Quote:
Originally Posted by Arnold Schnitzer
Ken, would you mind posting your experience with the big Morelli bass?
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Ok, ok.. lol
That Bass came to me unplayable but with a reputation of a big sound. It was a 44" string length and probably that company's version of a 4/4 bass. It was quite huge.
I wanted to have it converted to a 5-string because I just wanted one at the time and this looked like the bass that could handle 5 strings. I had borrowed a Pollmann 5er earlier and played some Orchestra concerts with and thought that being big, this would be a good bass to convert. Because the Scroll/pegbox was 1" smaller internally in length for the 5 gears than the Pollmann we scraped that idea and saved it for a different bass.
Now, the Top had a few nasty long cracks on the outer flanks, upper and lower plus a fist sized hole punched thru the rib so, the Top had to come off.
This was a round back bass with high arches in both plates and the wood was of superb quality. Long straight medium-fine reeds in the top grain and super hard mountain grown maple with slight curl in it. The bass was about 100 years old or so as well. The Neck was long with an Eb heel as well, original to the scroll.
This bass came traded in towards a small Italian bass I had for sale. Sweet sounding but not big enough for an Orchestra section. A perfect bass for chamber music, solo playing, studio work or jazz with an Amp of which I did try the bass on a few gigs to know what she can do before this sale. The owner of the Morelli had NO idea what his bass could do if restored and modified. I will put money on that.
Besides the repairs needed, the top and back were extra thick. They were also high arched and super strong hard woods. This is all 3 of the traits of strength in one, density, arch and thickness. Two is maximum for tone.
Both the top and back were thinned down nad re-graduated in the process. The tap tone of the plates went from thunk/before to boooommm/after. Basically, from dead to alive. To combat the long string length, the Block was cut and the neck set deeper. If this were an expensive Italian bass then I might have gone for a neck graft and shorten the Heel to a D from the Eb and get the length down under 42" but in this case it came in at 42 3/8" when all was done.
I had Arnold make a fingered C-Extension as well in place of the 5-string conversion and had it strung up with Obligatos. When I picked up the bass Arnold mentioned to me upon me asking "How does it sound?" he replied, "you can play this bass in the New York Philharmonic!".
It was not only super loud but the depth was like an organ. Smooth, low, deep and a dream to play despite its slightly long length. My first concert was Beethoven's 5th. That bass handled the Low Cs and other fingered extension notes as loud or louder than the other two basses combined beside me and they were both pretty good old German basses.
Owning so many basses and this being a trade-in it went up for sale shortly after as I already had the Gilkes and the Martini so this was just inventory and a trade-in bass. Sound wise though it was a monster. It sold fairly quick and the player was an acoustic jazz non-amp person. This was the perfect bass for that venue.
One more thing. The Top had an integral Bar in it and that was replaced with a normal bass bar. Internal design-wise on the re-graduations, it was an Italian bass made with old German wood and it sounded like it to earn that description.
The re-graduations of the bass turned it from a big loud factory German bass to a fine as wine sounding old handmade bass. Arnold
Re-made the bass using its own wood. Fantastic results. It was the first bass he worked on for me and in essence having not known him before this it was his
Audition as I had plenty of work lined up and needed the right guy to do it. My Gilkes needed to be restored and hadn't found the right guy to do it that I could trust. The rest is history now.
For reference, here's the Morelli,
Before and
After..