Hey guys,
First of all i'd like to say hey because I just joined TB and am loving it so far.
But anyways, I've been making my own rosin for about a year now and I am speaking from experience, you cant beat it. Here's a scnario:
Let's like you like your rosin hard but but hard rosin is harder than cement and medium rosin is just too soft for even the most tolerant hard rosin lovers. The solution is making your own rosin. Combining different companies with certain admirable qualities will get you the best of both worlds. I happen to like my rosin sticky and clingy but also like the traits that durable traits that hard rosin carries a long with it. So, I mixed in some Pops with some Hidersine #2 and Pirastro #3 (or some mix of the 2) and voila! a perfect rosin for me.
It's so easy to mix and match, some myths are that rosin change after being melted but if you melt together with other rosins, theyre outstanding traits tend to stick with them.
It's easy to do to.
You can start by getting all of the rosin cakes involve and putting them into a gallon ziploc bag (ROSIN ONLY! NO PAPER OR METAL!)
Get a meat tenderizer or a hammer and crush all of the rosin to a powder form, it doesnt have to be 100% fine powder but just all mixed up.
By using a double boiler or stacking pots, heat the pots pretty good and then pour that rosin on there, the texture will be sticky and you won't be able to use the pot with the rosin in it to cook, but at least you'll have some great rosin. Combining cakes also give you bigger batches!
After the rosin is mixed together and ready, you can take a rapid heat source such as a medium torch and torch the surface of the rosin mixture carefully as to get the bubbles out (if not i found the rosin works just fine, it just looks neater without bubbles).
You can choose which cup to pour it in, I usually like to pour it in cropped dixie cups because they normally dont stick to paper but there are a variety of options. Lots of people like the ketchup cups from your local fast food restaurants.
Just let the rosin sit for a while until its dry and cool and rosin away! There can be lots of experimenting done here and other bass players are often curious and impressed by one who makes their own rosin
But do it as another contribution for your search for tone or just a great rosin!
