Double Bass Heavy bows?

[jdapodaca]

I emailed the guy who builds the bows for Silvio Dalla Torre's students, and they're pretty reasonably priced. I've since deleted the email, but he sent me a pdf of all of his prices and stuff.

I think I remember him making 3 different bows in French and German, which is six bows.

Both the French and German came in a student, intermediate, and professional grade bow, and I think the prices were about $1,000 to $2,000.

The whole heavy bow thing really interests me. I'd like to have a pretty heavy bow, around 160 or more, for orchestra work and a more "normal" bow in the 140 range for solo stuff.

I don't recall ever seeing a bow over 160 on say, the lemur catalogs. Anyone have any suggestions on where to get a pretty heavy bow like that for around $1500?

 

[Ashley Long]

The one thing about having a heavy bow is that overall it will make you work much harder. Playing quietly with a heavy bow is a nightmare as is playing fast speeds at a high volume as it takes so much muscle to move the bow. Ive been playing my snakewood bow much more recently and the thing is so tip heavy that it constantly moves toward the floor and bounces to a large extent when playing quietly and changing bow in the center of the hair.

I assume that it is the weight of the tip that causes the bounce in quiet passages as it is quite a large tip and as snakewood is so stiff anyway, I think this exacerbates the problem. However, as I like the clarity and depth of sound it makes, I'm taking it to have some wood removed from the tip which I hope will rectify the balance and stop the bouncing. Im getting it looked at next week.

Has anyone else experienced something like this before?

 

[Henri Gross]

I know this thread died back in 2007, but I have two bows, one weighing in at 230 grams, and one at 260.

 

[Paps]

Have you any pictures? I'd be very interested in seeing such a beast.

 

[BassinCT]

As with any other variable, the technique can be refined to make use of the bow's qualities. I use a German bow that weighs around 164g, and it does require less effort to get thicker strings to move, but more attention is needed to avoid damping the vibration of the strings.