a stretch and uncomfortable for me near the nut. The Krell is 32" scale rather than 34" and I think with the way the bridge is positioned as well, it just makes everything much more comfortable. I no longer feel like I'm stretching to reach the low end. As soon as I've got some time, I will post up some better photos.

- I wouldn't recommend that. Whilst bass rosin may be a little different from cello rosin, they're not that different. New blocks of rosin are a pain as you need to get rid of the shine so that it grips the bow hair. The rosin I use for cello is relatively soft - Melos.

All my instruments are insured with Allianz, who bought out a UK specialist insurer some years ago (whose name I now can't remember). I've got a lot of kit insured with them (2 cellos, 2 viols, 4 saxes, 4 basses plus the amps and cabs). Cover includes instruments in locked cars. I had to make one claim about 4 years ago when my main cello fell on its face and the fingerboard came off, belly opened up, bridge snapped, plus made a mess of the finish. Took it to a luthier and they settled directly with him.

Yes. There are various letters which have dropped out of use in English - yogh and thorn being two of them. Thorn (aka Icelandic thorn) is an old runic character and it's pronounced 'th'. In old written text, you'll often see 'the' written as torn with what looks like a superscript 'e'. When printing came along, most printers didn't bother to have a thorn character and substituted 'y' for it... as it looked similar... People knew that 'ye' meant 'the'. So it's 'the olde shoppe' not 'you olde shoppe' which is nonsense. And I live in Shropshire.... You get both pronunciations for Shrewsbury used. The name seems to have an Anglo-Saxon origin with a person named something like 'Schroeb', which would tend to point to 'shrow' rather than 'shrew'... but both occur. And I regularly drive past Chomondeley. Most cases where pronunciation and spelling diverge is because the spelling was fixed when printing came along and the pronunciation has has since changed. E.g. the 'k' in words like knife and knight used to be pronounced.

Watched a video recently of a guy using 5,000 year old bog oak for a fretboard - it was almost jet black. I like the look of this though.

I haven't personally done it yet, but basic answer will be engineering. More expensive ones should be better made, meaning that they should fit and operate better. Precisely why (apart from aesthetics) you buy a£2k bass over a £500 one.

Sounds like the string isn't getting to vibrate properly. A new bow will need a lot of rosin on it. One way to check is to look along the length of the hair and then run a finger under teh hair across the width of the hank. You should see a little puff of rosin. Also, a new cake of rosin is resistant to cooperating. If it's still shiny it won't be giving you much rosin. Once the bow is rosined, you don't need to give it that much - just a touch up each time you play. I'm a cellist, not a EUB play, but principles are the same.

I have several apps on my phone. The one I sue most is Cleartune as I can change the temperament as well as transposition and the frequency of A (for some stuff I do I need A=415Hz rather than A=440Hz). I also use iStrobosoft. Both of my amps have tuners built in.

I've always wanted something made from purple heart ever since I saw antiques programmes years ago talking about marquetry and purple heart aways came up as being stunning etc.

I have a Yamaha and my hands are not large. Both the Yamaha and the Aulos are sufficiently good that you'd need to spend decent money to get a better wooden one. For wooden ones, the Early Music Shop has a big choice. https://earlymusicshop.com/collections/recorders

Adding to my earlier comments... the odd thing is I used to have to give presentations quite a lot, often technical, and often to large groups. That never used to bother me. I suspect because I was on 'safe' territory and I wasn't fazed by anything anyone was likely to throw at me by way of questions.

My experiences on this are very mixed. My first public outings as a musician were once I started singing with choirs, which is not until my 30s. I've never felt particularly nervous or anxious about performing live in concerts as a choral singer. (I do not and never have performed solo...). In my 50s I started to play cello and sax in orchestras etc and started playing in concerts. Again, that didn't give me any grief either... But... there are two things that do... A few years ago I did my first ABRSM performance exam - grade 3 sax. Jeepers - I started shaking uncontrollably. I just about got through the exam, and passed OK. When it came to doing G5 though, I did all the work for it and refused to do the exam. I really couldn't face it. The other is stick me in a social environment with people I don't know and I struggle. People who know me would find that weird as they tned to think of me a s 'confident' and 'outgoing'. But in a room with people I don't know... it's hard going for me.

Enjoy - got mine last week

Oh dear. I do dislike hearing about this sort of thing as I think it's very unnecessary. I don't have any band experience of this type, but I do have a lot of experience of much bigger orchestras etc. It only takes the wrong ego to be in the organisation space to screw it up for lots of other people. The problem with those sorts of people is they are either lacking in any awareness/empathy, or it's deliberate. Whilst the details of issues in orchestras are different, the essence is the same.

Real world experience of nearly 20 years with my conservatory. It has vents which automatically open according to temperature set on a thermostat. Generally, this means that the temperature doesn't get above about 33C. In winter, it rarely gets colder than 5C. The roof is the opaque triple polycarbonate type with some sort of heat reflective layer in it. I have blinds drawn most of the time as well. I suspect if basses are in cases and not in direct sunlight and you can regulate the maximum temperature and humidity to sensible levels, it's probably viable, BUT it's big swings in temperature and humidity that could do damage.

Well, "next day delivery" wasn't "next day", but anyway it has arrived. It's unfortunate that it coincided with me being stupidly busy with a mix of course work and sax workshops (please read carefully... 🙂). It is stunning in the flesh. I've snapped a few pics with my phone, but I'm goign to do a proper product shoot in the studio with it as soon as I can, so I will post some decent pics in due course.

Agree with above comments and suggestions. When I started cello 10 years ago, I got problems in my left elbow and shoulder. This was due to squeezing the neck, particularly with the thumb. My hands are not large and I find 1FPF at the nut challenging.

Harmonically, whichever instrument is lowest pitched is the 'bass'. Instrumentally, the bass is derived from the double bass / violone which has what is known as 16' pitch rather than 8' (this is a reference to the length of the organ pipe that plays lowest C on an organ ,not the length of the string). The violone which is the ancestor of the double bass had six strings and tended to come in two variants pitched a 4th apart: a G violone and a D violone, with the D being lower. The G was tuned an octave below a tenor viol (GCFADG) and the D an octave below a standard bass (DGCEAD).

It's in transit... I suspect it will arrive tomorrow, but I won't be in....