Quote:
Originally Posted by Robert J Spear
I'll agree with Ken that the decision to embrace 5ths tuning is one that means no looking back. You've basically got to lock yourself in a room for however long it takes. I've been trying to do that on a chamber bass I made in high 5ths tuning (GDAE) because it's small enough that I can fool my brain into believing that it's a totally different instrument. On the bigger basses, it is discouraging to realize how hard old habits die, if they ever die at all, but you'd need to talk with guys like Joel Quarrington or Paul Unger or other fifths-tuners to get a more detailed recounting of what the switch demanded.
As for the rest of it, my feeling is that if you want to make a bass for the 21st century, you need to step back and reconsider how a bass should sound. For me, I don't want a massive and cavernous rumble from my bass; I want a clean and focused sound that follows the listener and finds him wherever he's sitting in the back of the hall. I can probably numb your skulls with the many various acoustical reasons that underlie such a bass, but a good ****ogy might be from guys in my age bracket who remember pre-stereo "high fidelity" speaker systems.
Back in the day, to get a convincing bass in the lowest octave, you needed things like a monster folded horn. If you look at audiophile magazines of the era, you'll find projects where people used 30-inch woofers and turned their basements into part of their sound systems. No kidding. It gives literal meaning to the idea of shaking the floor.  As time went on and technology improved, you could get the same result by using a closet as the resonating chamber for your system. You will also find pictures of guys who mounted 18" woofers in closet doors.
Time marches on. Woofer enclosures came down in size to six cubic feet, to four, and then to three. With the advent of the acoustic suspension theory, we were able to put entire speaker systems on a bookshelf. You will not find people using closets for woofer enclosures any more. I have a subwoofer in a 1 cubic-foot enclosure. It has a single 8" speaker that pumps out bass at 32 Hz at a volume that'll make your bowels move (  needless to say, I dial it well back from that setting!).
Basses aren't loudpseakers, of course, but the idea is that we've gotten stuck in our thinking about basses. Bigger doesn't necessarily mean better or even lower. The demands of modern music are exceeding what can be done on what is basically a 16th-century gamba. My first question would be whether players would switch from their conventional basses to one that was smaller and had lower ribs if it would otherwise do as much as well as their normal bass. Next question would be whether the players would consider switching if there were trade-offs; that is, they had to give up some things they liked on the old bass to get even more (but different) things they liked on the new bass. |
I hear you, agree with you and, I remember that old Juke Box bass sound as well. I have a few great Orchestra basses here to compare. The Hart, Storioni and Tarr. The Hart is the easiest to play, the Storioni is close but the Tarr has a big size to it. Sound wise in a big Orchestra, you want the Tarr, hands down but this is not normal Germanic style gamba Tarr. It is one of the 9 basses Tarr made for the Orchestra some 30 years before it became the Halle, a 4/4 violin model. The Storioni is a true and quality old Italian sound but the Tarr literally shakes the room. The Hart on the other hand is the sweetest bass I have had but because it was built on the early Baroque Maggini/D'salo pattern and made with narrower/more normal Rib depth, it doesn't have the power of the other two monsters. It is not a huge difference to the Storioni but noticeable. To the Tarr, it's no contest in the power/projection department. Which do I take out more often that the others? The Hart, and the others in the sections I play in love it. The Storioni is a bit over the top within the section but is pure gold under the Bow. The Tarr scared the other 7 players the night I brought it to concert. I was more focused on the bass than the music that night but fortunately, I had played those pieces before so no harm, no foul..
Now, I did work with Arnold recently on making a quasi modified copy of the Storioni and it came out great. Now, it just needs time to age as it did have somewhat of a new sound on day one to my ear as might be expected. To others as well as Arnold and myself, it sounded somewhat older than new due to the wood and design. Being that I had the original to compare it to, I knew the exact difference. Most people wont. Also, I did play an old Testore recently that was long bodied but not deep ribbed and it had a smooth and powerful deep-smooth sound. It was NOT thick sounding, just deep. Thick sounding is what I consider a deep powerful bass should have and not just deep and smooth. From having my basses tried by many orchestra players I often hear comments like that. Sweet and dark doesn't always cut it for them. They want to engulf the stage floor when they play. Right or wrong, this is what I hear. One night I brought my Neuner to a rehearsal just after using the Tarr with that same Orchestra. The principal turns and says something like , "hey, we need a section of those basses" referring to its power. I said something like. "this is NOT my big bass, it's just my back-up/rehearsal bass". He replied, "it's BIG Enough!"
So, for today Orchestras, I think deep and loud is more desired. Sweet and clear is for your own pleasure or for Chamber or solo playing. The Orchestras want THUNDER. Can you imagine the early 19th century Manchester Gentleman's Orchestra with 9 Tarr basses?
I think that was the 7.5 earthquake they had that season..
Hey, for Jazz players, it's a totally different menu. I am speaking above mainly about Orchestra bowing basses, 4ths, 5ths or whatever!