Over the course of my career in music retail I have kind of become a go to guy for people who want to unload double basses.
I just picked this one up today. It belonged to a friend who is downsizing in retirement. He let me have it a no charge, since he never learned to play it. He had taken it in trade years ago for an old piano and it just kind of hung out in his living room ever since. I had only seen this bass a couple of times prior to today and had never given it much thought, but after giving it a good look over and playing it a bit I am curious to learn more about it.
Overall condition is good. It has a neck repair that looks solid, and a couple peg box repairs that perhaps could have been accomplished more gracefully, but still appear to be reasonably solid. There is some nice flame in the laminations on the ribs and on the back. Purfling is painted on.
It is set up for pizzicato and plays well, producing a good, if somewhat muted pizz sound. Acro sound is reasonably good, but a different setup would be needed. Strings are Spirocore Weichs. It could definitely benefit from some basic upgrades and adjustments.
There is no label inside or any identification marks, but it serms like it could be an older German laminate. Included with the bass is a French bow stamped Karl Hermann.
Most of the time I encourage folks to donate their old plywood basses to schools. It's usually a win win with the school getting an instrument and the previous owner getting a charitable donation that they can write off. For some reason I'm a little hesitant to do that with this one. In spite of all the work that has been done to it, it seems like it has potential which could be realized with a pretty modest outlay of time and money.
Any ideas as to what this could be would be greatly appreciated!
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I just picked this one up today. It belonged to a friend who is downsizing in retirement. He let me have it a no charge, since he never learned to play it. He had taken it in trade years ago for an old piano and it just kind of hung out in his living room ever since. I had only seen this bass a couple of times prior to today and had never given it much thought, but after giving it a good look over and playing it a bit I am curious to learn more about it.
Overall condition is good. It has a neck repair that looks solid, and a couple peg box repairs that perhaps could have been accomplished more gracefully, but still appear to be reasonably solid. There is some nice flame in the laminations on the ribs and on the back. Purfling is painted on.
It is set up for pizzicato and plays well, producing a good, if somewhat muted pizz sound. Acro sound is reasonably good, but a different setup would be needed. Strings are Spirocore Weichs. It could definitely benefit from some basic upgrades and adjustments.
There is no label inside or any identification marks, but it serms like it could be an older German laminate. Included with the bass is a French bow stamped Karl Hermann.
Most of the time I encourage folks to donate their old plywood basses to schools. It's usually a win win with the school getting an instrument and the previous owner getting a charitable donation that they can write off. For some reason I'm a little hesitant to do that with this one. In spite of all the work that has been done to it, it seems like it has potential which could be realized with a pretty modest outlay of time and money.
Any ideas as to what this could be would be greatly appreciated!
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