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Weight

#61
For me it has nothing to do with age. I remember thinking that my Hondo II Jazz Bass copy was too heavy when I was 15, and when I started playing music full time at the age of 20 I specifically looked for basses that were not too heavy. I'm definitely one of those people that asks about weight when I'm interested in a bass. The basses I gig with regularly are all 8.5 pounds or under, and my recently acquired ash-bodied Mod Shop P-Bass weighs in at 7.75 pounds:
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- Steve
 
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#62
Deleted member 394181 said:
How much does the wider strap weigh?
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That's funny! Reminds me of a strap I bought long ago because it was cool. Made from aged denim fabric, hand-festooned with colorful beads and such. Just for kicks I weighed it...3 pounds. At least it's 4" wide, so there's that I guess. :woot:
 
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#63
NewJackBass said:
I don’t think anybody asked you to weigh your bass, or to even care about weight period. But there are people who do care, and that’s cool.
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Yeeesss... Nobody here "told" me to weigh my bass.:rolleyes:
My point was that weight had never been an issue " for me" until I joined and discovered how important it was to so many others on this forum.
Not trying to offend anyone, just speaking to my own experience.
I especially can appreciate the weight being a factor for folks with back and neck issues...But it just never factored into my bass buying history.
 
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#66
gtirard said:
There's this bass I'm going to order at the end of the year (as a reward for quitting smoking) from a luthier.
He said the default weight for this model is 4.7 kg (10.4 lbs), but he could chamber the body to make mine weight 4 kg (8.8 lbs).

Do you think I should confirm my request to have him chamber the body in order to reduce the weight?

brooks1500-1-orig_1_orig.jpg


My experience with weight:
- I've got a Ovation Magnum II, I don't play it any longer because of its weight
- I don't know the weight of my G&L L2000 Tribute, all I know is that it's prefectly acceptable
- One of the reasons why I love my Acinonyx is because it is so lightweight at 3.5 kg (6.6 lbs)

My experience with chamber body: a few years ago, a friend made me a custom bass with a very dense wood, so the first version sounded good but it was too heavy for me. My friend then chambered the body, and this made a big difference in weight. But i think it also changed the sound significantly: I've had the feeling that the new bass being chambered sounded a bit "hollow", with a not so pleasant resonance. But it's hard to compare a sound you have now with a sound from my memory. It didn't dare to complain to my friend about the sound, after asking him to do the painful extra work of chambering the instrument.

So I'm afraid for the new bass, that if I ask to the luthier to chamber the instrument, it could alter the sound.
> Do you think 4.7 kg (10.4 lbs) is an average/ok weight, or do you think it's on the heavy side?
> Do you think that chambering the body might alter the sound significantly or not so much? The friend who built my first custom bass is really an amateur luthier, so maybe he didn't have the skill to do a good chambering, I could expect from the pro luthier of my next project to do a much better job of chambering without altering the sound too much?

What would you do if you were me?

[EDIT] On the positive side, even 10.4 lbs is not super heavy for a Les Paul shaped bass. I'm almost sure that the real Gibson Les Paul bass it's inspired from weights much more then that!
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1. Thank your friend. Thank your lucky stars you have a friend like that. Your decisions are your responsibility; I think you made the right call and things didn't work out 100%.
2. Chamber the new commission. You may end up better off but there's a chance you won't. You'll be selling it if it is too heavy, for sure.

Great looking bass BTW!!
 
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#67
gtirard said:
There's this bass I'm going to order at the end of the year (as a reward for quitting smoking) from a luthier.
He said the default weight for this model is 4.7 kg (10.4 lbs), but he could chamber the body to make mine weight 4 kg (8.8 lbs).

Do you think I should confirm my request to have him chamber the body in order to reduce the weight?

brooks1500-1-orig_1_orig.jpg


[EDIT] On the positive side, even 10.4 lbs is not super heavy for a Les Paul shaped bass. I'm almost sure that the real Gibson Les Paul bass it's inspired from weights much more then that!
Click to expand...

That's a cool looking bass, but there are three design aspects that are always concerns for me when checking out basses:
1) The upper horn strap pin does not align with at least the 12th fret = neck dive
2) Full sized tuners, if they're the traditional type are heavy = neck dive
3) The bridge is not at the butt end of the body = farther left hand reach to the lower register and increased neck dive

I would definitely go chambered to reduce the overall weight, but that might also exasperate the neck dive issue. I like the look of Les Paul inspired designs, but I don't know that they can be done on bass and have good balance.
 
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#70
Smallmouth_Bass said:
That's a cool looking bass, but there are three design aspects that are always concerns for me when checking out basses:
1) The upper horn strap pin does not align with at least the 12th fret = neck dive
2) Full sized tuners, if they're the traditional type are heavy = neck dive
3) The bridge is not at the butt end of the body = farther left hand reach to the lower register and increased neck dive

I would definitely go chambered to reduce the overall weight, but that might also exasperate the neck dive issue. I like the look of Les Paul inspired designs, but I don't know that they can be done on bass and have good balance.
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I'm not worried about the neck dive, since the luthier told me there was no issue with that (I trust him), + it's a short scale so that helps with the neck dive, and I think he's putting lightweight tuners.
 
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#71
Massive pinched nerves between my left shoulder and neck. I have a few boat anchors I don't gig much anymore.
I do 3 hour shows with a 10 minute break. Two long sets. Can't gig anything over 10 lbs anymore.
 
#72
OK, I always read about weight and it's high time to chime in:
The lighter the better........ until I started THINKING (I hate when that happens) about
neck
dive
(another all-too-common thread here, but hey!) !! I love light basses, but I've finally come to the realization that some of my lighter basses have a good amount of it. So what do I do? I rest my arm on the upper bout to keep it from diving. Pretty hard to calculate the extra down force/weight that I'm adding. I guess I need to factor all this in before my next purchase, right???!?!!? Or maybe rout a few chambers, then add helium and seal them off. Yeah, down the rabbit trail I go...........
 
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#76
Pocket Dave said:
Weight is the first thing I want to know. At my age and injury past, playing 3-hour shows every Fri/Sat, some 4-hours, some Sundays/weeknights, it's a factor.

Kudos to sellers who post weight up front in their ads.
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Years ago I had a conversation with my Sweetwater sales engineer about why I thought they should start listing weight in their bass (and guitar) descriptions, why weight is important for a lot of players, etc. So, when they later started including weight in their descriptions, I was pretty much taking the credit for it. :D
 
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#78
Pdaddy1978 said:
Yeeesss... Nobody here "told" me to weigh my bass.:rolleyes:
My point was that weight had never been an issue " for me" until I joined and discovered how important it was to so many others on this forum.
Not trying to offend anyone, just speaking to my own experience.
I especially can appreciate the weight being a factor for folks with back and neck issues...But it just never factored into my bass buying history.
Click to expand...
It's like anything else, when you're by yourself you may notice a bass is heavier or lighter but you don't have a reference to compare, you just play it. Once you talk to other people and your reference changes, you have a basis to compare and discover other perspectives. That's nothing to feel bad about, it's just natural life experience happening once community happens.
 
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#79
covermego said:
OK, I always read about weight and it's high time to chime in:
The lighter the better........ until I started THINKING (I hate when that happens) about
neck
dive
(another all-too-common thread here, but hey!) !! I love light basses, but I've finally come to the realization that some of my lighter basses have a good amount of it. So what do I do? I rest my arm on the upper bout to keep it from diving. Pretty hard to calculate the extra down force/weight that I'm adding. I guess I need to factor all this in before my next purchase, right???!?!!? Or maybe rout a few chambers, then add helium and seal them off. Yeah, down the rabbit trail I go...........
Click to expand...
I do that too, but then I realized how much stress that was putting on the muscles and tendons in my arm. As someone with chronic RSI issues, that's a big no-no for me. So then I went back to obsessing about neck dive. I'll take a little extra weight in exchange for good balance.
 
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