Okay, I made the plunge and picked up an ergo four from Jesse. I think it is pretty nice for what I paid. He made this one in sunburst lacewood and it is gorgeous.
My myspace page (linked from my profile) has pictures if you want to see it.
Does anyone have any tips on getting a hybrid string to make that tight radius on the gotoh tuner? I just drew blood (literally) and threw $40 out the window at the same time trying to put on an obligato A. I decided to stop there, and see if I can figure something out before ruining the E too. I might try different tuners as I really want to have the same strings on my ergo as my double bass. Right now I have the obligato D & G on there, and the original A & E, it is kinda funny because the obligatos sound really nice, but put out half the volume at low frequencies than the strings it shipped with.
I bought the Ergo so I could have a quiet way to practice at night. I am a night owl, my girlfriend is not. I have a day job, and I tried my hardest to get up early, but I just can't get up an hour earlier to practice. I think it will be perfect for practicing most of the music I play (I play in a community orchestra, and I am learning jazz.) This thing is great for practicing arco unamplified--not loud enough to bother someone in the next room if they are trying to sleep, but loud enough to hear yourself.
Here are my impressions after playing it for a couple of hours:
The string height and spacings are very comparable to my double bass at the octave they were within a 1/16th of each other--I got lucky on this and I won't need to modify the bridge. The feel is natural for me, I don't have any more trouble with intonation on this than I do my normal bass.
My thumb sticks ever so slightly to the back of the neck, so when doing rapid shifts to different positions I will move the stand, lift the bass off the floor, or wiggle the bass around. Since there is no way to lean into a body it it is difficult to fix this problem. Maybe it is because the finish is still curing--I will give it a few days and if I still don't like it I will probably sand the back of the neck bare.
The position markers make me look at my hands, this is bad. (Nothing wrong with the bass, I just get distracted by them--instead of just trusting my ear like I should be doing.)
It is an "E" neck, not a "D" neck. Again, nothing wrong with that, but most 3/4 double basses are D necks. My brain is dealing with this with less trouble than I anticipated. The top of the neck is flat--so the reference point I use for half position doesn't exist.
By setting the cymbal stand with one leg facing directly forward, I can lean the bass back on the other two legs and rest the neck on my shoulder when I play in thumb position. It is the only way I could get enough pressure to use vibrato without destabilizing the bass. Doing it this way feels pretty natural--very similar to playing a double bass in thumb position.
The amplified sound is okay. I mean, I didn't expect it to sound like my carved bass--that would be naive. Pizzicato sounds very similar to a double bass with a practice mute on it, you know the type of mute I mean--a big piece of rubber that engulfs the bridge. The sound similarity makes sense because there is no body to resonate. Arco, doesn't sound too well in my opinion. It is very nasal and bright, this is because of the piezo pickups--I just don't care for the sound of piezo pickups played arco--nothing wrong with the design, I don't like the $200 fishman piezo pickups either. I don't know if there is any way to fit a gage realist to this thing, I wonder how it would sound then . . .
My myspace page (linked from my profile) has pictures if you want to see it.
Does anyone have any tips on getting a hybrid string to make that tight radius on the gotoh tuner? I just drew blood (literally) and threw $40 out the window at the same time trying to put on an obligato A. I decided to stop there, and see if I can figure something out before ruining the E too. I might try different tuners as I really want to have the same strings on my ergo as my double bass. Right now I have the obligato D & G on there, and the original A & E, it is kinda funny because the obligatos sound really nice, but put out half the volume at low frequencies than the strings it shipped with.
I bought the Ergo so I could have a quiet way to practice at night. I am a night owl, my girlfriend is not. I have a day job, and I tried my hardest to get up early, but I just can't get up an hour earlier to practice. I think it will be perfect for practicing most of the music I play (I play in a community orchestra, and I am learning jazz.) This thing is great for practicing arco unamplified--not loud enough to bother someone in the next room if they are trying to sleep, but loud enough to hear yourself.
Here are my impressions after playing it for a couple of hours:
The string height and spacings are very comparable to my double bass at the octave they were within a 1/16th of each other--I got lucky on this and I won't need to modify the bridge. The feel is natural for me, I don't have any more trouble with intonation on this than I do my normal bass.
My thumb sticks ever so slightly to the back of the neck, so when doing rapid shifts to different positions I will move the stand, lift the bass off the floor, or wiggle the bass around. Since there is no way to lean into a body it it is difficult to fix this problem. Maybe it is because the finish is still curing--I will give it a few days and if I still don't like it I will probably sand the back of the neck bare.
The position markers make me look at my hands, this is bad. (Nothing wrong with the bass, I just get distracted by them--instead of just trusting my ear like I should be doing.)
It is an "E" neck, not a "D" neck. Again, nothing wrong with that, but most 3/4 double basses are D necks. My brain is dealing with this with less trouble than I anticipated. The top of the neck is flat--so the reference point I use for half position doesn't exist.
By setting the cymbal stand with one leg facing directly forward, I can lean the bass back on the other two legs and rest the neck on my shoulder when I play in thumb position. It is the only way I could get enough pressure to use vibrato without destabilizing the bass. Doing it this way feels pretty natural--very similar to playing a double bass in thumb position.
The amplified sound is okay. I mean, I didn't expect it to sound like my carved bass--that would be naive. Pizzicato sounds very similar to a double bass with a practice mute on it, you know the type of mute I mean--a big piece of rubber that engulfs the bridge. The sound similarity makes sense because there is no body to resonate. Arco, doesn't sound too well in my opinion. It is very nasal and bright, this is because of the piezo pickups--I just don't care for the sound of piezo pickups played arco--nothing wrong with the design, I don't like the $200 fishman piezo pickups either. I don't know if there is any way to fit a gage realist to this thing, I wonder how it would sound then . . .
