The Guitar Weasel

It's called the 'saddle' ... okay ... clean off all that PVA 'polar bear snot' with warm water and and a cloth ... blurgggggghh = Never get that stuff near a double bass on pain of .... well let's leave it at serious pain. Isopropyl alcohol will got off any that hot water won't ... then let the area dry thoroughly. Now go and buy some proper glue if you must use a 'chemical' glue use Titebond SPARINGLY Better is Titebond liquid hide glue You don't need much clamping with hide glue ... probably even get away with taping it down while the glue cures ... the forces once everything is back together will tend to keep the saddle in place even if the glue joint isn't the strongest. Now go get the person who did that gluing job to write out 100 times on a blackboard ... or an interactive whiteboard as you are at a college I MUST NOT USE PVA ON MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

East London me

it's such a crap thing to have happen ... hope they can sort your bass pronto

This ... 100%

A you mentioned the B word ... the 'horse's bum hair of brilliance stick' I hear bass players took to using it after hearing Jimmi Page playing his Les Paul with one ...

Welcome ... may the groove be with you!

Depends what you mean by real 'real' bass player. To me that means providing a groove and a framework that the music hangs on like a dress on a beautiful model. Working with a drummer to weave the underpinnings of something greater than the sum of the parts. To be able on occasion to launch out and play a blistering run, sure ... but to be the rock and the foundation that gives folks a good time when they listen to your band. Bass playing to me is a strange combination of joy and discipline. Utterly intoxicating when you are all in the groove. Personally while I listen to the odd bit of Mozart first thing in the morning to calm shattered nerves when I see what's in store for another day in the workshop - that's as far as it goes - even though my wife was a production manager at the Royal Albert Hall for over ten years, and I had the opportunity to both hear top notch classical music for free - I mostly took a pass on it. It has very little relevance to my experience of music growing up - with my mother a jazz/dance band pianist and my aunt a 'teddy girl' who played me all her rock and roll and rockabilly singles while she babysat me as a toddler. My experience from my wife's time at the Albert Hall was that while most professional classical musicians are lovely people and hugely dedicated, a great many classical music fans are snobbish bores who see no further than the ends of their noses. 🙂

The chip on my shoulder is that the state of private music tuition in this country is appalling. I will explain: for longer than I've been any sort of woodworker or instrument builder - or in fact, what I do say to day now - owner of a pickup winding company - I've taught music. I've always been foremost a musician - but to supplement that income I had a music shop in the 80s/90s and after that worked at a local FE college where my role required I become a qualified teacher. This opened my eyes to the fact that a great many people teaching instruments privately are a. a waste of money for the student, and b. creatively stifling for the student unless the want to learn the teacher's 'pet' genre of music. To many so called teachers, it's about money and no more (or a bizarre ego trip). They don't take time to find out what the student wants to learn, they don't put in the effort to prepare course work tailored for the individual and the type of music they want to play - they just apply a 'cookie cutter' one size fits all approach and take the money. Frankly students would be better seeking out the right sort of YouTube lessons and perhaps even paying for one to one tuition or small group (usually via Patreon ets) from someone on that platform who has a style they admire or want to learn. I hate to see folks waste money - and a huge amount of personal music tuition today is just that, a waste of money. If you are going to go to a tutor then go to one who teaches what you want to learn. Ask the right questions, seek out other students that have been taught by that person ... but don't just blindly go to someone who is supposed to be a good player ... because they can be that and a crappy teacher at the same time.

Steel double bass strings only really started to become the norm from the 1950s onwards. During the majority of that 300 years folks were playing lower tension strings ... ie gut ... similar to the lower tension strings you are dismissive of.

Yep there is a trend amongst some double bass players on here to be 'gatekeepers' ... 'you must suffer to gain enlightenment like we have'.

I very often use the passenger seat of our little Rover 25 - seat reclined a bit - bass upside down and secured with the seatbelt. Works a treat. A bit more of a pain to get in and out, but not much. I can carry a double bass, our PA, and my Bass amplification - and if someone else carries one of the PA speakers - I can carry a back seat passenger too.

Not particularly thought about bowing ... but I would have thought a blade design powered up by neodymium magnet/magnets would keep a more steady volume/response (with possible air gapping between magnet and blade to reduce string pull). Possibly one curved blade to conform to the string arc and a second hum cancelling coil using large diameter alnico magnets. Always prepared to have a crack at designing something. I've been working with hybrid material magnet arrays for years in pickups designed for technical metal ... there are always spin offs 🙂

If folks want a pickup winding article ... of course I can oblige ... I've done a pine of historic pickup rewind photo articles over on the Fretboard Forum over the years ... and a good number of them were for bass ... so if I get anything juicy I'll post here for certain. Also if folks want to have a crack at building magnetic pickups for their steel string double basses I'm happy to come up with a design I could help those interested make 🙂

Buy it ... that's no brainer.

I already teach pickup winding at my workshop fairly regularly - a few more folks through our hallowed portals won't cause an issue 🙂

It's interesting that in some light the bass looks jet black - and in some dark brown ... and even black with dark brown highlights. I'm a huge fan of gunstock oil .... lol to be honest I'm already looking around for another 'buggered big-un' to restore. It's addictive, and there do seem to be quite a few basses languishing as 'conversation pieces' which should be in the hands of players. If anybody wants help and encouragement with their own bass projects feel free to message me. I'm always happy to pass on skills ... and if you are in the London area - pop in to my Oil City Pickups workshop for coffee and talk basses 😁

And so 'Frankie' is done all bar the set up ... but I'm letting her settle in and get used to being a bass again before going mad with the action. I brought her up to concert pitch with the nervousness of a bomb disposal officer sat astride a ticking World War aerial mine! Fresh in my mind the first imploding Chinese biscuit material bridge. I needn't have worried. Plenty of graphite in the bridge slots and she was a good'n. So from this to this And how does she sound? Well I'm gobsmacked by how loud she is, I mean the Superior Bassworks Dirty Gut Deluxe strings are not known for huge volume, but the power and projection the old girl has is quite remarkable. I'm getting rather fond of the way she appears jet black in some light and dark brown in others 🙂 Yep I need to cut the nut slots a smidge deeper, and the action could come down a good 4mm at the bridge and still be 'slap worthy'. The oil varnish needs to harden a while longer before it can have a good polish ... and I need to buy a rubber chicken to put inside the bass ... so that when folks ask 'what's the little hatch for?' ... I can reach in and produce it! So after a set up I'm going to look at pickups - ideally something that I can use an adaptor to plug into my Shadow Rockabilly Pro preamp - thus saving on buying two preamps to have both basses gig ready.

Yep only bare wood.

I remember an instructor in college telling me my welds were porous ... I asked him 'how do you mean?' He said 'poor-as piss!'

Thanks be to Birchwood and Casey gunstock oil 😀

Not Chinese this time. It's funny I thought Chinese-ium was that metal used for some Far Eastern guitar and electric bass bridges that has the strength and durability of a cheap mild cheddar. It seems there's a wood version too! But this is more like wood grained rich tea biscuit!

I have to say it was spectacular - I found the other bridge foot nearly twenty feet away! I said a rude word too!!! And new bridge ordered ...