Properly mainting a DB

[Blacksheep]

Hello,
While I continue waiting for my Upton Hybrid, I have another question. How would i properly maintain a DB in my specific environment, to avoid damage/cracking etc

I live in southern Manitoba, in Canada, and we have a somewhat extreme climate in that the Summer (all two to three months of it) is extremely hot and humid, whereas the Winter (5-6 months) is extremely cold and dry. The bass will stay in my room when it's just at home. What should I do to prepare for this?

As for transporting it in outside, will the bag suffice to protect it from the climate? I'm not planning on just leaving it outside, but just going to and from lessons etc..

And other advice on how to avoid damaging your DB would be helpful, and appreciated.

Thanks

[toman]

I don't think basses need any special care, short of perhaps after being transported from one climate to another. I just use my bass as a tool, and when it gets damaged, I have it fixed. Aside from an occasional cleaning, it gets no addition care. I feel that if a bass has issues that aren't caused by regular use, then it's not a practical instrument and needs either to be repaired or abandoned.

[Eric Hochberg]

Because of the climate changes in your area (sounds much like Chicago) you need to make sure the humidity in your house, or room, is around 40% in the dry months. Get a digital hydrogmeter to measure this and if your home furnace humidifier doesn't do the job, get a room humidifier for the area the bass is kept in.

I know many people don't like them, but I still use dampits as insurance when I take the bass out to a gig. I've experienced a cracked rib during a gig in sub zero (and dry hotel room) Minneapolis and decided not to go out without them again!

The bass will probably benefit from a second soundpost cut for winter as the top shrinks due to the dry season. Talk with your luthier about this. In Chicago, we change posts when the heat goes on and when it goes off.

Your bag should be fine in transporting the bass in the winter. If it has been in the cold for a while, you might let it warm up in the bag a bit when you get to your destination rather than taking it out immediately.

Follow these steps and your bass should be fine.

[Greg Clinkingbeard]

Although maybe not entirely necessary, I think a room humidifier is good insurance.

I use this one by Holmes . http://www.jardenstore.com/product.a...=2390&cid=1501

I also have a Hybrid bass from Upton that has been through one winter with no problems at all. The plywood back may help in keeping it stable; I don't know. There's no need to worry about it. Don't abuse it, but look at it as a tool. Something will eventually happen and you can deal with it then.

[Bass]

I think the neck on my bass moved a little bit over the winter last year due to dry air. I'll be repairing / replacing the humidifier on the furnace (much cheaper than repairing the bass).

What is the recommended relative humidity? Between 40 and 60% I think. In Winnipeg you can expect the humidity to drop below this for a good part of the Winter, perhaps 30%.

[Damon Rondeau]

Blackie, I've owned and operated a Christopher hybrid in Manitoba for about 5 years now. I've never done anything special to deal with the weather and I've never seen a single bit of weather-related damage. (I'm a woodworker and have observed and measured the movement of wood in my house -- for example, in winter the solid wood panels in cabinet doors shrink a tad more than an eighth of an inch across about a foot of width. I have never observed any kind of weather-related effect in my bass other than a tiny bit of change in the bridge action -- it gets a bit higher in the summer as the relative humidity is higher. That's it.)

It's a little bit humid here in the summer -- it's not dry like out West (particularly southwest) and it's not stupidly humid like practically any place east and/or south of the Great Lakes. (Chicago and the Twin Cities are quite a bit more humid in the summer.) What we have are extremely dry winter interiors because of forced air heating. (Even within Manitoba, the Red River valley is more humid than anything west and south of the escarpment.)

What gets your bass in trouble are relatively fast changes in whatever weather regime your bass is used to, particularly with respect to humidity. We don't get those types of changes here in Manitoba. The changes are gradual and you are not likely to experience any difficulty whatsoever.

I wouldn't spend a penny on mold-inducing humidifiers -- mold is TERRIBLE for your health -- unless I had a definite problem that needed to be dealt with. Sponges, rags, doo-hickeys that you stick in your bass to supposedly "humidify" the bass -- all of these things are what one of our blunt-speaking luthiers around here called "farts in a windstorm." Worse than useless, because they can lead to moisture damage.

If any of your rig is really plastic-ey you might want to watch that when it gets to be 35 below zero. A lot of that plastic stuff gets brittle when it gets very cold. Don't heat your bass up too quickly, either -- if it's been in an unheated vehicle for three hours and you take it direct from there and plunk it next to a roaring fireplace, you're making the wood and finishes move too quickly and you're asking for trouble. The padding of your gig bag will give you some rudimentary insulation, slowing down the rate of heating and/or cooling.

[Contrabbasso]

A link to a company that sells
an affordable solution for humidity issues.
check it out.

http://www.burgessviolins.com/products.html

If you have both an humidifier and dehumidifier
this device will turn on one device and
shut off the other to control the relative humidity.

I'm going to have to get more info on this one.

[Bass]

Originally Posted by Damon Rondeau

...I wouldn't spend a penny on mold-inducing humidifiers...

So you don't recommend getting the humidifier working? Really? Maybe I'll rethink this.

I bought a relative humidity gauge last year, and I got awfully nervous when the humidity dropped well below 40%.

Nothing to worry about, eh?

[Damon Rondeau]

I think you should work from a position of understanding and necessity. Understand what's going on and only do something if it's necessary.

If you make your bass' home much more humid than most other places where your bass might go (and time is a factor here -- it takes time for this stuff to happen) then you're setting yourself up for more wood movement than you probably want. Think equilibrium with the local environment. As for humidifiers, I'm speaking for myself. I don't like a higher humidity domicile because I associate it with mold, rot, trouble, work, and expense. Based on personal experience, I like the house well-ventilated.

[uprightben]

I live in the southern appalachain mountains, and I think that the humidity difference here is about as extreme as it can get, %80-%90 plus all summer and rarely above %30 all winter (and drier indoors because of heating). I have a fully carved bass and I find that it shifts a lot in terms of the action between seasons. I try to keep a not too moist dampit in it when things seem really dry and the rest of the time I trust fate. As far as that your bass is just a tool stuff, mine is a tool that I use to earn a living with and it's the only one I have.

[mjt0229]

I was talking to my luthier recently after having a crack repaired and she indicated that recently she'd been seeing a lot of water damage related to the use of dampits. She wondered aloud if it wasn't possible if the manufacturer had recently made some changes and the resulting product wasn't as consistent as it used to be.

It might be worthwhile investigating other options and using a dampit as a last resort.

As I noted in another thread, I recently purchased this hygrometer for my home:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000EX83RU/

It seems to work pretty well, although the remote sensor requires a small Phillips screwdriver to install the batteries (?).

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I use a room humidifier in the winter to keep the room with the bass and piano at or slightly above 35% humidity. Dunno about mold and such, but my instruments seem healthy, and I haven't had any cracks or open seams so far with this system.

[Menacewarf]

It seems the majority of concern for bass's and air moisture is from low humidity in the winter due to household heating or just during dry summers.

I can't help but wonder about the opposite. This time of year here in Southern Oregon is pretty mild. We have had nights a bit on the cool side lately thought with temperatures dropping to about 30. Despite this my roommate and I stopped using heat about 2 months ago as one only "needs" heat here for December and January.

My question is, Since the temperature is fluctuating 20-30 degrees in my house each day should I worry about the accompanying swing in relative humidity.
As you can see in the immage below it is considerable. Granted a bit less inside the house.

Will my bass (carved top) get too "used" to a RH extending up to 80 and 90 percent?

Is it overkill to be putting my bass in the case and covering that with a blanket at night?

(Image from NOAA at: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/get...id=KMFR&num=72)

[reedo35]

Originally Posted by Menacewarf

Is it overkill to be putting my bass in the case and covering that with a blanket at night?

Couldn't hurt. That's what I did with my Bass on the last winter tour. At least it wasn't ice cold when I took it out. Another option to maintain a constant temp is to get an inexpensive space heater (20-30$) from home depot or somewhere and set it at the temp you want in the room.

[Menacewarf]

I have considered a little heater but I have an inclination that it will produce 'dry heat' for some reason. Maybe it's just some errant memory of a space heater's smell but something about the idea of using one makes me think I will be asking for even more drastic temperature (and thus humidity) swings.
I was hoping someone would squash my fear of these temperature swings but I guess the answer is to just buy a little gauge and compare the Temp and RH ranges in in my room with the same ranges inside the case.

[Damon Rondeau]

Air can hold more or less gaseous water depending on air temperature and pressure. Your relative humidity goes up when your room temperature goes down because the air is more relatively "saturated" (cold air can't hold as much water as warm air), not because there is more water in the air. If you cooled the air enough you would reach the dew point, where the relative humidity is 100%. Then you would get dew or frost in the room. When you think about stuff that's bad for basses, dew is right up there.

[GerardSamija]

With a hybrid bass, you can often get away with even fairly radical humidity changes. I've seen quite old hybrids (50+ years) with almost no cracks in the belly, where fully carved but otherwise similar makes of basses about the same age are usually subject to a few rib cracks and at least a few lower belly cracks related to winter shrinkage. But the biggest problems come with carved flat-backed basses, where the dynamics of cross-plate shrinkage usually make for huge cracks up the back, braces cracked and un-glued from the back, open seams (especially in the lower C-bouts where the big mid-brace sits), and it seems more belly cracking than with arched-back basses. That last I can't say with certainty, just seems that's what I've seen more often.

The traditional 3 or 4 braces used across the grain of a flat-back have always seemed a dumb idea to me, since starting work on basses over 15 years ago. Here's a thin, flat piece of maple, which naturally wants to shrink and grow by up to about 5% in width while fluctuatiing between winter (often sub-30% RH due to over-heating in homes) and summer (often in excess of 70% RH), and makers presume to 'stop' that motion using stiff spruce braces across the grain! Nonsense. Can't be done. Wood moves, and if you try to stop it this way you might also want to try stopping horsetail weed or bamboo from growing by paving over them with asphalt. There isn't a glue made that's strong enough, and even if there were, you'd only get worse cracks up the back.

So for a while I've been using stepped brace contact on flatbacks when replacement of braces has been necessary. By this I mean carving out gaps, making contact for about 60% of the length of the brace in a pattern something like a Roman aqueduct. Also lots of clearance - at least half an inch - at either end, keeping well away from the rib linings. Then I tag down the ends of the braces with strong raw linen and hide glue. Time will tell of course, but so far I've not seen any such braces let go at all, and the back splits likewise.

A couple of years ago I saw a Jackstadt for the first time and was very impressed by the intelligence of using a long X-brace instead of braces running perpendicular to the grain of the back. This scissor pattern allows for a lot of wood movement, simply letting the brace arms bend with seasonal movements in the back, but retains sufficient stiffness for mechanical strength and whatever acoustical role the braces might have (I'm not very convinced of this aspect - bracing is mostly or all about structure on flat-backs in my opinion). The kerf-cuts with fill strips to make the upper X-brace curved are another great idea, allowing for a subtle curve in the upper back rather than the inherently fragile sharp kerf bend. I see a lot of broken kerf bends.

Anyway, just some thoughts on what works and what doesn't where bass humidity is concerned. For my place, where there are always half a dozen or more basses around these days, humidity control is simple enough. We have forced air furnace heat, but the windows are so leaky (and landlord unlikely to renovate any time soon) that it doesn't usually get below about 40% here. When it does for a week or two during a cold spell, as hygrometers fall below the mid-30's, I just put a big pot of water on a hotplate in my workshop and set it to the lowest setting. The steam is enough to keep basses from popping seams and opening old repaired cracks while they're here. I make sure the humidity doesn't go above about 60%. Thinking about a vaporiser... might get one instead of the hotplate, as we've got a toddler around the house now and he loves my workshop. Loves plinking on bass strings too.

As for repairing the cracks once low RH has done its evil work, I've seen a lot of big cleats from other luthiers fail completely to restrain later openings of the same cracks. Once there's a path of least resistance no little bits of wood tacked on are likely to prevent re-opening should RH fall into the 20% range. I find linen, sometimes overtop of very tiny spruce cleats (less than 1cm square), to be the most effective reinforcement. Saturated with hide glue and then polished once dry, such a patch is just as acoustically reflective as maple or spruce, but much stronger in resisting cracking. And unlike a stiff, over-sized cleat on the surface (or inlaid - as I'm having to remove from a number of places on a nice old Bohemian I'm restoring at the moment, most of them failed on one or the other side of cracks), linen has the flexibility to move subtly with wood, and thus to help spread out the localised forces of seasonal shrinkage, usually keeping old cracks well closed.

In extreme cases, such as ribs cut from a very twisted maple tree with ancient, many-times-re-glued cracks, linen at least keeps the cracks covered in winter so that sound isn't 'leaking' out of them and they're not getting any worse. The ancients used linen reinforcement in ribs for good reasons. I wish more modern luthiers would respect that tradition. When I see cloth patching it is all too often some bit of old sheeting, usually cotton, sometimes even a cotton-synthetic blend. Rarely raw linen, which is the only natural cloth virtually impossible to tear, and also inherently hygroscopic. Pick up a piece of dark grey, natural linen. It's cold to the touch. That's because it's wetter than anything else around it, always. A few percent at most, but significant in keeping repairs in wood stable, while not enough to cause the hide glue to let go.

[Bass]

Originally Posted by Menacewarf

...Is it overkill to be putting my bass in the case and covering that with a blanket at night?...

Don't forget to tuck it in and kiss it goodnight.

[Don Carrigan]

Maintaining a new (or old!) bass.
#1: use a Humidifier;
#2: use "citrus" oil (lemon or orange) but WITHOUT WAX content.

I live 35 miles north of Boston (Gloucester, MA). Our winters are just as long as yours owing to the temperature of the Atlantic Ocean on three sides of Cape Ann. We also get less sunshine due to prevailing winds that carry pollution haze from factories in the south and west. Moreover, I have forced hot air -- the worst possible condition to best preserve a double bass.

So I use up water in a 5 gallon humidifier every two days in the room with the bass, kept between 40 and 50 degrees humidity. It makes a difference! Before that my 188 year old Prescott was do dry that it "exploded" during a concert -- the bottom seams all let go at once: BANG!

The second thing I do is to lightly rub citrus oil (lemon or orange in a commerical "polish" mix) all over the bass. The cells in the wood loose oil over the years, but oiling can be overdone. I oil my 1820 Prescott about once a month and I can see where the oil penetrates and where it is already absorbed and doesn't penetrate. However, I suggest you consult a good luthier for best method for oil use. I don't think ordinary "polish" with wax content is a good substitute because it builds up and collects dust or resin particles. Because my old bass has cracks all over the belly, I feel compelled to seal them up with citrus oil before they separate entire. It's working, too. The belly seems more slightly rounded instead of the flatter appearance before oil treatments a few years ago.

Don Carrigan, prescottviol@earthlink.net
See Prescott data/images: http://home.earthlink.net/~prescottviol/

Photos:
#1: My 1820 Prescott in 2004, while still sporting 4 strings on a 3 string neck
http://home.earthlink.net/~prescottv...arborBEACH.jpg
#2: Healing the cracks on the 188 year old belly
http://home.earthlink.net/~prescottv...5strgFRONT.jpg

[drurb]

Originally Posted by Don Carrigan

...The second thing I do is to lightly rub citrus oil (lemon or orange in a commerical "polish" mix) all over the bass. The cells in the wood loose oil over the years, but oiling can be overdone. I oil my 1820 Prescott about once a month and I can see where the oil penetrates and where it is already absorbed and doesn't penetrate. However, I suggest you consult a good luthier for best method for oil use. I don't think ordinary "polish" with wax content is a good substitute because it builds up and collects dust or resin particles. Because my old bass has cracks all over the belly, I feel compelled to seal them up with citrus oil before they separate entire. It's working, too. The belly seems more slightly rounded instead of the flatter appearance before oil treatments a few years ago.

Then there's this...

Originally Posted by KSB - Ken Smith

If you think Glue doesn't stick to Glue then when that Oil seeps into seams and cracks do you thing Glue will stick to Oil?

Dangerous advice you give here Don!...

If a Bass had any type of finish or Varnish at all, the Oil will never reach the wood unless it seeps into cracks, seams or worn areas where the varnish has been rubbed off.