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Double Bass Good Golly! How did it ever come to this?!?

GretschWretch

GretschWretch

Supporting Member
Dec 27, 2013
12,449
25,120
East Central Alabama
#1
As I pursue a slow, more intensive migration from electric music to FAR, I'm systematically benching my acoustics to make sure they are gig ready. Most of the DBs have not been used in years and even are lacking strings. So I go to my box of (now used) strings (because at the time I could not afford to replace them with new) to see what I've got, and I find several sets of strings that are viable except for one string, say a G, that has somehow deteriorated beyond reclamation. So I think, "Okay, I'll find a set with another bad string but a good G and create a mongrel set and be good to go."

But then I remember, "Wait a minute; I've got packs of DB strings that have never been opened. I wonder what I have there?" What I have there is I have . . . I have . . . wait for it . . . I have nineteen sets (NINETEEN!) of unopened bass strings, including gut sets and sets for mandobass. Some I remember buying and know why I bought them; others, I have no idea. But I doubt I now will be mix-and-matching mongrel sets of used DB strings.
 
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#4
GretschWretch said:
Folk/Americana/Roots: genres like old-timey, bluegrass, some country, blues, straight-up folk, early jazz, even jug band. Stuff that was around even before there was any electrification of instruments.
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Ah. Interesting. I'm used to acoustic being the comparative for electric. "Dylan goes electric." "Acoustic blues as opposed to electric blues." etc.
Had never heard of FAR.
 
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#6
erratick said:
Ah. Interesting. I'm used to acoustic being the comparative for electric. "Dylan goes electric." "Acoustic blues as opposed to electric blues." etc.
Had never heard of FAR.
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FAR is not very commonly used to describe genres/styles of music. Kind of like you don't hear much about people playing POPRA music as a genre (progressive, opera, pop, rap, acoustic).
 
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#9
Pings Bass said:
It's new to me, and I play in an Americana band😜
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It's like this: if I say RAF, people are going to think I am referring to the Royal Air Force. If I say ARF they are going to think I am engaging on dogspeak. Would you prefer to have to spell the whole thing out every time you wanted to use it? Seems to me I am choosing the least among evils here. :smug:
 
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#12
Hmmm, Wiki says Roots includes Folk (which includes bluegrass), Americana and a number of other genre. For my use, most of the time I just say roots.

Of course, just like the Internet, Wiki is always right. :D

Fwiw, I had never heard the FAR acronym.

Back on topic, I've only played DB for going on 8 years now and I already have a fairly full string drawer. Isn't it a requirement???
 
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#13
Don Hergert said:
Hmmm, Wiki says Roots includes Folk (which includes bluegrass), Americana and a number of other genre. For my use, most of the time I just say roots.

Of course, just like the Internet, Wiki is always right. :D

Fwiw, I had never heard the FAR acronym.

Back on topic, I've only played DB for going on 8 years now and I already have a fairly full string drawer. Isn't it a requirement???
Click to expand...
Yes, while my Aquila synthetics were in the mail, I have just decided to go full gut on my new bass. But we'll see...
 
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#16
Don Hergert said:
Hmmm, Wiki says Roots includes Folk (which includes bluegrass), Americana and a number of other genre. For my use, most of the time I just say roots.

Of course, just like the Internet, Wiki is always right. :D

Fwiw, I had never heard the FAR acronym.

Back on topic, I've only played DB for going on 8 years now and I already have a fairly full string drawer. Isn't it a requirement???
Click to expand...
Since FAR seems to be so unknown, maybe I should have it trademarked and make my fortune off licensing. :cool:
 
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#18
Don Hergert said:
Hmmm, Wiki says Roots includes Folk (which includes bluegrass), Americana and a number of other genre. For my use, most of the time I just say roots.

Of course, just like the Internet, Wiki is always right. :D

Fwiw, I had never heard the FAR acronym.

Back on topic, I've only played DB for going on 8 years now and I already have a fairly full string drawer. Isn't it a requirement???
Click to expand...
New strings? Used strings? Both?
 
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#19
Stuart.C said:
I am FAR more interested in how one acquires 19 unopened sets. my OCD is inflamed just thinking about it.

are they all different, did you intend to put them and experiment, but then just practised bass instead?
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Sixteen posts and only two addressing the actual subject of the OP. FAR out. Have I struck a nerve? :bassist:

Okay, I'm going to go on short-term memory here from a couple of days ago; I'm not going to go back and take inventory. But I've got four (new) sets of Heliocore Solos, two sets of LaBellas (one gut, one tapewound -- wish I had more), three sets of Hofner, a couple sets of anonymous Asian guts and a couple of sets of steels also from Asian sources, one set of D'Addario mandobass strings and one of LaBellas. I have one anonymous set that cost only fifty-five dollars.

What I don't have, and wish I did, are more Thomastics, especially solo Spirocores, but all my Spirocores and ropecores are in the batch of used strings. Also wish I had more LaBella tapes.

The presence of so many Hofners tells me that all this started back in the nineties, probably even before there was a TalkBass, because at that time I had a Kay C-1B that really liked Hofners. Given the prices (for one set I paid only $55), suggests to me that all these were bought prior to the 2008 recession, at which time I was in a gigging band that became far more successful than any of us ever imagined it would. So I had the money.

I think whatever intentions I had were to just stockpile strings when prices were comparatively low and I had the money, rather than get to a point of need and not have and have to pay through the nose to get.
 
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#20
GretschWretch said:
The presence of so many Hofners tells me that all this started back in the nineties, probably even before there was a TalkBass, because at that time I had a Kay C-1B that really liked Hofners. Given the prices (for one set I paid only $55), suggests to me that all these were bought prior to the 2008 recession, at which time I was in a gigging band that became far more successful than any of us ever imagined it would. So I had the money.
Click to expand...

The solution is obvious: buy more basses until you find another one that likes Hofners.
 
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