| 4 Months With An Upton Hawkes---From a listener's perspective
I purchased an Upton Bass Hybrid Hawkes 4 months ago, and my hope is to write a review with a little different slant. I am probably one of the few TB members who is not a bass player. My son is a young bass player and I spent a lot of time reading through all the TB posts to get an education. I was able to identify 4 or 5 of the basses that everybody seems to talk about (under $6K) and we started our search by listening to those various basses. One of my stops included taking a 2 hour flight out to Upton to try the Hybrid Hawkes. After listening to as many basses as possible (beyond the 4 or 5) we came to the conclusion that the Upton was the best sounding bass of all that we tried. I know that it can get a bit ugly around here so feel free to PM me if you want to know what those other brands were and how they compared, I don't want to start another war. The point is, that our family and my son were in unanimous agreement that the Upton was without a doubt the best bass that we had tried.
We ordered the Hawkes with Dominant strings and after 4 months, my son loves playing that bass more and more each day. He finds it very easy to play and the sound is so reinforcing to him. The Dominants are great strings for both arco and pizz.
The main thrust of my review is to explain how, in the last 4 months, we have had that bass in 5 different concert halls, a jazz club and countless rehearsal situations, both classical and jazz, and listening from the audience, the sound is incredible. As a comparison point we have heard no fewer than 20 other upright basses along with the Upton, and I can always pinpoint the sound from my son's bass even with other bass players in a classical setting. The texture of the sound is unique and the projection is fantastic. It's not that the Hawkes is so loud, it is that the notes just hang and seem to travel a long way. I wish I could explain it better. It is not pure volume but somehow the sound carries well, if that makes any sense.
My son was playing in a concert the other night doing pizz with a choral group. There were other musicians on stage and the bass sound was so strong that I was certain that somebody else was contributing. I looked around the stage and nobody else was playing. I was really shocked at how well this bass projects to an audience. It is really a pleasure to listen to, far superior to anyone else's bass at the same concerts in which my son played. I realize that this is highly unscientific. I don't know the brands of the other players' basses, I just know from living with this bass for 4 months, that we undoubtedly made the right choice.
This is not a technical review by any stretch, other than to say that as my wife and I sit in the audience for the various concerts and we hear the Upton compared to all the other basses and we constantly say to each other "we bought the best bass". Add the bonus that the Upton people are an absolute pleasure to deal with, and I don't see how you could ever go wrong buying an Upton bass. During my "homework" reading TB I always thought it was a backhanded compliment when people said that Upton was a great bass for the money. For us, it is the best bass we have heard.......and the price so happens to be great.
I also want to throw in that the Upton Rev Solo pickup is really natural sounding. OK, I will mention one brand name, we previously had the Realist pickup and the Upton completely blows it away on tone quality. It sounds just like the bass, only louder, no other tonality is introduced.
I'm thinking that very few of you get to judge basses like I have since you are all playing your basses, and I thought I would explain my experience as a listener from the audience, and hopefully my experiences can be a benefit to others, just as all of your posts have been a great benefit to me.
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