Rudolph (Rudolf) Fiedler Basses

[Bass Barrister]

I've heard little talk about basses from this company and there have only been a few tangential mentions about them on TB, and two of them have come in the last couple of days. Aoubt a week ago, I was speaking to someone at Robertson's about another bass. During our talk, he mentioned the RF name as one example of high quality affordably priced basses.

After a little digging, I've learned that Rudolf Fiedler is located just outside Prague and is owned by Jiri Povolny and Andrew Collins (a Czech name if you've ever heard one). I've tried the Jiri Povolny bass for sale at a440 in Chicago - it's beautiful and powerful but that big bottom bout is just too big for me. There have been a couple of JPs offered by Shank's and Ken Smith (he whose name must not be spoken) has spoken very favorably about the JPs he's seen. I know that RF violins and cellos get favorable reviews.

Now I see this new outift, Atlantic Strings, offering RF basses for as much as $13k. There are, however, no photos and no specs on the models. RF itself at one time had a website but that's down now.

So that's all I know about the Fiedler basses. Can anyone else offer some first hand experience?

[Andrew Grandahl]

I just bought one. It's beautiful. It plays extremely well. No wolfs. It is loud as hell and has an amazing sound. 14k, sounds like a bass well into the 20's.

[LouisF]

If you Google Jiri, you'll see that he has some very sophisticated theories about wood, density, cuts etc that (he says) make his new instruments sound old. A friend of mine has one of his high end cellos and its quite a nice, warm instrument. I did talk to Mike Shank at one point about the Grancino copy of Jiri's that he has - and it's supposed to be quite an impressive instrument.

Louis

PS: I was curious about the Atlantic Strings site, too and their mysterious KCC basses. Odd