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Double Bass Ugly bass ???

#41
Hey fellow doublebassists,

Thank you so much for the input !
I've been playing the bass for a few days now, lots of arco (works really well on spiro starks...) and i believe (could it be my imagination ?) that is opening up, it becomes more resonant.
As I told you already ; she stays :hyper: Hopefully Frenchy finds a new owner real soon...

Best regards,

Francis
 
#42
Ok I'm out of my world now as I'm a player of those little basses turned on their sides and I only opened this thread because of the title. In my not so humble opinion that is a beautiful bass and the fact that she plays amazingly should have been all the answer you needed. I am glad to see that you will be keeping her.

H
 
#45
Why did you ever think it was ugly? Just because the upper bout is narrower? It's beautiful.

Next to it, the gamba basses with a large upper bout look kinda clunky, you know? Anyway, it occurs to me that if you happen to have a gut, a larger upper bout might get in the way and make you have to reach for the bass a bit, no? (I have no idea what made me think of that.)
 
#46
nimbleswitch said:
Why did you ever think it was ugly? Just because the upper bout is narrower? It's beautiful.


Next to it, the gamba bases with a large upper bout look kinda clunky, you know? Anyway, it occurs to me that if you happen to have a gut, a larger upper bout might get in the way and make you reach for the bass a bit, no? (I have no idea what made me think of that.)
Click to expand...

Thanks nimbleswitch ! I'm starting to love it more and more :)

Hey, my previous bass was a large-shouldered one, so that was making the "ugly" one look so strange in the beginning. I have to admit that the small shouders are feeling more confortable and it makes me move into TP more easily. I'm still getting used to the D-neck tho...
I've been doing lots of bowing on it and it keeps sounding more and more resonant, wheather has changed too so that could also have an influence.

It has a Fishman FC installed but I agreed with the shopowner that he's going to replace it with one of his own PU's.
He designed a PU that's mounted in the E-side leg (same place as the FC but hardly visible and not adjustable (climate's a lot more steady here in Europe). Only thing that's visible is a thin black wire that's coming out of the bridge and some cork around the piezo to fill the gap. The wire has a (gold plated...) coaxial threaded connector. That goes into a little black box wich is fitted (with small screws) at an angle behind the tailpiece. The box has a female jack connector and two switches. They both enable a different filter network so you have four possible filter settings. This gives you yhe possibility to match the PU better with the bass...
As soon it's installed i will post some pictures and maybe a soundsample or start a new thread about it.

Regards,

Francis
 
#48
I agree with what most people have said. I think you have a beautiful bass actually -- not "ugly" at all in my opinion.

I also agree with others that the look really is secondary, but to be fair, there are "degrees" of ugliness.

Imagine (totally hypothetically) that there was a wonderful to play bass that literally looked like a cardboard box and you couldn't change anything about it. I personally might be willing to go for another bass that was slightly inferior in terms of sound if it looked a lot better. Of course, I wouldn't be willing to go _way_ down in sound quality.

point is, I think most of have some tradeoff between sound and look; it's just that almost all of us agree that in your case, there's actually no tradeoff in the looks (or at least it's not nearly enough to justify going for the other bass).
 

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