The Guitar Weasel

So the big day of stringng her up to sort the action - put on the Supreme Bassworks Deluxe Dirty gut - All went well tuning steadily up until the G string almost came up to pitch .... then there was a huge explosion and ... Scratch one cheap Chinese bridge! God knows where the other foot even flew to! The bass had already been up to pitch once with the green Weedwhackers - so I think it was a fault in the maple - it simply couldn't handle the downforce of the beefier Dirty Guts and gave up in a sliding shear fracture. It's bloody galling as I don't have a spare bridge, so things will be on hold while I get another one ... hopefully not made of Chinese biscuit!

Yay, you started about three months after me .... good job! And determination and a real love of the instrument can sometimes be better for an individual case than a blanket 'go to a teacher' approach. And double bass has changed my life too. The pandemic left me struggling with agoraphobia and a fear of driving - well you can't rehearse or gig with a double bass on public transport so I had to cork my bottle of demons and get on with driving myself about with my bass.

Ooooo that's nice

So we have black stain and a first coat of Tru-Oil on the neck More coats and lots of flatting required ... but it's really starting to look the part - old but well looked after - rather than utterly borked. 😁

Couple of coats rubbed on ... perhaps ten or more to go ... at least this heat dries the Tru-Oil quickly.

Yep the grain shows through - not easy to see in the pic. As an ex metal guitarist I've absolutely no desire to see how my double bass fits into a metal band ... the feedback issues alone would make my hair fall out 😁 The see thru black finish does a good job of hiding all the repairs this old girl has had in her life ... plus makes disguising the new neck a lot easier.

So I pick another stifling hot day to sand and stain the bass ... hey ho So before I attacked it with the 240 grit .... A couple of coats and the look is pretty much what I wanted ... old looking. Not stained the neck yet ... that will be a next week job. Put an experimental rub-on first coat of Birchwood and Casey gun stock oil after I took this pic - and it's starting to look really good. I want the end result to be satin - and still retain the look of an old and battle-scarred bass ... just with a brooding aged black patina and no obvious chunks missing

Firstly absolutely not a dying art by any means ... there are many many gigging psychobilly and rockabilly slap players - I went to an all day psychobilly festival a while ago where out of seven bands playing there were six slap players (and one lady with a Rickenbacker). You have hit the nail on the head with the fact that there are VERY few teachers who have any clue about slap - and worse - a couple I have met regard it as 'not proper double bass playing' and somewhat look down their noses at it. Not everyone wants to play jazz or classical and and rockabilly appeared to be the OP's thing. To my mind for a rockabilly player there is infinitely more use in some of the YouTube slap lessons than in six months of learning stuff you have no desire to play from someone who doesn't get the genre you want to learn. Also learning about pickups and amplification (without feedback) is super important if you want to gig - and very few teachers have much of a clue about that. And as you said, high tension strings (and low jazz actions) are a sure way to screw up or at least not sound great slap playing. I love jazz by the way ... just not me playing it 😉

Thank you @Burns-Bass.

This thread will be carried on on Fretboard forum here Catch you guys around 😁

Do you know I really don't think I'm suited to Basschat - you have convinced me. Shame as folks seemed to be enjoying the bass rebuild thread. Those who want to continue to read about that quest can find it ob Fretboard forum. Take care chaps.

'Low tension strings that twang like washing line' your prejudices are showing old chap 😉

And she's fully stripped! That was a truly epic job - which I don't want to repeat again in a hurry! The heat didn't help in keeping me sweet tempered while the brown gloop came off but I got there - sweaty and triumphant. I picked up a sander from my local B&Q at lunchtime - but the 31+ degrees in the unit's yard made me decide to take the rest of the day off! So next jobs: I made up some hide glue pellets and water - ready to use later in the week - sawdust and hide glue is a brilliant filler that easily takes wood dye ... so the odd bit of damage etc will get plugged. The whole bass will get a sanding - Then the dye can be applied ... my favorite bit.

I don't really play electric bass - that's the thing that has 'idiot wires' on it isn't it? Oh sorry 'frets' 😉 Oh heres a chap using that evil third finger ...

There's several bits of wisdom I'd give as someone who'd never touched a double bass till late last summer - and seldom ever a bass guitar before - that and now has the bass spot with a 30 year established rockabilly band. Do your own thing ... there really is no right or wrong if it sounds good. I listened to a certain YouTuber DB player who while great, is a bit of a stickler for technique, and pretty soon decided 'stuff leaving out one of my fingers for a lark'. I'd been using all four fingers since I started in the sixties (just) on guitar so screw changing now just because I was playing a musical wardrobe. In chess passed pawns must be pushed ... in double bass playing it's fairly easy to start to sound good but you must keep pushing yourself ... a properly double slapped walking R&R bassline blows punters minds ... but it's not hard once you get the technique down. It's easy to 'phone it in' lines ... I've been guilty of it. I learned the rhumba beat of Twenty flight Rock ... but now I might start the rhumba phrase with a drag triplet (or end it with) it pushes you and makes you a more interesting bass player. Listen to Bill Black till your ears bleed - his timing was always awesome. Listen to new psychobilly players like Djordje Stijepovic of Tiger Army (and brilliant solo stuff) Listen to every doghouse player ... but be yourself!

Oooooo that's pretty - it's exactly the same pattern as mine shape wise - quite broad in the bum with fairly sharp C bouts ... lovely shape. My somewhat crowded music corner ... behind the Les Paul is my Promethean bass amp - and under my guitar amp (the tweed Peavey) is my 2x12 extension bass cab

If it inspires someone then all the 'getting stoned out of my gourd' on acetone fumes will have been worth it 😁

I already have a blonde bass .... so my idea was to copy the aged black burst on this Gewa - so I need to get all the sanding sealer off so that the spirit wood dye can do its thang

So I simply HAD to pick a 31 degree Centigrade day to strip the front and back of the bass ... doh! I used the shadiest corner of my workshop yard ... but it was still stifling and VERY acetony! It was so hot the acetone was evaporating and solidifying with the lacquer almost as soon as it was tipped on ... but I persevered. Compared to the woodworking part this is a hard, unpleasant and gruelling grind. Front and back done ... only the sides to do. And stripping the back revealed some past repaired damage down at the end pin block ... it's well enough done to be left alone. I gave the front and back a light hand sand - but I think I will have to get an electric sander onto them to take away the last of the sanding sealer and remove the blotchy look prior to staining. The issue is that I don't have a sander in the workshop (hand is usually good enough for what I do day to day) ... so more tool buying required. How much easier it is to work on a bolt on neck bass ... the way forward I think.

It really is in how tough your hands are and how tough you want to make it on yourself. Ideally everybody would be like Lee Rocker - and have a ridiculously high pain threshold and a devil may care attitude to the quantity of minced finger and claret spread all over their bass. Because if you were like him - then you'd use steel strings and amplification without feedback would be so much easier - as magnetic pickups (the less feedbacky option) only work on steel and steel core strings. For us mere mortals the options are down to some combination of nylon or nylon and a wrap. I have tried Weedwhackers ... which to my ears sound okay on G and D strings - but have too subdued a note on the A and E - They do a Weedwhacker Pro set which have an extra thick Kevlar core - but I haven't tried those. I took a friend's advice and bought a set of Rotosound 4000 strings and aside from bumping the set (A becomes the E string all the syrings move down one and a C for a 5 string is added as the G). To me this combo is ideal. Quiet for at home practise unamplified, and loud and rounded with a beautiful woody slap when amplified (I use a Shadow Rockabilly Pro preamp and pickups bridge mounted. It's an utter game changer. I have a set of Superior Bassworks 'Dirty Gut' synthetic gut strings I'm going to try on the bass I'm rebuilding ... I will let you know when I try them - but I suspect I will simply end up taking them off and put a set of bumped Rotosound 4000s on that bass too!

Thank you. Well by the time it got to me for 49 quid some joker had knocked the scroll/pegbox off so I couldn't say how awful it was prior to me replacing the neck ... but I think it would have been pretty dreadful. If you factor in the lack of 'coupling' of a neck joint not fully pushed home when glued (are you listening to me Gibson) then I think it probably sounded as bad as it played! Really the whole idea here was to take an entirely written off bass ... and make it giggable. When I strung it up the other week ... I could have put my Rockabilly Pro preamp and pickups on and gigged it ... it would have looked horrible ... and the neck was like a cricket bat (wide end) but I could have done it. So yes ... the net double bassage of the world has gone up by one 😁 I'm ridiculously sentimental about musical instruments - especially as I spend much of my working life making old pickups live again - and I wasn't about to see this old girl turned into a 'sign' as the owner suggested or a wall cupboard. It needed to make music again - and it will.

Oh yes ... I was forgetting you could use one of those stringy, saw-like things on em ... wassernhame ... bows 😉

If you intend to slap it and play amplified rockabilly style (I do, and also have a Stentor) the strings are almost as important as the bass.

It makes me want to avoid walking past any of the (numerous)'nail bars' on my was home from the workshop for fear I freak out! Because I have five litres of the fecking stuff to get through AND I HATE IT!!!!!!

So while I assemble the bits and bobs for the re finish - another task: The somewhat manky rosewood saddle needs to be changed seeing as we are going all ebony. I wasn't subtle getting it out ... in with the 3/4 inch chisel and resistance was futile. As you can see some stripping has been started. God I hate the smell of acetone in the morning! A saddle cut from some nice ebony ... I curve-chamfered the ends in a decorative manner and glued it in ... I'm stripping the bass by installments - the f holes are tricky so they get done separately from the rest of the top ... did I mention ...I HATE THE SMELL OF ACETONE. Next update will probably see the bass stripped