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Double Bass floor decoupling?

#21
robobass said:
That sounds really good. Effective, fast, and cheap is a winning combination. I'm gonna try it. My only worry would be how to keep the board from sliding off the tube. Do you glue it?
Click to expand...

I just brought home a tube, and will try to take a pic tonight. As for sliding, it was never a problem in my application, but I imagine that some rubber cement would probably solve the problem. Otherwise, the rubbery-ness might make it stick well enough to the floor.
 
#22
fdeck said:
I just brought home a tube, and will try to take a pic tonight. As for sliding, it was never a problem in my application, but I imagine that some rubber cement would probably solve the problem. Otherwise, the rubbery-ness might make it stick well enough to the floor.
Click to expand...

Did you finish this project, and was it successful? I'm about to move into a condo and will probably need a sound solution.
 
#23
My, more ghetto solution is the top to a broken end table (any 1/4"+ thick piece of wood should work) shoved into a pillow case (on top of the pillow.) I then have an extra bathroom mat taped upside down on to of it...primarily for the non-stick surface it provides. It works pretty good so far...I haven't heard a knock since I started using it.

My downstairs neighbor used to knock on the ceiling when my wife couldn't hear me in the other room...it's louder through the floor than you think.

There is some other good advice here.
 
#25
chriscrob said:
My downstairs neighbor used to knock on the ceiling when my wife couldn't hear me in the other room...it's louder through the floor than you think.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I've discovered, the hard way. Hell I got a knock on the door because I was *tuning* (barely pulling the string to get it vibrating enough for the tuner) at 1am once.

It's going to get worse for me soon - moving into a much older building in a couple of weeks. Old place with hardwood floors...yeah, that's gonna transmit the bass right through. I picked up a practice mute today and it doesn't seem to be making that much of a difference.

My plan now is to build something like a mega-sandwich of Roxul filled plywood, or maybe just use the cheap broadband absorption panels I've already built out of that stuff, originally for recording. It should be an interesting experiment so I'll try and post some photos.

Got too much money tied up in basses right now, so I'm trying to avoid the EUB route...
 
#26
Hers an old trick I learned from a disco soundguy. They used this to prevent their subwoofers from bleeding into the Club a floor below.
Build a shallow frame with a bottom, maybe 6 inches deep.
Fill it up to 4 inches deep with dry sand. Cut a piece of wood or plywood and put it on top of the sand making sure that the piece doesn't touch the sides of the frame. Put your endpin on the 'floating' piece of wood.
you'll be surprised at how well this prevents bleed through the floor.
Sand doesn't transmit much energy.
if you have a cat this can be a pain, but otherwise......
 
#27
I have just made the move from a private home to a rental appartment and this is what I have done:

I took an old piece of press board about 24" x 24" and about 1" thick and attached five hard rubber round feet to it, one in each corner and one in the center.

It is large enough to stand on comfortably with my bass.

I also use a heavy rubber practice mute and I use the bow all the time.

We have wall to wall carpeting so I am sure that helps too.

Have had no complaints yet and I practice a 7 AM even on weekends.
 
#28
This talk about sand and rubber bumpers also makes me think... wouldn't just like 5 small sandbags and a plywood board do the trick? Should be crazy effective I would imagine.

Alot cheaper and easier than making a sand filled false floor.
 
#30
hdiddy said:
This talk about sand and rubber bumpers also makes me think... wouldn't just like 5 small sandbags and a plywood board do the trick? Should be crazy effective I would imagine.

Alot cheaper and easier than making a sand filled false floor.
Click to expand...

That would get the bass off the floor, but I think the beauty of the sand-filled false floor is that, in theory anyway, the sand will actually *absorb* the low frequencies.

I just did a little test with by 4/4 size bass. Lifting the thing right off the floor (which I'd consider pretty much completely decoupled) didn't stop the floor from vibrating a glass cup I'd placed there. That bass is louder than the one I want to use, but I think it's a clue that not only do you need to get the end-pin off the floor somehow, but also absorb that low end energy.

I think I might just suck it up and put some really low tension, quiet strings on as an experiment and see what that does for the volume too.
 
#32
robobass said:
If you really want to go crazy, how about building bridge adjusters that have tiny shocks built in? Make them so that like on some bike shocks, the damping would be defeatable for normal playing. A goofy idea to be sure, but loading up the bridge with a practice mute degrades bowing response. I wonder what's the smallest pneumatic shock that's ever been made?
Click to expand...

Had another brainstorm while loading out for tonight's soundcheck...

Anybody try something beneath the bridge feet? I took my Realist off the Eastman the other day, and it was noticeably louder. I'm going to try something like a doubled up strip of inner tube beneath both bridge feet to see what happens. Also considering a sandwich of the stuff with felt in between maybe -?
The drawbacks are that you'd need to detune, get the stuff under the bridge, then probably adjust the bridge height a bit before tuning up, before every practice session. But hey, if it works...
 
#33
"That would get the bass off the floor, but I think the beauty of the sand-filled false floor is that, in theory anyway, the sand will actually *absorb* the low frequencies."

Even with the bass off the floor, as you discovered, energy is still transmitted to the floor by the vibration.

That's the neat thing about the sand.
Sand will not transfer energy at all, the effect is that the sand absorbs it.
 
#35
fdeck said:
I do some work with extremely sensitive optical instruments, and the best poor man's quick and dirty isolator is a piece of 3/4 plywood on top of a partially inflated kids bike innertube. Cut a hole in the plywood where the stem of the innertube is. This is a trick from people who do amateur holography, because even the slightest vibrations totally screw up a hologram.
Click to expand...

Just got my innertube, laid a cutting board on top and don't have to cut a hole as friction is holding the two pieces together.
Thanks for the suggestion!
 
#36
Hardwood apartment floors are definitely not our friends.

I usually stand on my futon when practicing and it seems to help.
But you'd have to ask my downstairs neighbor, I suppose.
 

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