Double Bass Busted seam help!!!

[JBarz]

Double Bass Making Book (Building, Construction, Upright, Acoustic) (violins.ca)

Thank you for this. I feel like a wormhole into the next ten years of my life just opened before me.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Thanks! But there will be no build - I'll leave that to the real makers. I just want to play the damn things. But today seemed to go well enough. No idea if it will hold like the first on, but like you told me a number of times, there's very little risk and lots of potential reward, so....

 

[1st Bass]

Double Bass Making Book (Building, Construction, Upright, Acoustic) (violins.ca)

Thank you for this. I feel like a wormhole into the next ten years of my life just opened before me.

That book, along with the Chuck Traeger book and lots of input from folks here on talkbass got me through my first bass.

Ask Matthew Tucker how it worked out.

 

[1st Bass]

I probably did not word that properly: what I intended was, “ask Matthew how it worked out for him.”

He built his first bass as I was building mine: he pressed on to become a professional bass luthier, while I relapsed into the smaller beasties; violins, violas, cellos, etc.

I have only built two basses, while he has built many. But we both began with that book, where basses are concerned.

Now I mainly build five-string instruments…

 

[JBarz]

If I have my druthers, I'll be building a 5-string high C, removeable neck, God willing. I'm already a Traeger devotee, but the actual building part has always seemed like it would be like a "meditating in a mountain-top cave on one foot for 20 years" kind of high-unobtainable objective. Super stoked for this resource. Thanks again!

 

[1st Bass]

It will be a labor of love: make careful plans, accordingly.

 

[GretschWretch]

while I relapsed into the smaller beasties; violins, violas, cellos, etc.

Someone once asked the late, much lamented firm of W. E. Hill and Sons whether they did anything with basses, only to be told, "We don't work on furniture."

 

[1st Bass]

Harsh!
(But funny!)

Inside the front cover of Peter Chandlers book, there is a photo of all the materials (wood, fittings, tuning machines, etc.) for building the specific bass he built in the course of the book. Total mass? 115 lb. Finished bass weighed 20 lb.(!)

Not many people are willing to carve away 95 pounds of wood to arrive at a double bass.

Most luthiers respond with an emphatic refusal to even work on double basses, let alone build one.

Maybe we are afflicted with a special kind of crazy… if so, I embrace it cheerfully!

 

[Steven Ayres]

Most luthiers respond with an emphatic refusal to even work on double basses, let alone build one.

I think it'd be great if more professionals were as clear about their limitations and willing to forego work they can't handle well — physicians and auto mechanics leap to mind.

 

[1st Bass]

Clint Eastwood (in his Dirty Harry role) agrees with you…

But some of those non-bass luthiers act insulted that you even asked.

that’s ok, too.