[Jeff Campbell]

Hi Ken,

I played your mystery bass several times at the ISB - what an amazing sound!
I live in Rochester, NY and know Paul and Jesse at CSC. I play in the RPO and am on the faculty at the Eastman school. I too had a mystery bass at the ISB. It's a 5/4 instrument that I've always thought of as German. I showed it to a well known luthier and as I was getting it out of the case, another shop owner came by and said that he had a customer who had a very big bass JUST like mine and that it had a label by E. Withers. The first luthier then pulled from his collection a bass JUST like mine that he attributed to James Brown. Within a few minutes I went from having never seen another bass like mine to knowing of three.

When I got home, I did some homework and got in touch with the Contrabass Shoppe and sent a photo of my bass. They told my is was probably of Mittenwald origins perhaps made by Neuner, Hornsteiner, or Seitz. I did more home work and found a bassist who has a bass from 1827 by Seitz as shown in the photo. The lower portions of the C bouts are similar to those on your mystery bass Ken.

My bass has very large dimensions as listed below:

Back length 46 5/8"
upper bout – 22"
middle bout - 16"
lower bouts - 28 3/4"

Depth of lower ribs - 8 1/4"

Body Stop – 23 7/8"

String length 43"

I'll attach a few photos in my next post. I guess my question is - what kind of bass is this? I've heard both Mittenwald and English. Photos to follow...