Well, after nearly a year and a half of planning and waiting, I finally picked up my fully-carved Upton Concert! This all started a while back when I had a “bass-off” between my fully-carved Romanian and one of Upton’s European-made Professors. I placed an order for the Professor but after finding out that Upton was planning domestic production, I put my order on hold and hung back and waited. After all, I had a really nice bass to play. Over time, they ramped up their production and introduced new models. I finally settled on the fully-carved Concert model. I got it with a few extras: double-purfling on the top and back, English sycamore neck, and Rubner engraved-plate ebony hatpeg tuners. It was SOOOOOOO worth the wait! The obligatory bass-porn is below.
Okay, so how does it sound? Frankly, I figured that I wouldn’t be saying a word about the sound in this first post because, being only days old, the bass would have to settle in. I’m sure it still will but when I played the first note on it, I was nothing short of stunned. It already has a big, dark, “beefy” sound and the “bloom” can even be heard on the E just above the neck on the G string. Let’s just say that projection is no problem! This brand new bass sounds older than my “old” bass. So much for the notion that a new bass has to sound “green!” I play mostly pizz. but I had to pull out the bow. Oh my! Playing the open E or the G in first position on the E seemed to rattle just about everything in my living room that wasn’t tied down. The windows were literally shaking. My former bass never did that! Over the last 35 years, I’ve played a bass or two. The only basses I had ever played that were this much of a treat for the player were and still are WAY out of my price range. Gee, and to think it’s gonna improve!
Great to see things moving in a positive direction.
I sure do wish that I could have waited the year-and-a-half it took for a bass like yours - I am glad that you could! Also, I am comparing my $6K bass to your $10K bass...
. They always creak a bit, sooner or later, and the adjustment is coarser than something like the KC strings tuners. But then again, the nice thing about the hat pegs is the reduced mass at the top of the neck. When I bought my bass, I did an A/B comparison with my bass and a virtually identical Upton "Professor" bass - mine with/the other bass without the hatpegs; the hatpegs won, in that particular case, sonically speaking.
