My new bass journey ...

OilCityPickups

Singing isn't so bad with upright bass ... can't do it at all with electric bass ... how weird is that? 

OilCityPickups

Just ordered some replacement tuners from Chineseia ... they look to be far more solid and heavy duty in brass than my existing ones ... at £60 they seem reasonable ... let's see. 

Al_Nico

OilCityPickups said:

Just ordered some replacement tuners from Chineseia ... they look to be far more solid and heavy duty in brass than my existing ones ... at £60 they seem reasonable ... let's see. 

They look good. Maybe a touch of 3 in 1 dry lube where the shaft goes through the side plate to help them slip under tension?

OilCityPickups

Al_Nico said:

OilCityPickups said:

Just ordered some replacement tuners from Chineseia ... they look to be far more solid and heavy duty in brass than my existing ones ... at £60 they seem reasonable ... let's see. 

They look good. Maybe a touch of 3 in 1 dry lube where the shaft goes through the side plate to help them slip under tension?

Yep these are fitted and I have a tad of dry lube to get em to slip (especially with low tension strings) . 

Al_Nico

Here is a method of amplification for acoustic bass, and a transport solution. I thought this was wonderful:

OilCityPickups

Al_Nico said:

Here is a method of amplification for acoustic bass, and a transport solution. I thought this was wonderful:

That's fecking mental :-) 

OilCityPickups

Well I got my first slap bass player's blister from last night's rehearsal. Things went particularly well and we slammed through two full sets - over 40 numbers without a break. I was double slapping pretty much everything as my speed and dexterity has gone up a hell of a lot in the last month  (I've been woodshedding lots of psychobilly tracks to practise triplets and drag triplets). Pain occurred about halfway through the evening and I just carried on - having heard Lee Rocker's horror stories of blisters and claret all over the front of his bass - I expected the worst. It wasn't quite that bad, but my third finger (that 'leads' doing the return slaps on doubles and triplets has a healthy blister. 
Yay I feel like a proper doghouse player! 
In other news the new tuners I fitted are working well - though I must get round to sorting out the old screw holes. I've plugged em - but they need levelled and a bit of lacquer dropped on. They definitely look and feel the business and I'm considering them for the other project bass, though that bass is a bit smaller in the 'shoulders' and more delicate than my Stentor 1950 and so a bloody great set of steampunk like machine heads might look a bit out of place.  

OilCityPickups

So with all of the work going into the 'new' rebuild of the old Czech bass .... perhaps a bit of an update on my playing in general and a sort of long term owners report on the Stentor 1950 Rockabilly ... my main squeeze in the doghouse department. 
Firstly the playing. I suppose about a month ago I had a bit of an epiphany - one of those 'at last I get it' moments. It came from finally, properly relaxing my right hand and arm, playing way down by the end of the fingerboard. and shutting off my brain and just enjoying playing. I know all of our numbers backwards now ... so I can start to relax and have fun with them. When you relax your hand properly your tone improves in strides ... and a relaxed right hand means your left is more supple too ... you aren't 'gripping up' and your intonation improves. 

The Stentor really is a brilliant bass. Not super well finished I'll give you that ( there are lots of places you can see filler under the lacquer) , and a bit on the big side for a 3/4 - but the tone gets the job done and it's sturdy to the point of being a possible bomb shelter ,,, 
It looks the mutts nuts to the audience in it's 'big blonde' finish and is a great working instrument. I'm gradually wearing away at its fingerboard ... some sort of 'ebonised' lighter wood like pear ... but that'll happen with any bass, and one of the reasons I shelled out for real ebony om the project bass. It's not a bass for the classically inclined ... it could probably do okay at jazz, but its happy place is rockabilly and psychobilly ... second hand ... £650 well spent.     

OilCityPickups

So ... 11 months down the road where am I with my double bass playing? 

Well learning a huge repertoire for the Cobras has pushed up my confidence levels to the point where I think I could happily drop into pretty much any Rockabilly - and probably a fair number of country upright bass scenario's/gigs with no real issues. 

I really think that some of the mystique around upright bass playing is upright players themselves wanting to 'pull the drawbridge up' behind them. 
If you play electric bass then it'll take a while ... but you'll get it ... it's not really a whole new instrument as some would have you believe, it's just bass ... but bass with a different set of muscle memory.   

Funnily enough there is a long history of guitarists turning into double bass players ... and I actually think it's easier to come to the instrument like a guitar player not 'thinking you should be able to play it'! 

The toughest thing is getting the instrument set up right for you - and mastering slap right hand techniques which are much more akin to being a drummer and bass player at the same time. 

I am fairly seriously thinking of starting a YouTube channel with some basic slap double bass lessons ... as there are really only a very small number of lessons online, and many of them get bogged down in theory - which if you want to play 'Americana' you really can take on board as you go along. 

I'm a huge fan of learning closed movable bass patterns that allow you to improvise and key swap much more easily than the usual 'start by doing a 1/4/5 in country two step on the open strings only ...'.
Three or four shapes, runs and turnarounds and you can drag your doghouse to any blues jam and hold your own ... a little more and pretty much all the rockabilly back catalogue is open to you. 

Speed up ... learn to gallop like Kim Nekroman ... and you can thunder out psychobilly. 

Bork

OilCityPickups said:

So doing my first 24 hours as a double bass player ... 



First - cats hate double basses - seems to be a law of nature.

Second: wow it's physical ... never mind the fact the bass weighs 20+lbs ... the string tension on the huge orchestral flat-wounds is mahoosive ... so fretting is tough and slapping needs iron fingers. 

Did you look into Thomastik Belcantostrings?  Strings with synthetic cores tend to have lower tension.  You could also look at gut strings but they can be a little unstable.

I dabbled with buying an Steinberger electric upright at one point but the sheer physicality of playing it put me off completely.  And they are way easier to play than an acoustic upright.  I prefer not to have to fight my instruments, it's a distraction.  

OilCityPickups

Bork said:

OilCityPickups said:

So doing my first 24 hours as a double bass player ... 



First - cats hate double basses - seems to be a law of nature.

Second: wow it's physical ... never mind the fact the bass weighs 20+lbs ... the string tension on the huge orchestral flat-wounds is mahoosive ... so fretting is tough and slapping needs iron fingers. 

Did you look into Thomastik Belcantostrings?  Strings with synthetic cores tend to have lower tension.  You could also look at gut strings but they can be a little unstable.

I dabbled with buying an Steinberger electric upright at one point but the sheer physicality of playing it put me off completely.  And they are way easier to play than an acoustic upright.  I prefer not to have to fight my instruments, it's a distraction.  

Well I've done nearly my first year on double bass, am the bass player in a long established rockabilly band, and actually have two double basses.now! One of which I renovated from a broken wreck.
My strings of choice on the Stentor pictured are now Rotosound 4000s ... in a bumped setup with the E actually being an A string ... the D and G moved over one, and the top G being a C string intended for five string. This is a common setup for fast rockabilly. I'm trialing Superior Bassworks Dirty Gut Deluxe on my other (old Czech) bass. They are synthetic gut and BIG diameter - with a big, warm punch. 

I no longer find the physicality of the double bass difficult. My muscles have adapted to a 25-30lb (with preamp and wireless fitted) instrument, and I find that big solidity really reassuring. Tried EUB, felt awful. 

Slap double bass is a physical work out that requires stamina, precision, a sense of rhythm far closer to a drummer and an acceptance of the odd blister. Compared to playing electric bass guitar I find double bass really relaxed and calming once you are in the groove. 

The myth is that you have to have a huge car or estate wagon to transport your bass. Nope ... our tiny Rover 25 does just fine. Double bass upside down in the passenger seat, strapped in with the seatbelt, neck in the footwell. That leaves room for my amp in the boot and two passengers, or no passengers and the whole band's PA as well. 

Not a myth: women adore double bass players. 



 

Adey

Now I'm definitely buying one....

OilCityPickups

Adey said:

Now I'm definitely buying one....

Have to beat em off wiv a stick ...

KDS

Fascinating thread. What is EUB?

OilCityPickups

KDS said:

Fascinating thread. What is EUB?

Electric Upright Bass 

ICBM

KDS said:

Fascinating thread. What is EUB?

A hatstand with a pickup, and usually some metal framing to approximate where a double bass touches the player, so it feels vaguely like one .

MartinB

If you're playing one because you really want to be playing double bass, EUBs are frustratingly neither one thing nor the other. And for me, playing one for several years when I didn't think it was practical to own a double bass (student accommodation, no car) caused me some issues with technique that it took me a while to sort out after I owned a proper double bass, so I regret the experience overall. 

OilCityPickups

MartinB said:

If you're playing one because you really want to be playing double bass, EUBs are frustratingly neither one thing nor the other. And for me, playing one for several years when I didn't think it was practical to own a double bass (student accommodation, no car) caused me some issues with technique that it took me a while to sort out after I owned a proper double bass, so I regret the experience overall. 

Yep I can see the convenience thing ... but they feel horrible to me. 

OilCityPickups

So ... the Cobras ... the band for which I'm the double bass player are now fully out there and gigging. We played our first gig on Friday ... and frankly I'm still buzzing. Even though we were headlining we didn't get a sound check ... long story ... but we adjusted 'on the fly' and aside from very poor monitoring (wasn't our PA) - I - and it seemed the audience ... thought we killed it! 
This was my first ever gig on double bass after just a year of playing the instrument ... and aside from problems hearing myself and a bit of feedback ... it all went like a bit of a dream. I kinda watched myself play - a year of rehearsal making things very tight and pretty much automatic. A minor irritation was that every time I tried to go high up the fingerboard on the G I felt a feedback 'honk' building and I had to mute out. I ran out of manoeuvring room with feedback before I ran out of available stage volume with the Promethean 1x10 combo run out to a 2x12 TC Electronics cab. 
I also was pretty limited by the way I stood to avoid feedback meltdown!