Double bass rebuild - not for the faint of heart!

[The Guitar Weasel]

33 minutes ago, Hellzero said:

I hope you bought a non Chinese one this time, they are more expensive, for sure, but way better in terms of quality.

 

French ones, like Aubert or Despiau are excellent. 😉

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!   

[ezbass]

7 hours ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

 

 

 

That's a lovely sheen you have managed to achieve there, looks great.

[The Guitar Weasel]

18 hours ago, ezbass said:

That's a lovely sheen you have managed to achieve there, looks great.

Thanks be to Birchwood and Casey gunstock oil 😀 

[PaulKing]

3 hours ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

Thanks be to Birchwood and Casey gunstock oil 😀 

Yeah its sweet. Guess it only works over wood? What if you were put it over nitro?

I always feel the satin nitro finish I got on my King Mortone refinish could do with a bit more depth and shine, like they used to have.  

 

[PaulKing]

[Stub Mandrel]

I guess it would work on a porous finish? "Try in an inconspicuous area first" as they say!

[The Guitar Weasel]

On 12/07/2025 at 14:31, Stub Mandrel said:

I guess it would work on a porous finish? "Try in an inconspicuous area first" as they say!

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

[The Guitar Weasel]

On 12/07/2025 at 14:09, PaulKing said:

Yeah its sweet. Guess it only works over wood? What if you were put it over nitro?

I always feel the satin nitro finish I got on my King Mortone refinish could do with a bit more depth and shine, like they used to have.  

 

Yep only bare wood. 

[PaulKing]

9 hours ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

Yep only bare wood. 

I wish they still made Topps Scratch Cover. That stuff is magic and I'm down to my last few drops...

[The Guitar Weasel]

 

 

 

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. 

[Mediocre Polymath]

Amazing work. Looks, I'm sure, significantly better than it did when it was new.

[JPJ]

As a recent convert to the world of double bass, I have followed your rebuild thread with great interest. He/she/they/them looks an amazing bass and another one saved from the great gig in the sky. Well done 😎

[Burns-bass]

Yep. Sterling work! This thread should hopefully inspire others, too, which is great. 

[NickA]

6 hours ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

'what's the little hatch for?' .

👌.

 

Thrilled to see a "skippable" bass brought back to life.  Chickens and all.

[Hellzero]

Top notch resurrection, congratulations!

 

I was a bit sceptical about the choice of the finish, but it looks very nice as it is, with that touch of class.

[The Guitar Weasel]

11 hours ago, Hellzero said:

Top notch resurrection, congratulations!

 

I was a bit sceptical about the choice of the finish, but it looks very nice as it is, with that touch of class.

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 .... 

15 hours ago, Burns-bass said:

Yep. Sterling work! This thread should hopefully inspire others, too, which is great. 

 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 😁  

[MacDaddy]

4 hours ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

and if you are in the London area - pop in to my Oil City Pickups workshop for coffee and talk basses 😁  

 

Be careful what you wish for

 

😉

[The Guitar Weasel]

20 hours ago, MacDaddy said:

 

Be careful what you wish for

 

😉

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

 

 

[itu]

Could you make a short article here about it, please? 

[The Guitar Weasel]

4 hours ago, itu said:

Could you make a short article here about it, please? 

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 🙂 

[Beer of the Bass]

12 minutes ago, The Guitar Weasel said:

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 🙂 

 

It's an interesting area - the Krivo magnetic pickups manage to be a little clearer and more "acoustic" sounding than older designs, presumably using some of the same tricks that modern acoustic guitar soundhole pickups do (controlled microphonics, lower inductance, neo magnets). But no commercial magnetic pickup for bass has cracked the bow response issue yet - because the string vibration is dampened in one plane when bowing (up/down relative to the pickup position), you get unpredictable volume and weird barky attack when bowing with most magnetic pickups. 

There are a couple of cello systems that place polepieces in between the strings so that they sense the movement in that lateral plane more, but I haven't seen that tried on bass. 

Edited 23 hours ago by Beer of the Bass

[The Guitar Weasel]

1 hour ago, Beer of the Bass said:

 

It's an interesting area - the Krivo magnetic pickups manage to be a little clearer and more "acoustic" sounding than older designs, presumably using some of the same tricks that modern acoustic guitar soundhole pickups do (controlled microphonics, lower inductance, neo magnets). But no commercial magnetic pickup for bass has cracked the bow response issue yet - because the string vibration is dampened in one plane when bowing (up/down relative to the pickup position), you get unpredictable volume and weird barky attack when bowing with most magnetic pickups. 

There are a couple of cello systems that place polepieces in between the strings so that they sense the movement in that lateral plane more, but I haven't seen that tried on bass. 

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 🙂 

[itu]

I built a pickup maybe 25 years ago that can handle low frequencies, DC - 400 Hz. It is made from an acceleration sensor. Small, but goes really low, even too low (DC). I made a HPF to it because amps were really hot after some playing: the directional component was too much to most amps I tried. 

 

Needs a power, like a 9 V battery. Not so good by itself, because of so limited response but could take care of the low end. Sensibility is comparable to other pickups available. 

 

I got the sensors from a certain manufacturer. They did not limit the response in production, and therefore it goes so high. Many units are limited to, say 100 Hz. 

[Hellzero]

The (hard to find) EMG single string pickups fitted this way on my Leduc EUB 6 called Moaï are working really good even with the bow (that I play badly, of course) and are height adjustable to fine tune the tone and output.

 

There are also 6 RMC piezos in the bridge with a dedicated RMC preamp and the EMG summing preamp and both can be blended at will thanks to the twin volume/tone configuration.

 

That said the low B bowed can destroy a poorly made speaker, but it's working really well as the sensing area is bigger...

 

Just add a bit of piezos for crispness and you get a really realistic tone thanks to the patented floating Leduc top of the U-Basse adapted here.

 

It was a six (according to Christophe Leduc) to seven (according to me as I factor in the year of discussion and ideas trials) years built.