Bowing on a bass guitar

[Oneirogenic]

Has anybody on here done it and if so can you share advice, experiences, what bows and techniques work best, etc. I know it's possible to bow on a bass guitar even if it is rather limited considering the flat bridge and neck. I'm considering adding bowing to my bag of tricks and I don't want to jump into it totally blind.

[JTE]

The rosin gumms up the strings pretty quickly. It's almost impossible to get the middle strings (A and D) because of the flat radius. You pretty much have to bow over the neck.

That's about all I recall from my attempts to do it decades ago.

John

[Oneirogenic]

I pretty much assumed anything on the A and D was impossible unless you bowed all the strings and muted which most likely produce quite a bit of noise

[MarkTAW]

Try an ebow instead. It's a small battery powered device that has a magnet that spins, which gets the string vibrating in a way that's reminiscent of a bow.

[WJGreer]

I tried it years ago as well. I found that, as is true on my acoustic basses, LOTS of rosin accumulation is necessary to allow the bow to grip the string enough to make it vibrate. The feel of the rosin was completely unacceptable to me when playing normally on an electric.

Have you thought about an e-bow?

[Oneirogenic]

I currently use an ebow and love it. just thought about trying something different. I saw a bassist use a bow to great effect on an acoustic piccolo bass guitar before but he mostly used it on his G or on all the strings to create noise. If can remember the guys name I will post a link