'The Bass'

[Ken Smith]

I just strung up a new Bass I acquired with regular Flexocor and a Stark 'E'. I could not believe the growl the Bass had for jazz type pizz. It has its normal booom orchestral pizz sound but played as a Jazz Bass, it just 'smokes' with those strings.

I am throughly convinced now that the actual Bass can have more to do with the growl than the string itself. On many other Basses, these strings would just go 'thud'. One might be thinking "this must be a bright sounding Bass, no?" NO! It has more of a low sweet sound Organ type sound actually.

The Bass I am referring to is my newly acquired ex-Riccardi Storioni Pear shaped cornerless Bass c.1780 or so, formerly attr. to d'Salo.

I will re-post this in Hybrid with added info.

[Eric Hochberg]

I wonder if the long string length has something to do with this...

[Ken Smith]

I wonder if the long string length has something to do with this...

Not really. When I tap on the wood, it sounds extremely deep as compared to other old Basses. In the last 2 days, I have moved the bridge around and played it from 43 3/4 to 44 1/2". The shorter it is, the deeper it is but that may be because of the distance from the sound post. The longer the string length, the sweeter it sounds and with more clarity but then again. that could be the sound post position as it 'does' have a sweet spot somewhere. I have not at all tried moving the sound post.

This Bass has depth and volume to spare not to mention color of tone. Moving things around changes the sound but not better or worse, just different.

If you are curious about length and sound, loosen your strings a bit first and then move the bridge higher or lower about 1/2" each way and re-tune. This will show you ho it sounds but without the sound post moved as well, it's not a perfect test.

[Eric Hochberg]

We did do this with my Bohemian bass, moving the bridge north about 1/2 inch from center (with sound post adjusted) and the sound didn't change much, if at all. It gave me the 41.5 string length I wanted.