big band playing/mic in tailpiece

[Claude Bilé]

I'm a 2nd year bassist at the Adelaide con, i just picked up the double about a year ago. ive only done a few gigs around town and havent really needed to amplify myself, and if i do i usually just plug into the keyboard amp, which removes all 'acousticness' from my sound. But its ok, no one's listening anyway.

Recently i joined a community big band, which i did to improve my reading, there's a shortage of wind instruments at the uni atm... (theres 2 saxes, 0 trumpets, 0 trombones, and 8 basses in my year level!), so getting into one of the 2 big bands is tough. We recently did a gig in a town hall, about 1000 people there, and so i obviously needed amplification. I brought my amp/speaker along, which i use for electric playing which i love (250 watt head, 1 15inch speaker) but unfortunately didn't quite cut it in this setting. It lost all of its acoustic sound, was feeding like crazy (i ended up having to sit about 2 metres away from it, and could barely hear myself) and basically was one of the worst gigs ive ever done.

Now, i was talking to this with my teacher at uni, (Peter Dowdall) and discussing the various forms of amplification. i was lucky enough to see the Brad Mehldau trio earlier in the year, and was very interested to see how Larry Grenadier amp'ed himself, now i didn't quite see (i was sitting far back), but he was running through a PA speaker, which was on a stand behind him, and after tweaking it a bit, by about the 3rd song he had a beautiful, crisp, Larry Grenadier sound. Peter said back in the day, bassists used to get mic's, wrap them up in a towel, or something, and stick them under the tailpiece. So i was just experimenting with that, on my computer, and it blew me away, just the acousticness of the sound. ive never been able to pull such a sweet sound. now this is through garageband and a $20 mic. Which got me thinking, for a setup, maybe use a mic in the tailpiece, into a mixer, into a PA speaker. it seems like a cheap way to get a crisp acoustic sound.

So i've written a lot, but does anyone have a similar set up? What do other bassists do in big band situations? do u have any other suggestions? cheers.

[Phil Smith]

I have a realist pickup and a 2 channel AI coda, works fine. I've experimented with the mic but for feeback reasons haven't been able to get it work very well in that environment.

[longfinger]

I've used the mic-in-towel under the tailpiece method, as well as heard other players do this. I'm not a fan of it. First a good vocal style mic by Shure or Audio Technica costs about $150-$170, then it's designed to pick up sound from in front of it. When it's under the tailpiece, the bass is not in front of it, but rather to the side of it. What's in front of it is usually the drummer...

So the mic is not being used in a way it was designed for.

Then, by stuffing a towel wrapped mic under the tailpiece, you prevent the bass top and tailpiece from vibrating, and then the DB is not working as it was designed to do.

If you don't have a pickup, and you have an extra vocal mic handy, and you want to be able to move a bit on stage, well then this method is better than nothing. (Putting the mic on a mic stand and pointing it at the bass will give a better sound, provided that you don't move the bass, as even a few centimeters of distance change will drastically change what the mic picks up)

A good modern piezo p/u like the Realist or Full Circle, with a proper bass amp that can handle piezo signals is a great way to go.