Beer of the Bass

Wonder if they'll get an angry letter from John Hall's legal team for the shape of the bass?

I watched a couple of the videos. The part that makes me feel old is the way all the plagiarism was from other primarily online content creators, and not some of the gigging, record creating players who originated those jazz/funk/fusion styles. Even ignoring the ethical aspect, something about that just sort of leaves me cold. Like it's a gamer mentality applied to music.

I'm guessing those are the Indian made guts that a few different sellers have. Most of the classic gut string jazz sounds would use a plain gut G and D and a silver wound gut E and A, and the ones one the link are all plain. Plain gut on the lower strings is hard to get a good pizzicato sound with and I only see them being used by a few slap players.

My takeaway from the video was less about them being 15s, and more about how some of those older driver designs have a really pleasing thing going on in the mids and highs, if they're used without pushing their limits too hard. The others have portability and overall volume advantages, but that Trace cab is an immediately likeable bass sound for me.

I'd want to get a really close look at the output transformer and the label itself. If the 8 looks to be written on or a sticker applied after the original manufacture, and the output transformer is the same as the stock 4 ohm model, the only other reason I could think of for relabelling it is if someone had been running it with one pair of power valves removed for lower power.

Though if you're an acoustic trio without drum kit or backline amps on stage, that's probably as close to an ideal scenario as you'll find for making a mic work. If you don't want to spring for expensive dedicated bass mics, various dynamic mics can work well - the venerable SM57, or a side address dynamic like the Sennheiser e609 or Superlux PRA628 wrapped in foam under the bridge or tailpiece. A few bassists on Talkbass are mounting the Sennheiser e604 on the string afterlengths too.

I'm not sure piezo pickups are the place to look for "air", but that said, the J-Tone Big pickups do have quite a thick, midrangey tone that can come across as a little electric - it's perfectly usable, but you may find you like others better. And a lot of players find they prefer a single element pickup to one with two sides - I would try the J-Tone with one element hanging loose first just to determine if that's a good direction to head in. I'm getting results I'm quite happy with using the KNA DB-1. As pickup sound goes, it's fine, and the high end is more open sounding than I got with a single element J-Tone on the same bass. But both the fit and the way a pickup responds on your specific bass can be extremely variable, so don't take that as a firm recommendation!

Hmm, it's nice to see that Bowspeed stock as many German bows as they do, I'm used to just never seeing them. I remember reading an older British tutor book (might have been Eugene Crufts) that simply said "in Britain we play the French bow", but my first couple of lessons were on German and it stuck with me. I'm still playing a very basic student bow that's probably not economically worth another rehair, so something even slightly nicer is on the wish list.

Interesting mix of quite quirky and more conventional styles there. I'm enjoying the looks of the one in the first post with the Austrian/Hungarian style scroll and the unconventional wood choices, very individual looking.

17 basses? With the size of the market in the UK, that would be slow to move however well advertised they are, unless a dealer takes them at a job lot price to resell over a few years themselves.

There must be some shops in your area who would take at least some of them on consignment - it can be slower but the returns are usually slightly better than auctioning with limited info and it gets you a professional opinion on them. If it's a large number of basses, they're likely to only want to take the better ones, but it's worth enquiring.

The shape, size and panel layout look identical to a FAL combo that used to be kicking around at a scruffy arts cafe I frequented, and I think FAL were also a Leeds company. I wonder if Linear (on the back panel) are the same company as the older Linear Concord valve amps.

I would usually have the nut at around my eyebrow height in playing position, the range of movement for both hands works best for me there. Some go lower, especially in roots music styles where you might stay in the lower positions more. Harmonics are harder to sound than on bass guitar - bright steel strings help, as does playing with your right hand down at the very end of the fingerboard. Re finding the notes higher up, putting a pencil mark or a sticky dot at the octave can be helpful as a temporary measure. Keeping markers on permanently is a contentious topic, but as a short term thing to help learn your way around it probably does no harm. And on most double basses the heel position helps with orientation around the 7th/8th "fret" region, but EUBs don't all recreate that. The string heights you're aiming for are probably in a reasonable ballpark. 5mm-8mm is not uncommon for modern jazz styles with steel strings. It's at the low end of the range you might see on double basses in the wild in the UK, but I'd probably do the same on an EUB where unamped projection is not a concern. (I have my double bass down there currently, but with an adjustable bridge I retain the option of going up a little for specific gigs)

If you've got the synthetic E in the house already, I'd absolutely try that first.

Most likely an Underwood. It's an old design, they've made them since the 70s, but people still like them. There's a similar looking Shadow from Germany, but I've only seen those with moulded jacks, not metal ones.