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Double Bass 6,666! (DB forum thread)

#21
When I joined the forum I had a 1949 Kay M-1. It had belonged to a bluegrass player whose family eventually donated it to the local community orchestra where it was seldom used. A friend of mine bought it from the orchestra and later sold it to me. The bass actually wound up back in the same orchestra as I played with them for several years while I got my chops together.

That Kay served me well for many years, but as I watched the price of these basses climb, I coudn't help but wonder if I couldn't cash in on that vintage American plywood mojo and obtain a superior instrument. I now have a fully carved German bass that's 50+ years old and looks brand new becasue it was in storage for 40+ years, and thanks to my good ol' Kay I didn't have to go into debt to get it :cool:

- Steve

(I do wish I could have kept the Kay too)
 
#22
When I first started posting here, I was playing a beat-up Engelhardt. My first mission was to wear everybody out with questions on how I could turn that sow's ear into a silk purse: what if I refinished it? What if I put a compensated tailpiece on it? Maybe a new fingerboard. Every time, the estimated upgrade cost could not be justified compared to the value/sound of the bass.

I finally moved up to a hybrid Christopher (after more pestering here), which has served me well for about a decade. Would love a carved bass in maybe the $10K range so that I feel like I'm somewhat contributing to the bass sections I sit in, but each time I get close, reality steps in (job loss, kid goes to college, food runs out) and the carved bass dream is deferred. Maybe the next scratch-off will be the winner.

One more thing: Though I've had lessons and played many different gigs, I don't consider myself a formally trained musician. I freely attribute whatever strides I've made in my playing over the past few years to the knowledge and generosity of the many fine bassists who share their time here.
 
#23
I picked up the electric on the day before my 15th birthday 20 years ago and had been threatening to take up the DB since college in the '90s. The music program at NY's State University at New Paltz had a gorgeous, fully carved Juzek-ish thing that I just adored, but I never followed through.

A dozen years later, on a Friday night I answered a craigslist ad for a doublebass. The party selling it turned out to be the widow of a jazz musician who had played professionally around the Northeast during the '70s, and had died seven years earlier. She wrote me back Saturday afternoon while I was at the laundromat, and said that someone had offered her $250 for it the night before but never showed up. Did I think that was a fair price? I gathered the toddler under one arm and our wet laundry under the other and flew from Albany to lower Westchester in about seven minutes.

After I met this surprisingly young woman and her much older new beau (hmmm...daddy issues?), they pulled this godawful, filthy lump of canvas out of the back of their SUV. That poor cover looked like it had been doing hard time in a chicken coop. It was awful. But out of the bag came this beautiful old German plywood bass, strung lefty and all encrusted with filth.

Having done my TBDB homework I tapped around the edges and found a few open seams but found no major problems. I paid the $250 she was asking, tied the bass down in the back of my truck and headed back up the Taconic Parkway.

A couple of weeks later, acting on a tip from a member here, I got in touch with Bill Merchant. He re-cut the bridge and strung it right-handed, confirmed the bass bar was in the right place, refit the sound post, walked me through how to fix open seams and gave me a bag of glue granules, apologized for not having clamps to lend me, and charged me all of $108, tax included.
 
#24
KUNGfuSHERIFF said:
A couple of weeks later, acting on a tip from a member here, I got in touch with Bill Merchant. He re-cut the bridge and strung it right-handed, confirmed the bass bar was in the right place, refit the sound post, walked me through how to fix open seams and gave me a bag of glue granules, apologized for not having clamps to lend me, and charged me all of $108, tax included.
Click to expand...

Bill was also the guy who put me wise to what I'd found at the garage sale. Good karma points for that gentleman all around.
 
#27
My parents gave my first DB to me as a high school graduation gift.

The rosewood fb of the '41 Kay had been planed down to nothing, and the entire neck, now too thin to handle modern strings, had bowed way forward. Also, my father had taken it to a coffin maker for a setup or something. It was all gorilla glued up. Lovely.

Still, once I married and settled in Connecticut, I got to playing it with a jazz group that managed to gig around for a while... we played for seven or eight years and I got to where most casual observers thought I knew what I was doing on the thing. I even upgraded to a plywood Juzek with less insane action. Nothing is as loud as that Kay was, though. It sure had the boom boom.

TBDB really helped me out quite a lot. I learned what to listen for, what to look for, how to amplify, and how to tie a band's sound together with my instrument.

My career has taken me away from playing, though and I sure miss it! Nice to reminisce in a thread like this, though.

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#30
Ah...I still have my 1st bass...a really beat up 49 Kay C-1...I traded a Peavey electric bass and $450 for her at Midtown Music in Atlanta somewhere around 1991.She served me faithfully through music school and way more gigs and records then I can remember. Somewhere out there I got it in my mind that I needed a more solid bass and that journey led me here. What a great place this is. I have 4 ply basses now and what's funny is I started out looking for 1 carved bass !!! I get so attached to the Basses that I can't seem to let go of them..I'm sure you Cats can relate.......
 

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