Ken, I definitely appreciate your insights on finer qualities of bows, playability, etc. I also appreciate your patience with us relatively neophyte players. In my somewhat limited experience with bows, I have found nothing that contradicts anything in your posts in this thread.
As to the issue of what a better player sounds like with a lesser bow, etc., please let me interject that this is a spurious argument and somewhat off the topic. With due respect to all of Mr. Holden's comments, many of which are valid, these also are irrelevant to the issue of will a better bow help a player become a better player. It is also not really relevant that price is not always an indicator of quality. The fact is that it usually is. Sure some bows are better deals than others, but it still holds that a better bow is a bow that plays easier and these usually cost more, or will cost more when recognized by playability. It may not always be true that spending more gets a better bow, but the safer bet is that it will.
It is somewhat frustrating when someone starts bringing this price/quality issue up because it is a different issue. So is the bit about Da Vinci with a two dollar brush. If you are doing nothing but painting the bevels on a picture frame matt, a better brush works better and is easier to use. Give me a Windsor-Newton sable any day. Very similar to Jaco did it with a Jazz etc., etc. No question he would have been better off with a Smith, a Ritter, a Warwick, etc. ad infinitum. What constitutes a better bow is what Ken is trying to establish. In my experience, which is just no where close to Ken's (although I have been playing bass guitar for an awfully long time), I would have to say that I have to agree with him on all the points he has made in this thread, as well as what constitutes a better bow, and one worth paying more for. As a developing player, I should have skipped the fibreglass bow. It was a hazard. The cheapo brazilwood was a decent starter. There is no question that Ken's Loveri bows would have been much better. The custom Brunkalla is a significant upgrade (I have no idea where it stacks up against Ken's Loveris, a Lipkins, etc.) and the quality earmarks mentioned here by Ken have really helped me evaluate this bow I had on approval, particular the playability across all the hair, necessary pressure, etc. I'll never be an Edgar Meyer. So what. I play better with the better bow. I think most players will find the same.
When we talk about the bass/bow/player combination what we really mean is bass/bow/technique. The biggest improvement will be accomplished by upgrading the weakest link. In the beginning, it is obviously technique, later it is the quality of the bass, the bow, or both. Then it will shift back to technique. Then it will go back to bass or bow. Then back to technique.
A while back, it was difficult for me to understand why Ken was changing basses, exchanging bows, seemingly going all over the place with his gear. If one considers the above, it is a necessary exercise if he wants to get even better sounds from his playing. It is like sequentially distilled liquor. It just gets purer with each step.
I appreciate the discussions and all the opinions expressed, but one thing this thread would benefit from is those posting carefully considering the real relevance to the issue at hand and avoiding the more tangential debates.
Responding to the "sound of the stick" tangent: The tapping pitches of my better bow is lower than my lesser bows and it actually rings more. The wood is from different tree species, but both have a similar glassy kind of tap sound, more like a high pitched "click" than a "toong". It's such a high frequency I can't see how it would affect bass frequencies very much in any significant way. Resonance starts with the fundamental and goes up through the partials. The higher the fundamental, the higher the partials also. In the case of the tap tones of bows of any wood dense enough to make a bow, these tones are so high that only the highest upper register could even be theoretically affected, let alone noticeably affected.
This is a different "vibe" over the length of the stick that Trevor is talking about. I can see that when a bow starts sort of jumping on a certain note. It could be a big deal if the bow is too jumpy, but that is easily cured by slightly changing the tension on the hair. Of course the jump just moves to a different note. On a good bow, the jumping will not affect the sound of the note. The hair will be glued to the string and move smoothly along despite what looks like a really jumpy bow. I noticed this with bows right away and I check this on all the bows I have tried. On some note they will start jumping. I haven't tried a bow that didn't do this, but the jump note varies widely and so does the jump. Generally the higher you torque it, the less it jumps. It's due more to the frequencies of the hair than the bow tap tone.
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