[Dixielandjazz] Optimum sound from Double Basses - was Luckyhorse

[Allan Brown]

I most certainly will Steve.

On 30 Jan 2010, at 19:54, Stephen G Barbone wrote:

> Hey Allan:
> 
> Small world. <grkn >
> 
> You might want to buy Chuck's "Coda". It  is 60 or so pages and contains many new tips on Sound Post,  end pin peg and the use of teflon plus a few other good thoughts about bass sound. It is the last word Chuck will write about Bass Repair/set-up. Our bassist loved it. I'll talk with Chuck soon and will pass on your regards.
> 
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
> www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband
> 
> On Jan 30, 2010, at 1:03 PM, Allan Brown wrote:
> 
>> Hey Steve,
>> 
>> I've got that book - and I concur with all you say. It is an amazing book and I spend many a happy hour leafing through it.
>> 
>> I hope you don't mind me indulging in the story of my bass.
>> 
>> Whilst at art college my pal Jerry (who now makes those electric double basses) and I discovered a bust up student bass in a locker. We asked if we could have it and when permission was granted we decided to divide the spoils - I took the body and Jerry took the neck and fingerboard. He went on to make a body and I a neck to compliment our respective halves. (The art college joke being that had a splinter come off the original bass, someone would have stepped forward to make a whole new bass around it.)
>> 
>> Luckily the landlord of the digs I was in at the time had a workshop and he let me use it and his tools. So I set about carving a neck, armed with nothing but my ignorance. I was, however, given invaluable advice by a local double bass maker that I discovered and he also gave me some old metal tuning pegs that I managed to fit to my freestyle headstock. The scroll was an ugly, ungainly thing which I've since improved. I was also unaware of the arcane art of shaping the fingerboard and scooped out far too much wood in the middle of the fingerboard to prevent buzzing, when I should have been raising the bridge.
>> 
>> The body is made of plywood, but underneath the horrible orange lacquer lay a lovely grained wood. So I sanded it all down but I didn't dare open it up to move the sound post and bar to the other side of the bass in order to make it truly left handed. Getting the neck and the body together was nightmare as the block the neck sat on was the cheapest of the cheap and was wafer thin as the bass must have been dropped at some point in the past and the neck must have sheared off taking most of the block with it. In the end I just had to screw the neck on in a move that would have Chuck's toes curling in his boots. And that's how my bass stayed for over a decade. It looked pretty but it was just too difficult to play.
>> 
>> Despite the frustrations I really enjoyed making it and a couple of years ago I was thinking of having a go at making a new bass, including the body this time. Whilst researching I came across Chuck's book and it totally opened my eyes to what's involved in getting the optimum sound out of a double bass. I figured that rather than making a new bass there was probably a lot I could do with the existing bass. So i took it Jerry who's set up scores of basses now and we pretty much stripped it right back. We pulled off the fingerboard and re-glued it. He totally re-shaped the fingerboard and we hacked off the scroll, which I re-shaped and we pegged and glued it back on. A new bridge and a set of new strings and it sounded like a totally different instrument - and so much easier to play. (But not easy enough!)
>> 
>> I just don't realistically have the time or a suitable workshop to do it at the moment but at some point I've love to give it another go. There are a couple of good books out about how to make double basses and Chuck's book is a bible. My father-in-law is also a fantastic carpenter and has made several classical guitars as well as two astonishing lutes. So I feel I really should be doing something with this knowledge and expertise that surrounds me.
>> 
>> Pass on my gratitude and appreciation to Chuck, should you speak to him. That book is a wonder.
>> 
>> All the best,
>> 
>> Allan
>