He had a Kay there that he had just restored about 4 months ago and I swear that thing was like a cannon. I couldn't believe how freakin' loud it was. Made me think about plywoods in a different way.
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Double Bass Plywood Basses?
- Thread starter peterpalmieri
- Start date
He had a Kay there that he had just restored about 4 months ago and I swear that thing was like a cannon. I couldn't believe how freakin' loud it was. Made me think about plywoods in a different way.
Actually, that's not really the point at all. The comment about Stradivari being "into new" instruments was a bash on the cult of antiquity in the instrument world. People making new instruments (including Zygmuntowicz) are antiquing them to avoid the stigma of a new instrument. The comment refers to the fact that Strad's instruments came out of his shop looking "new."
The conclusion of the book is that there is a mystery and possibly a superiority of the old Cremonese masterpieces that hasn't been replicated yet.
If that was the 47 M-1 he had, I came real close to having it shipped to me. I was ready to buy it based on the phgoto description, but to his credit, he insisted that it needed the neck reset. It looked really good, and after speaking with Mark about it, I was tempted, and I needed a spare at the time. He knows and loves those old Kays for sure. And yes, they do get better with age and use. I think that those old plywood basses are worth every penny he was asking, when you factor in all the work it takes to rebuild/restore.
It is a good thing to become comfortable with a luthier or shop owner. I feel this way about Bob Beerman in Greensboro, NC and Alfred Michels in Creston, NC. When good repair or service is rendered, good recommendations will follow and return work will take place.
When making repair to vintage instruments, refinishing repair has to be at another level, to be able to recognize what finish currently exists on an instrument and how to make a refinish touchup match. Many older instruments were varnish finishes while many newer ones have laquer finish. It also take a good bit of knowledge and nerve to work on what could be an unreplaceable instrument. These factors can contribute to repair work costs rising to vastly different levels.
The plywood instruments are built to withstand the rigors of moving what is virtually a piece of furniture around, while being able to consistently make audible sounds spring forth from it. If you visit the [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] (makers of the American Standard and King basses, both plywood) you can see a rather hefty man standing on the top of a King bass that is lying on it's back. All these instruments garner abuse due to their size and the travel to which they are subjected. A hit to the top of a plywood bass, which resulted in a major repair, would have probably destroyed a carved topped instrument.
There are newer crappy plywood basses and newer crappy carved instruments. Again, I think the reasons for buying a plywood over a carved or hybrid, is mostly due to the conditions (outside, in the heat, humidity, vast temperature changes, etc.) that the player may find himself participating in. There are better and worse instruments in playability, tone, volume, quality in both carved and laminate basses.
I just prefer to have something a bit more durable and not as subject to cracking & changing as happens with solid wood instruments.
maybe my bass is a freak but I have a carved bass and it hasen't cracked or been into the shop even for a seam repairs since I started using velvet bass strings 7 years ago, maybe the reason basses are damaged so much with the change of the season is the pressure of steel strings on the top? who knows
I once owned a rather "heavily" built carved bass from Romainia, but it didn't have very much sound. No cracks or issues with it at all.
String tension could very well could be a factor. I really don't know the answer to this question. When did steel strings come into existence for basses, fiddles, etc.?
All the "vintage" instruments were made to be used with gut strings, right? After all, the gut strings would be subject to the same temperature changes, humidity changes that a solid instrument would be.
Maybe I'm straying from the original thread topic.
I think it is the strings because before that my bass was in the shoppe getting work done every month, it is a bit of a bastard bass(different parts from many instruments) it has had alot of previous work done on it(top is around 160 years old) but since nothing.
I haven't been around for awhile but I just noticed this
"Ever since Ken Smith and Paul Warmbuttocks took a powder those discussions have decreased immensely."
What happened to Ken ?
"Ever since Ken Smith and Paul Warmbuttocks took a powder those discussions have decreased immensely."
What happened to Ken ?
- May 6, 2003
- 5,272
- 160
- 64
- Disclosures
- Proprietor Fifth Avenue Fret Shop. Technical Editor Bass Gear Magazine
OK I'll bite. I've been away for a spell. Why does Ken need his own forums? We not good enough for him anymore? Did he cross the line too many times and have to be banished?
- May 6, 2003
- 5,272
- 160
- 64
- Disclosures
- Proprietor Fifth Avenue Fret Shop. Technical Editor Bass Gear Magazine
Assuming the upload worked, Invalid Link Removed the recording Phil is graciously helping me to post. Its a trio cut recorded on the R-09 from a jazz area performance at the U. - apologies for the size of the file; I think the bass comes in about a minute in. The bass is the LaScala laminate strung with a set of Dominants. It's opened up a lot in the time I've been playing it, and while I may well be biased, I don't think it really sounds "laminated" in the way a lot of ply basses sound. The thing is an absolute canon (one of the loudest I've played), but I think it has plenty of complexity to the tone. YMMV.
You'll get less grief here if you talk about high end plywood (something that Ken Smith would have called an oxymoron, if he'd take time to spell it) than if you talk about low end carved basses. I never got so much grief as when I bought a plain wood carved bass from a supplier who really has done a great service to this community and is one of the humblest of the commercial users here. And folks, after two years of playing it everywhere, it is a bass worth talking about. You can check my profile, but I don't post pictures, or the usual antics that follow every Hawkes or Cleveland purchase. Apparently people on the other side, would rather hear about my vintage Fender or my Ritters, more than some here would like to hear about a great low priced carved bass. If you're around 100 years from now, despite the plain wood, this will be a nice European shop instrument from a "guilded" maker. Sorry it's not Italian or German, English or a high-end or vintage plywood. And I don't worry about humidity much, heat, or dents or sloppy drunk patrons that dance too close to it. If it gets trashed, I'll cry cause it's my baby, collect the insurance and order another one and it will be substantially the same and be delivered in about 10 weeks, more or less. I take it everywhere. It sleeps in a tent for as much as a week at a stretch when I'm up in the Blue Ridge festivals. It's a great low end carved work of art that refuses to fall apart. It was built by Ivan Georgiev's shop in Kazanlak. It is a commissioned carved instrument, very well dimensioned. It deserves a full review. Question is does this forum deserve to host that review?
That's one I haven't answered yet. I imagine that answer will soon be forth coming.I know where there is a fantastic Pollmann violone. It's right here local. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, the well-wishers here would swear Pollmann never made violones. The fellow who has it knows the Pollmann family of makers personally. It's the size of a 3/4 DB. It's more ornate than anything I've seen in person. Perhaps I can sell my house and buy it and post some photos and sound files. I'm serious! It was made in the 1970's and has never been sold. Tied on frets, etc. It's a violone. Truly that to me is a really, really nice instrument. And I won't get any grief about that because it doesn't compete with high end plywood. And it's more interesting than my carved 5-string 4/4 Ivan Georgiev.
In truth, not many of us have the $$ for the really great old carved basses, or even new ones. We can't talk about them like we can talk about Foderas, Ritters, and Ken Smiths, Kays, New Standards, etc. because few of us can even really look at these with a hope to owning one. So we don't have much experience with them, except through photos. Ken brought us a lot of nice stuff to talk about, even if we had to experience it by proxy. He was really hard on me and some others and kind of made me angry about twice a day if not more, but I learned a heck of a lot from his posts. I wasn't following the thread that broke the camel's back, but Ken's absence is a loss, just as his presence was a mixed blessing. I will say this and be finished: As much grief as we gave each other, he graciously accepted me as a contributor to his forum.
It sounds like you've found a great match for what you do, want, and play. I think most of the "grief" people receive about low-end carved basses is not because they didn't purchase an instrument 2-5x the price but because low-end carved basses tend to fall in the lower tail of the distribution of quality among carved basses such that they are inferior in all relevant dimensions to their quality hybrid counterparts. I am speaking in general terms and not about any specific bass or basses.
I don't view these as antics at all, especially when one consults the definition of that word. Rather, I think what follows such purchases are expressions of enthusiasm that the buyers share and should share in forums such as these. One has to consider what makes those folks so happy!
I would be interested to hear more about your bass. Why not start a thread?
Jim
I have a carved freak too, in that case, but I have steel Helicores on it. So maybe the plywood stability thing is a myth. Or maybe some makers of carved basses use wood that is stabilized and aged properly and a little thicker in dimension and others are in a hurry to market some thin but more immediately resonant flamed grain that could have used a few more years in the shed and should have started life with a couple mm more in graduation. I say maybe because if I said for sure, someone would ask for statistical scientific proof and there you go. No useful information would come from that. Just a useless debate over some unknowns.
Atlanta sits on a line between the piedmont and the Blue Ridge. Eastern Continental Divide runs right through the middle of the city less than a mile from my house. That makes for some highly variable and suddenly changeable weather. As for my DB, I don't even need adjusters in the bridge and this thing gets a heck of a lot of humidity and temp variation in just one day;- enough that the tuning can be a whole step up or down. Compare that to the supposedly more stable laminated-ribs hybrid that I had for try out over a weekend. One little hiccough in the weather and the paper thin flamed veneer was blistering all over at the seams.
If one keeps repeating the misinformation often enough for long enough, it is soon taken for fact. People buy a bass and equip it with adjusters without even waiting for one year of seasonal change. They buy the ply without trying a carved bass because the "prevailing talk is ...". And not too many who like to see fancy grain will admit that straight grain is structurally superior.
I guess if I were a control freak I'd start my own thread on my bass. But it's plain maple ribs and back, and thick top have been "flamed" to often in other threads already. If it were my thread I could make sure it didn't get deleted like the other ones. But you give someone else the control and you get to see how they use it. On an internet forum, that is useful information. "How" often is a clue to "why".
Let a hint to the wise be sufficient. There are great carved instruments available at prices well below high end ply ("high-end plywood" is something I can't type with a straight face, let alone get a full rich arco sound from
). No they don't sound like 300 year old Italian basses carved from slab cut wood with knot holes in it;- yet. And some of these can take the weather, the knocks, the abuse, too.
Ignorance is bliss, perhaps? No basis for comparison, since they've never had the two choices side by side long enough for a carved instrument to open up? Finally getting something that they wanted for a long time and posting during their initial excitement instead of waiting for a couple of years when the instrument's good and bad points have had time to show up? Being an arco neophyte or a total pizz. player and not ever hearing that difference? Experiencing the rewarding feeling of inclusion in a socially accepted herd mentality that prevails on a web forum? Any guesses any one else wants to venture? As you can see, I am totally open to suggestion.
