Had an interesting discussion this past weekend with a bassist friend of mine regarding the B1. He is a DB guy, no electric playing at all, and was very interested in the Barker. He stopped by my Sunday afternoon jazz date and noodled around with the bass during a break, then asked "How long is the learning curve on a bass like this?"
Now, of course, as a DB player he had issues with the scale length, the (by comparison to a DB) flat neck, small body, etc, etc, but it made me think about how long it really took me to be comfortable with the bass. After pondering that a bit, I came up with 3 levels in my learning curve ...
Level One: Immediately after I got the bass, I was comfortable enough with the verticle positioning to play semi-proficiently within about a half hour. Thought I was hot stuff, that is until I took it to a studio date after owning it for 1 week and found out how terrible I was in controlling the sustain
. Humbled, I went to ....
Level Two: I started using the Barker more than just one quiet set per night when gigging (I was playing the B1 for the first dinner set at my restaurant gigs then switching over to my slab basses for the rest of the night). Made some adjustments to the positioning with the stand, eventually abandoned the stand altogether, switched strings, adjusted the action (raised it slightly), and a few other changes to make it more "comfortable" to play. The bass really started to sound great the more I used it, until I started to use it exclusively for jazz gigs (mostly duo/trio work). I found myself reverting back to DB habits, especially when reading charts, which obviously messed with my intonation
Level Three: Now, with over 2 years of B1 playing time under my belt, the bass is 2nd nature to me. It's at the point where I can just play it without thinking "Wait a minute, this thing is verticle, not horizontal, blah, blah, blah ...". Where before, I would have to kind of do a head check before playing, now the bass is just a part of me.
So I guess my answer to my friends question should have been: I was able to play it immediately, but it took me about 1/2 year to be "intimate" with the bass ....
BTW, I'm really enjoying sitting down with the bass and I'm back to using the stand when sitting ...
