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Double Bass Need a reccomendation

N

Nick Ioannucci

May 18, 2005
1,148
2
Connecticut
nickioannucci.blogspot.com
#1
i got a new bass last year, and am unhappy with the bow my parents picked up. i was looking for a reccomendation for a low cost bow that would give me good sound. i do not now what my price range is yet but i will soon find out :) . i am also interested in graphite bows, because from what i have read there are low cost graphites that sound better than expensive wooden bows. please help.

thanx
 
#2
Nick -- I can mention a couple of possibilities, but the most important thing, I think, is for you to go to a shop and try out several bows and see what type works best for you. One possible brand to look for is Erich Steiner. I have a French-style bow from them, for which I paid about $250, which is on the low end of the price scale for decent bows, and it works fine. Also, several TB participants here have bought bows from Bob Golihur (http://www.urbob.com), who sells bows I believe for $200 or so (I may be a bit off on the price), and they have offered pretty good reviews of Bob's bows.

If you go through a mail-order bass house called Lemur Music (you can also find them on the web), they will advise you and let you order two or three bows at once, try them for a few days and then decide which one you want to buy (or none of them if you don't want). I bought a bow from them that way.

Good luck.
 
#3
Besides Bob G. which has some nice bows for the price, Arnold S. (TBs own) at his shop AES has these great Bows from Brazil for around $500. or so and play like bows in the 1-2k range. The better the Bow you can afford, the better you will play and the less bad habits you will develope compensating for a Bad, light, out of balance Bow.
 
#4
A light bow isn't always a bad thing. I play with an Ary France bow that cost $700, it is light and sort of on the short side as well, but I like it.

Just go and try bows, you will know which ones sound good with your bass and with your playing. Then decide how much you want to spend and buy one.
 
#5
thank you very much. it would be hard for to actually go somewhere to try bows out because iam 14. so i have to et someone to drive me. in addition the only plass around me that has bass equipment is a place called constantine which is fairly overpriced. so i may try the mail order thing. still looking for a reccomendation for a graphite bow though cause i hear they are quite nice and very durable because i do alot of traveling mith my bass between school events and different orchestras. thanx again
-nick-
 
#6
sorry to double post, but i have found a carbon fiber bow for 150, the preand name being premiere, and i understand that carbon fiber and graphite are comparable to higher end wood bows to a certain extent. if this is true i would be happy because this is well in the price range of a fourteen year old whos only income is bass lessons.
please and thank you.
-nick-
 
#10
Its hard to describe CF/graphite bows without being general. Basically, you get what you pay for. If you want a 150 dollar bow, it will most likely play like a 150 dolla bow. The nicest cf/graphite bow that I have played is the Carbow, it was around 600 USD. I really liekd it, thought it had a lot of flex and such. My Dupree bow works wonders, and it was 700. I think that if you are serious about a bow, then you should save up and get a nice one. Barry Kolsteins shop is in Baldwin, NY, which is on Long Island. Take a day and go out there, you wont regret it.
Peter Ferretti
 
#11
My self and a couple other guys that study with the same teacher as myself have either tried or purchased bows by Londoner from Woodwind Brasswind-www.wwbw.com, and for the price, they really seem to be a good deal (right around $250). My teacher took one to rehearsal with the orchestra he plays with and asked the other guys in his section what they thought the bow would cost and all of them said that it could easily be a $1000 bow. When he told them the price their jaws dropped.
After trying one out for a while, I dont think its the one for my bass, but I am looking to spend a little more when I do take the plunge. It did seem to be a decent bow though.
Good luck.
 
#13
Nick Ioannucci said:
i got a new bass last year, and am unhappy with the bow my parents picked up. i was looking for a reccomendation for a low cost bow that would give me good sound. i do not now what my price range is yet but i will soon find out :) . i am also interested in graphite bows, because from what i have read there are low cost graphites that sound better than expensive wooden bows. please help.

thanx
Click to expand...
A fairly recent thread relevant to your bow preference / need is here:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=158503

Reading through the answers to your post and your reactions to them, it seems to me like you are not hearing what you want to hear. If you want someone to recommend a carbon fibre bow, well some of us may only recommend what we think is a good bow. Probably that is going to be a wooden bow. Carbon fibre, IMO (disagree if you like), has not been really perfected yet for bows. I really think this is a case of a material looking for another use, perhaps one for which it is ill-suited. I may be proven wrong, but since the introduction of carbon fibre in the mid 1970's, it has been a material in search of uses. It has found a few, but most of the things that it was tried for are still made of the materials that preceded carbon fiber. The notable exceptions are sporting goods equipment like golf clubs and tennis racquets. Anyway, if you read through the reviews of several bows in this forum, you should find one that will work well. I use one of Bob Gollihur's brazilwood bows. They are well under $200 and great for the price, probably not bad for someone who intends to pay for it with bass teaching $$. If you have more than that budgeted, try some of the other ones folks have suggested, and try not to look for an excuse to buy carbon fiber in a recommendation.
 
#16
I bought a french and a german Premiere CF bow. I was very happy with each, in that they didn't cost an arm and a leg, and quite frankly, they sounded as good, if not better than some of the lower priced bows mentioned here. Big caveat though. . . this was several years ago, and the brand went away for a while, so who knows what ww&bw, etc. has now carrying the Premiere CF name.
Just since I commented, my German one took a suicide dive, and cracked near the tip. I was able to fix it with crazy glue. I won't use it in public, but it is good enough for practice.
 
#17
So, I disagree about CF being a material seeking a use, at least for this application.

CF bows can be good. I have a Gage Metropolitan, which I'm very pleased with. It comes out of the same process as the Coda CF bows, and they play very similarly. I've also had a go with an Upton CF bow that was good value for the money.

When it comes down to it, a CF-based composite bow is less work to make than a wooden one, and the materials are perfectly consistent and do not have any rarity value worth mentioning. So that means a good CF bow is likely to be better value, presuming the maker knew what they were doing.

However, then marketing steps in, and of course the maker may decide to price the bow at the going rate for a bow of that quality, just because they can make more money that way.

The thing is, I think CF is the only kind of bow you can recommend to someone based on brand and price only, because there's very little variation between individual bows of the same design. So if you can't try out a whole bunch, read up on what people think of the CF bows and buy one that fits your budget.
 
#18
Well, I saw that they ( the Premiere CFs), existed again and my old german one had cracked from abuse and is held together with super glue, so I took some tax refund money to get a new one that I was assured by the "product specialist" that it was identical to the old one sold a few years ago.Not a chance! Beware! This is a dead stick, with different printing, winding. . . I have been putting off making that call to returns.
They put the "a*s, in assured".
 
#19
I bought a french pernambuco from Worldofbow online. About $215 it cost me, and I am very pleased. I play it in the Bronx Symphony. Our section leader plays a snakewood from the same vendor, about $60 more. The only bow I've played that flat out beats them was a 2 grand Siefert. Great value I say.
 

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