I play in a jazz piano trio, and am considering adding bowing to my repertoire. Can't afford much more than $1500. Not interested in traditional DB, can't transport. Thanks in advance! BASS.
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Double Bass How is the Ibanez UB804 for bowing?
- Thread starter misterCRUSH
- Start date
It is technically bowable. It has a radiused fingerboard which means that you will be able to bow one string at a time if you want. It has a much more cello-like string length of 34” compared to a 41” or 42” for most double basses. Not sure what strings come stock on it but roundwounds tend to not bow well. It all depends on your expectations really. Also, do you already know how to play Fretless? That would be helpful because a bow exposes bad intonation very quickly. Learning actual double bass technique would help quite a bit with intonation as well, there’s reasons that we have different positions and all that. Playing this thing with Fretless electric technique will often leave you exposed and confused, intonation wise, with no tactile landmarks or positions to refer back to. Regardless of the left hand, Playing arco itself is a challenge that you may be underestimating. There are a lot of joints involved and it gets complex quickly, lessons are always recommended, it’s not a thing anyone learns naturally. Shoulder, elbow, wrist, fingers, bow weight, bow speed, bow placement. It’s not really a “pick it up in a weekend” type thing, it takes a while before you can honk out something with a decent tone. I don’t mean to be discouraging, just honest. I began as an electric bassist myself. It’s best to just consider double bass a whole separate instrument that happens to be tuned the same. If all that hasn’t discouraged you, then use what budget you have left on a carbon fiber bow, don’t forget you’ll need rosin as well. You’ll get a lot more for your money in your price range with a carbon fiber bow than with wood, you could probably even get a cello bow, it may be a better match for that instrument anyway. I have a Fiddlerman carbon bow that’s worth the $110 I paid for it. As for rosin a cello rosin may be the best choice. There may be better options out there too, stagg and palatino have been written about on here quite a bit. If it’s just the sound your after, you can do quite a bit with a volume pedal and a Fretless, you can use it to both clip off the fronts of notes and swell like you can with a bow. A good reverb can add quite a bit to that as well. Whatever you choose, I hope it works well for
You.
You.
A solid body EUB is bowable with metal wound flatwound strings, but it is a bit harder to start the string than on a DB.
It is also possible that a good bow for DB is not as good for a solid body EUB.
The short scale and the limitation to BG strings makes it even harder.
Don’t invest too much in the bow for this instrument. Either go the cheap route with a Brazil wood beginner bow or get a low to medium priced carbon fiber bow. You first need to learn to bow at all before you can check out which bow works bette than another one.
Wooden bows differ a lot from one to the next. CF bows less inside the same series. Wooden bows are warmer, CF bows are a sometimes a bit cold.
A nice CF bow is the Finale bow. I got one used and it is still my best bow, but I have played once a wooden bow (on my DB) that played without any effort and was “cheap” at 1600€. But too expensive for me and I still lost (forgotten) one bow that was 80€ only.
I don’t want that with a 1600€ bow.
My recommendation would be to get a better DB scale instrument (like an MK studio) for your bow money and get a cheap Brazil wood bow (that you should check with your instrument out of several bows).
Better get an experienced DB player or teacher with you when shopping a bow and let him/her play the bow on your instrument. Then you also get a recommendation if your (current) instrument is suitable to learn bowing or not.
You don’t need amplification to find out the starting behavior, but it may help you to get a better impression of the sound.
Personally I would never get a n EUB with BG strings. These strings are designed for pizz only and their mounting method need a construction that is no longer used for DB strings and doesn’t work well for bowing. It is not impossible, but you might never get satisfied bowing BG strings.
It is also possible that a good bow for DB is not as good for a solid body EUB.
The short scale and the limitation to BG strings makes it even harder.
Don’t invest too much in the bow for this instrument. Either go the cheap route with a Brazil wood beginner bow or get a low to medium priced carbon fiber bow. You first need to learn to bow at all before you can check out which bow works bette than another one.
Wooden bows differ a lot from one to the next. CF bows less inside the same series. Wooden bows are warmer, CF bows are a sometimes a bit cold.
A nice CF bow is the Finale bow. I got one used and it is still my best bow, but I have played once a wooden bow (on my DB) that played without any effort and was “cheap” at 1600€. But too expensive for me and I still lost (forgotten) one bow that was 80€ only.
I don’t want that with a 1600€ bow.
My recommendation would be to get a better DB scale instrument (like an MK studio) for your bow money and get a cheap Brazil wood bow (that you should check with your instrument out of several bows).
Better get an experienced DB player or teacher with you when shopping a bow and let him/her play the bow on your instrument. Then you also get a recommendation if your (current) instrument is suitable to learn bowing or not.
You don’t need amplification to find out the starting behavior, but it may help you to get a better impression of the sound.
Personally I would never get a n EUB with BG strings. These strings are designed for pizz only and their mounting method need a construction that is no longer used for DB strings and doesn’t work well for bowing. It is not impossible, but you might never get satisfied bowing BG strings.
- Aug 1, 2005
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Don't even consider this.
Two big components of an instrument being bow friendly are having a somewhat traditional bridge and a compliant top. The structure needs to absorb the bow vibrations. Based upon that, I would expect this thing to be a very poor choice for bowing.
Two big components of an instrument being bow friendly are having a somewhat traditional bridge and a compliant top. The structure needs to absorb the bow vibrations. Based upon that, I would expect this thing to be a very poor choice for bowing.
I believe many have had some success playing various NS Design "upright sticks" (both the 42" full scale and the 34" Omni) in arco. Of course, I'm doing everything wrong (an NS Omni CR5 tuned in 5ths with GHS Precision flatwounds using an Incredibow synthetic hair carbon fiber bow) and I'm very, very much still learning, but it seems to work for me!
No, it doesn't really sound like an upright, but it is a very nice tone to my ear nonetheless. Yes, string choice is important - round wound strings (and even some flatwound) tend to grab the bow hair, but the GHS Precision Flats are fine. I've not heard much about the UB804 in arco, but you might look into the NS Omni, which has the same scale.
No, it doesn't really sound like an upright, but it is a very nice tone to my ear nonetheless. Yes, string choice is important - round wound strings (and even some flatwound) tend to grab the bow hair, but the GHS Precision Flats are fine. I've not heard much about the UB804 in arco, but you might look into the NS Omni, which has the same scale.
Yup, much like @mrvan here I'm using an NS Design Omni Bass, which is pretty similar to the Ibanez in question in this thread. It bows just fine, to my ears anyway, and playing arco is the main reason I have it. Search for it on YouTube, there are several videos of people bowing it there. I would suppose the Ibanez works just fine with a bow too 
It's got Flatwound strings so it works. You could bow on Roundwounds but you'd have to use Coruss Synthetic Bow hair w/ Clarity Rosin to make it work. There's a 5 string Version too called a UB805
and like the UB804 these have a Compound Radius so you can play it w/ a Bow too. I wish Ibanez made a Special Bow designed for this Bass but you can use any Upright Bass bow that's available.
I wish Ibanez made a Special Bow designed for the UB804 (and UB805 which is the 5 string Version) because it could give you the best sound possible that might work in Concert Band. They don't make that (yet) so you could use a CodaBow Infinity French Bass Bow
with a CelloPhant
Not an expert on upright, and very much a beginner on bowing as well, but I do have the NS Design omni, which works quite well for arco. Since there isn't much info on this topic, I thought i'd pitch in my experience, as limited and anecdotal as it may be.
When the Ibanez came out, I thoguht: great, I'll try it & if it's 'close enough' to the NSD, I'll 'downgrade' from the NSD to Ibanez, since the NSD is so much more expensive, and I use it overall so little. So if the Ibanez is 'close enough', i'd rather release some of the funds for other bass gear.
Sadly, this experiment didn't work out.
To me, the arco sound of the Ibanez is nowhere near as appealing/usable as the NSD. It might have also been the strings (I think the Ibanez comes with DA Chromes as stock?). In any case, the difference in sound & versatility was enough for me to hang onto the NSD Omni.
From my experience, I see the NSD as an instrument with a very usable fingerstyle tone, and a useful arco tone. The 'polar' piezo system really does give very different tones depending on whether you use the pizz or arco mode - and on the CR series, the 'adjustable blend' of these two is useful.
On the Ibanez, I only found the fingerstyle sound to be pleasant - though it sounded basically like a fretless bass, on a stand. The closest analogy I can think of is an Ibanez Portamento, just with a less-flexible preamp. You 'can' bow the Ibanez, but I didn't find that tone appealing. If you want to run it through a bunch of effects for ambient stuff, etc. - then it might work. But on its own - not for me.
If you listen to Ibanez's own video introducing the UB804, the one part that does have arco playing already has some effects on it. The fact that despite the bass being out for a long while now, there are few (none?) clips illustrating its plain 'direct' arco sound, makes sense to me.
From various discussions of the NSD 'polar piezo', it seems that the pizz & arco modes use different kinds of vibration input, whereas Ibanez uses the same 'aerosilk' piezo saddles as in ther fretless basses. So it does that 'fingerstyle fretless bass' tone well - but the arco (to me) is missing something. If you've got acces to an NSD EUB, and try bowing it with the mode-swich left in 'pizz mode', the experience is somewhat similar.
So: the UB804 is a fun instrument for sure, but for me not a close-enough 'cheaper alternative' to the NS Omnis.
Apologies for the long post - and would be happy to hear other viewpoints (esp. if someone is getting the UB804/805 to sound 'great' with arco). Also, if anyone has tried other strings on the Ibanez, and found them to work better (or worse!) - I'd be curious to hear about it.
When the Ibanez came out, I thoguht: great, I'll try it & if it's 'close enough' to the NSD, I'll 'downgrade' from the NSD to Ibanez, since the NSD is so much more expensive, and I use it overall so little. So if the Ibanez is 'close enough', i'd rather release some of the funds for other bass gear.
Sadly, this experiment didn't work out.
To me, the arco sound of the Ibanez is nowhere near as appealing/usable as the NSD. It might have also been the strings (I think the Ibanez comes with DA Chromes as stock?). In any case, the difference in sound & versatility was enough for me to hang onto the NSD Omni.
From my experience, I see the NSD as an instrument with a very usable fingerstyle tone, and a useful arco tone. The 'polar' piezo system really does give very different tones depending on whether you use the pizz or arco mode - and on the CR series, the 'adjustable blend' of these two is useful.
On the Ibanez, I only found the fingerstyle sound to be pleasant - though it sounded basically like a fretless bass, on a stand. The closest analogy I can think of is an Ibanez Portamento, just with a less-flexible preamp. You 'can' bow the Ibanez, but I didn't find that tone appealing. If you want to run it through a bunch of effects for ambient stuff, etc. - then it might work. But on its own - not for me.
If you listen to Ibanez's own video introducing the UB804, the one part that does have arco playing already has some effects on it. The fact that despite the bass being out for a long while now, there are few (none?) clips illustrating its plain 'direct' arco sound, makes sense to me.
From various discussions of the NSD 'polar piezo', it seems that the pizz & arco modes use different kinds of vibration input, whereas Ibanez uses the same 'aerosilk' piezo saddles as in ther fretless basses. So it does that 'fingerstyle fretless bass' tone well - but the arco (to me) is missing something. If you've got acces to an NSD EUB, and try bowing it with the mode-swich left in 'pizz mode', the experience is somewhat similar.
So: the UB804 is a fun instrument for sure, but for me not a close-enough 'cheaper alternative' to the NS Omnis.
Apologies for the long post - and would be happy to hear other viewpoints (esp. if someone is getting the UB804/805 to sound 'great' with arco). Also, if anyone has tried other strings on the Ibanez, and found them to work better (or worse!) - I'd be curious to hear about it.
I find the response a bit different from the upright but the possibility is certainly there. I am using a half size French style bow as I found my full size and weight bow to be a bit too much and overpowered the pickup and electronics on the UB804. I considered trying a cello bow but that just felt too foreign and puny in my hand.
I have this bass now for a few weeks. It's perfectly bowable (with the stock strings). It takes a short while to get adjusted to the shorter scale as for bow placement though. But it has the same 'bowability' as a real upright bass I would say. The bow sound of the Ibbie doesn't disappoint me either. So you assumptions are not right, at least not for me.
The 34 inch scale length makes it easier to play faster, it's almost like a 1/4 size Upright bass in an electrified format.
A 1/8 DB is 31.75 in scale, a 1/4 DB is 35.5 in scale so a 34 in scale Bass Guitar (and the UB804 & UB805) is somewhere in between the 2, almost like a 3/16 Size DB which is a bit uncommon.
If you put Piccolo Bass strings on the UB804 then you have a Piccolo Upright Bass pitched the same as a 1/32 Size Upright Bass.
My source said 80 cm for a 1/8, 90 cm for a 1/4 DB.
I only calculated an inch by 2.5 cm and thought I could drop the 0.04 cm, but I was wrong. You are right, it‘ almost middle ground with 86.36 cm and slightly closer to a 1/4 DB scale than the 1/8.
Sorry for my sloppy calculation by head.
Yes the UB804 (and UB805 which is the new 5 string Version) is really a 1/4 Size Electric DB (Rather than a 1/8 DB) so it would be as if you took a 1/4 Size DB & moved the bridge a bit closer to the fingerboard.
I own this bass and want to switch from roundwounds to flatwounds. I purchased D'Addario NS610's but the 'ball end' is too large for the bridge. Any suggestions on what flatwounds to buy?
Also, does anyone know where to find a manual for this instrument? I've been searching for one for about 9 months without success. Thanks.
Also, does anyone know where to find a manual for this instrument? I've been searching for one for about 9 months without success. Thanks.
