Double Bass The Felt

I may be wrong, but I think their sole purpose is to protect the tailpiece. The string pull is distributed on all the felt ring's suface, and the felt being softer than wood, it doesn't make notches in the wood. It may also prevent buzzes.

We had a thread going on about these a while back - I asked and about 50% of the people use them. I personally have noticed no difference in resonance or tonality. So I think the idea that they protect the tailpiece is a good one.

I was told they are for reducing metallic tone of steel strings. This they seem to do.

A soft mount (ok, no jokes here) would change the way that the vibration from that end of the string reach the bass. I'd think that the change would be pretty minor as the action from the ball end of the string would be pretty dampened by the tail piece, tailpiece wire, endpin, and bottom block. I don't think that you get a lot of sound of out the tailpiece. The only guess that I would have on the way that the string would respond differently is that the core would act differently with the ball being mounted in mud, but the wrap of the string still touches the tailpiece directly, so no difference there?

Anecdotal evidence shared with me is that a dense wood tailpiece (like ebony) gets you a darker tone than a cheaper, lighter wood (like Maple or something) tends to be brighter. I've never changed tailpieces on a bass, so no way to confirm this myself. Perhaps BOLLBUSTERS (my first time that I Fuqua'd up a name) would have a comment on all of this.

Originally posted by Ray Parker

Anecdotal evidence shared with me is that a dense wood tailpiece (like ebony) gets you a darker tone than a cheaper, lighter wood (like Maple or something) tends to be brighter.

Click to expand...

Apparently, Ray Brown feels that the heavier the tailpiece, the more it soaks up vibrations, so he tends to get lighter ones.

Then there are the guys like Laszlo who go with no tailpiece at all.........

Monte

My comment, PARKIT, would be to stop arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and go practice yer dang bass. Just livin' up to your Fuquazation!

Time spent on the axe isn't a shortcoming of mine, though. I am hanging around still recovering from a triple that I did on Saturday wherein played pretty much straight from 11am to 2:45am. This kinda stuff seems to kick me in the pants way more than it did when I was 25. Good for your mental, emotional, and physical chops, though. Another year of this and I'll be where I was 12 years ago