Double Bass Basses improving with age? (DB Forum Thread)

[Don Hergert]

I have several drummer friends who swear that cymbals get better as they age. One guy commented just recently on how he won't be around any more by the time his cymbals are sounding their best.

In regard to metal instruments, my Alcoa came to me with its age being around 90, plus it's been modified quite a bit, so I can't judge from that...

However I have a number of relatively new and very old banjos and Dobros to compare with, their sound-making mechanisms being mostly metal, and while they're all sounding good now, I can't in all fairness say the older ones sound better than the newer ones. Being realistic, there are just too many material, design and setup variables to attribute good tone just to age or to the amount of time they've been played.

That said, I, and a number of my peers, do seriously think older steel strings sound better than new ones -- we're talking about 3 to 20 years and older strings here. Again, there's no accounting for taste.

Personally, I think if there is a difference based on age and playing time, that difference isn't as recognizable as the difference caused by an experienced -- and sensitive -- touch.

 

[Steve Swan]

The Rabbath brothers seemed to be having a really fun time miming and hamming it up for these scenes !!

 

[Reiska]

I have several drummer friends who swear that cymbals get better as they age. One guy commented just recently on how he won't be around any more by the time his cymbals are sounding their best.

I quess the aging is about metal loosening with use and then dirt collecting to grooves and marks in the surface. Legends tell that back in the day some drummers even dug their new cymbals under ground for some time to darken the sound. FWIW I really like sounds of literally broken and pimped up cymbals, to go even further with the idea.

 

[Don Hergert]

I quess the aging is about metal loosening with use ...

In the banjo world there's a rumor about brass and bronze tone rings crystallizing with age and use. Similarly, for Dobros there is brass used for the cover plates and aluminum used for the biscuits, spiders and cones, plus some Dobro bodies are steel or aluminum, and again the crystallization discussion comes up from time to time. As mentioned earlier, I have and play a number of old and new of both of these types of instruments, and when trying to be objective, really can't say the old instruments sound better. There are some very nice sounding new instruments being made.

 

[Ed S]

In the banjo world there's a rumor about brass and bronze tone rings crystallizing with age and use. ...

Don't know about the crystalization, but I recall sitting at a lunch table with a couple of worldclass pickers/makers at a banjo camp a couple of years back, while they discussed the make-up of some older tone rings. Nearly all of the conversation was way above my head, but I recall them discussing very specific aspects of the molecular makeup of the alloys, and the forging temperatures. They agreed that these tone rings had never been duplicated.

This plywood thumper was wondering if anyone could actually discern the minute differences they were discussing, but I kept on quietly eating my lunch.

 

[Don Hergert]

They were right, many of the alloys and production processes aren't reproduced anywhere today, for a large variety of reasons. A couple of boutique tone ring makers have come close, and their tone rings are highly valued. But whether they actually produce different tone, who knows...

Having been involved since I was 15, I've learned over and over that here's a whole lot of snake oil out there. And it's not just banjos, I've felt right at home among similarly obsessed instrumentalists from every camp -- there's an OCD brotherhood/sisterhood of instrument players that we're all part of.

 

[longfinger]

IMO, testing something complicated like a violin is not the best way to find out if there is basis for the "tone wood improves with age" idea.

Keep it simple.

Isolate the wood by using matching pairs of tone wood sound boards. (perhaps have two more subgroups, unvarnished and varnished.) Flat boards are small, easy to test and practical to store dozens of pairs.

Test both.
Keep one set stored away.
Put the other set into some kind of background music playback system, and place it in a place that plays canned music 24/7 like a hotel lobby etc. (A music speaker system that uses a transducer element to vibrate the tone wood to get more volume).

10 years later, collect the tone wood sheets from the music playback systems, and repeat the tests done earlier.

24/7 canned music vibrations are perhaps 6-8+ times more hours than a regular human played instrument would get. Any measurable difference between the book matched pair of sound boards? If yes, then the rest of the belief has some credence. If no, then the differences of played and unplayed instruments would rest more in setup, glue joints changing, winter-summer expansion contraction etc.

 

[Don Hergert]

The problem is, no two pieces of wood are exactly the same, even book matched from the same tree. So, no two instruments built from wood are exactly the same.

While metallurgic processes can be very similar, there is also variance with metal stock, and with metal instruments, but especially so if they are hand constructed and/or hand assembled, and even more so if they incorporate wood.

Now, if you're testing one piece of wood, or one completed instrument to see and document its attributes, before making any effort to "open up" the sample, that could be interesting because you'd have a baseline of where that piece of wood or instrument was when it was new (or younger). But the exact same sample (including setup), test process technology and documentation would have to be available, for example in 50 years, in order to be able to test accurately again. And, 50 years is a long time to preserve process technologies and documentation.

In my experience, there are really too many variables and unknowns to produce a 100% reliable comparison.

 

[AGCurry]

Keep one set stored away.
Put the other set into some kind of background music playback system, and place it in a place that plays canned music 24/7 like a hotel lobby etc. (A music speaker system that uses a transducer element to vibrate the tone wood to get more volume).

10 years later, collect the tone wood sheets from the music playback systems, and repeat the tests done earlier.

Just to continue discussing what may be a total flight of fancy:
1. Wouldn't you want to subject the wood only to the sounds that it was designed for, i.e., a violin to the sound of a violin, a cello to the sound of a cello?
2. How would you test a piece of wood if it's not part of an instrument?
3. You could certainly identify differences in waveform, but other than loudness, how do you decide that one waveform is better than another?
4. How do you match the pairs?

 

[statsc]

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
- Hamlet (1.5.167-8)

 

[longfinger]

Just to continue discussing what may be a total flight of fancy:
1. Wouldn't you want to subject the wood only to the sounds that it was designed for, i.e., a violin to the sound of a violin, a cello to the sound of a cello?

Nope, we are testing something more basic, whether the wood improves with vibrations. The wood was not designed itself for violin or viola or guitar.

2. How would you test a piece of wood if it's not part of an instrument?

Various "tap-tone" tests, like luthiers do before buying or using a piece of wood, but more elaborate. Sending sound and vibrations through the wood and measuring / recording. (Like a geologist?) Even doing the "loose particles" on top of it to visually see the vibrations.

3. You could certainly identify differences in waveform, but other than loudness, how do you decide that one waveform is better than another?

Better or worse is now irrelevant. All we need to find out if the wood permanently changes as a result of prolonged vibrations. Get a "yes" or "no", to that first.

4. How do you match the pairs?

The same way luthiers do. They are cut booked matched pairs from the same piece of wood.

Say 60 pairs. 30 varnished, 30 unvarnished. 20 cedar, 20 spruce, 20 maple. (cedar for guitars) These details can all be refined.

 

[turf3]

Any time you test for an effect using a control group and an experimental group, no matter whether it's pieces of wood, humans with diabetes, or pieces of steel, there is variation amongst the members of both groups.

Engineers and scientists know the statistical methods used to determine whether two groups are equivalent at the beginning of an experiment, and then determine whether they have diverged as the result of the experiment. This is part of Laboratory Practice 101. Lay people - especially those with an axe to grind - make much more of these difficulties than they deserve. The propsal above for sample sizes of 20 pieces looks, on first glance, to be reasonable.

As I noted earlier, testing whether acoustical response of wood is affected by subjecting it to the types of vibrations incurred by a string instrument's body is a fairly straightforward experiment and I'm surprised no one posting here has yet found any published work. Determining how acoustical response of wood is affected by its natural aging is somewhat more difficult because of the time factor and the difficulty in accelerating aging without causing superfluous effects; but such tests could be designed and carried out, only with more expense and time.

Believe me, the instrumentation can detect differences your ears can't, not the other way round. A bigger challenge is deciding whether differences observed by the instrumentation are discernible to the human and if so how the human characterizes those differences. In my experience (not music related) we've typically made short sound files of "before" and "after" or "with" and "without" and then played these to subjects through a good pair of headphones. You have to use short duration files because the ears/mind adapt so rapidly and normalize a particular sound.

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

Believe me, the instrumentation can detect differences your ears can't, not the other way round. A bigger challenge is deciding whether differences observed by the instrumentation are discernible to the human and if so how the human characterizes those differences. In my experience (not music related) we've typically made short sound files of "before" and "after" or "with" and "without" and then played these to subjects through a good pair of headphones. You have to use short duration files because the ears/mind adapt so rapidly and normalize a particular sound.

Too many times have I poured energy into tweaking a music mix ... hours really ... only to have "lay" listeners respond to before and after versions: "They sound the same to me."

 

[GitmoMango]

Just wanted to throw this out there:

Double Bass ToneRite

 

[Bar Star]

Just wanted to throw this out there:

Double Bass ToneRite

I have always been curious about Tonerite but I could never bother to get $150 to try one. I even watched an attempted controlled experiment with the guitar version on YouTube but he tested the « before » sound spectrum with new strings and the « after » with the same set that had been subject to the same amount of vibration as the guitar instead of control strings so the small difference he detected may have been due to string wear.

In looking at their website via the link above, I found it interesting that some of the testimonials seem to hint about reversibility of the tone improvements. This seems to echo the experiences of some of the comments above about « warming up » instruments that haven’t been played in a while.

In my (extremely limited) personal experience, I have noticed some changes in in 7 year old Eastman Hybrid since I have added bowing my instrument for 10-15 minutes to my 3-4 times per week practice sessions in the last four months. This contrasts with the once a week pizz only I averaged before. The low end sound has become more open in both bowed and pizz.

So far, I think I’ll keep my routine up (it’s improving my hands, my eye’s (reading), my ears and possibly even my bass. I’ll continue to follow tone rite as they continue to develop their product as I believe they might be on to something. I am definitely interested to hear what more experience players and luthiers here think of it.

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

So for double bass, the $299 Tonerite simulates vibrations that are more like pizz, arco, in between? For an engineer/inventor, his website copy is vague.

I got a new Thompson hybrid about four months ago. It's sounding better every day, and tonal improvement has accelerated since I began regularly bowing. I'm a total beginner on double bass, and while it's exciting to see tonal improvement on this beast, I think I'll get more bang-for-the-buck by manually breaking in the bass. While it needs vibrations, this player can use the practice!

 

[damonsmith]

In my experience of trying a lot of basses, there is something that is just much smoother with an older bass. Often new basses can have brightness that can be good for acoustic small group playing because it cuts.
My bass was about 70 when I got it. I use to describe it as loud and clear but less rich than other instruments I had played. Now it is still loud and clear but it has become very rich.
I noticed a huge change for the better in terms complexity of tone after three years of dry Northeast winters in the upper register especially - this also came with a few top cracks!

 

[longfinger]

Just wanted to throw this out there:

Double Bass ToneRite

$299 double bass tonerite... vs $20 aquarium fish pump. LOL. This was a thread in Talkbass about 10 years ago. It's also all over the various acoustic guitar forums.

The other device was a transducer speaker that used the instrument as an acoustically amplified playback speaker. The instrument get's worked as you listen to recorded music.

 

[Emoody]

I'm concerned with this "Tonerite". For someone who hasn't time to practice 4 hours a day owning a new instrument it could be beneficial IMO ? Does any member use it?

 

[GonzoBfiddy]

I know this has been discussed before - on both the electric and upright sides - as well as w/ fiddles. And my understanding is that some people feel a stringed instrument continues to "get better" beyond some relatively short breaking/settling in period, with little real support either in experiment or rational theory.

I've been surprised at how many threads recently have made reference to decades old instruments having "opened up" and such. I find myself dubious to such claims.
-I can imagine that many older instruments that have survived might have been the better sounding ones when they were young. They were cared for better and valued more.
-I can imagine a single owner becoming increasingly in tune with the specific characteristics of an instrument, such that they can get more out of it.

But I can't figure out a reason to think that - say - a quality 50 (or 150) year old instrument would sound better than it did after 5 years of playing.

Anyone ready for another go-round?

I'm not sure if it's that the bass/instrument gets 'better' with age or if it's that the instruments being made now have evolved over the years to a point where there's a difference in tone/feel and the older, more familiar instrument just sounds 'right'. My PreEBee basses are my "reference" models for tone and feel. I judge all basses by them. The newer "Classic" MusicMan StingRay Basses are close to them in tone/feel, but the latest StingRay Special basses are altogether different for me. I'm STILL working to get comfortable with my 'Ray Special after 8 months. The feel of the naked or satin necks is NOT for me as I prefer the hi-gloss finish of my older basses. The pick up placement and the modern blade switch is another feature I'm still getting accustomed to. So it's natural for me to gravitate back to my familiar instruments.