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Old 03-15-2015, 09:38 AM
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Ken Smith Ken Smith is offline
Bassist, Luthier & Admin
 
Join Date: 01-18-2007
Location: Perkasie, PA
Posts: 4,851
Ken Smith is on a distinguished road
Thumbs up agreed..

Here's a twist. If you believe in Karma, it happened to me last night. About 8 years ago, a player in the section that was shopping for a bass found and old Juzek at a great price from a family. I think the owner had passed. A few minutes before the concert, he shows me his brand new Sihon sliding mute. I have mine since 1966, an original. So he asks me to show him how it goes on the bass. So, I put the mute on the bass, and it was tight, not exactly as nice as the old ones. Sliding it up, I tried getting it on the bridge and POP, the old original 75 year old bridge breaks in several pieces in my hands on stage just minutes before the downbeat. Luckily, the place we were playing at had a music program and there was a cheap Chinese or Romanian bass in the back so we grabbed that from the music room and he was set to play. His bass needed a new bridge anyway..

Last night, I am on stage with a new acquisition, a 1980 Pollmann Busetto, 4/4 model (7/8? in USA). One of the players in my section also has a 1980 Pollmann (Gunther Krahmer) but a large Fendt-Maggini round back model. So he came to try my bass having only seen it for the first time the night before at the dress rehearsal. We had been talking about my friend in England, Leon Bosch who tunes up Orchestra strings for solo and doesn't use solo strings. So he tunes up a string or two to show me on his bass and I start doing the same on mine. He has Orig. Flatchromes, the same Leon uses and I had Belcantos. I had the G almost to the A and was tuning the D up and then when to the G to get it to pitch and POP, my Tailpiece breaks. A piece of the rosewood tore out where the cable slides through. This is the original TP, the same as on his Pollmann bass, the cable slides thru underneath and not drilled thru the top and the cable on one side ripped out of the TP. I was told by Arnold some years ago that this can be weak for a bass and he was right. Looking on the stage floor I found a sliver of rosewood that was ripped out, the TP held by a single cable and ready to rip out like the other if I applied pressure. Luckily, we were at a school, the conductor is head of the music department there and I know they have a few basses in the music room. It is minutes before 7pm and I need 1 1/2 hours or more on a Saturday night to drive to my office and back to pick up my other bass (Marcucci). So, I went and told the conductor the situation and he showed me into the instrument storage room. I see about 8 basses there, all plywood and in bad shape. One with the neck ripping out, several half sized basses, some of them Kays and one German plywood half sized bass with terrible old floppy gauge strings! The conductor says they only have one bass player in the orchestra and he uses the Kay. The German Ply has been sitting for years untouched. I tune it up, pull the bridge tip down, straighten the bridge placement and I'm on stage playing Principal bass with a 50+ piece Orchestra doing Sibelius 2 and other Scandinavian pieces with a student plywood 1/2 sized bass and a Lipkins Sartory bow. If not for the Lipkins bow, I would have been in Bass-Hell. Instead, I buckled down and played good because instead of relaxing with a bass that plays itself, I was on my toes trying to get sound out of this bass shaped object and, it worked.

I had packed up my bass and left it in the Directors office. When I got back to the office after the concert and post-concert dinner, I took off the strings, bridge and tailwire and with the strings still on the TP and on the gears in the pegbox, I looked at the possibility of repairing the TP rather then replacing it. The sliver of rosewood that ripped out did not press back into place but rather 'slid' in from above without out a splinter missing. The holes drilled for the cable were about 3/16" so I looked all around the shop for some 2-ton epoxy but nothing was anywhere to be found. Then, in the supply room next to the 5-minute epoxy supply that we use to inlay the graphite bars on the Smith Electric Basses, was a single box of a duo-tube mix of Devcon 2-ton epoxy.

So, with the bass on my bench and the Strings and Tailpiece still all together I gathered all I would need. A piece of cardboard to mix the epoxy, a small dowel piece to mix and apply it, paper towels for drip, a clamp and 2 3/16' dowel pieces I just cut to length to plug up the old holes so after it's fixed, I would drill thru the top and do it the stronger way. Right now, it is all clamped up since about 1:00am this morning (last night). After I have my Sunday buffet breakfast at my favorite Diner (you had a late dinner there with me when you visited), I will go back and finish the job. The set time for the 2-ton is listed as 30 minutes but being that I have 3 pieces glued up to withstand 100s of pound of pressure, letting it dry over night before working the piece is recommended. I once had a bass come in from overseas and the pegbox was ripped off from the base of the 'box so I glued it with 2-ton and the next day, strung up the bass. This is was just a temp-fix as the bass needed a restoration regardless. It probably needed a neck graft anyway because it was too long for the bass for the needed measurements as well as being made from some local Neapolitan junky maple-like wood. For a fine bass, it deserved better and will get it before long.

So, rather than replace it with an Ebony TP that I actually have available from another bass awaiting restoration, I opted to fix the original one and re-use it with the cable running thru the top instead. My friend with the other Pollmann has the exact TP as mine so I advised him NOT to tune his bass up to solo or 'his' TP cable might also rip out and be in the same boat as me!

Being a bass player and a woodworker yourself, you know how exciting this can be, doing the fix yourself and improving it in the process. I will post an update here when all done but being this is YOUR Lipkins bow thread, all of this for ME at least is connected. My bass section of 4 consisted or a 1933 Juzek Gamba, a 1900s Markneukirchen bass, a 1980 Pollmann and a 1950s 1/2 sized German plywood that was barely playable. If not for the Lipkins bow as I said, I would have been struggling to play. Instead, I played and led the section, ignoring the left hand discomfort and got thru the concert with flying colors. We have the best and tightest section of all the other strings in that Orchestra. I was about to switch places on stage, being embarrassed to be on the first stand with such junk in my hands BUT, this is what they give students to learn on, not a Pollmann or Marcucci so I played with that bass just to put myself in the shoes of a beginner that had to learn to play with such an inferior instrument. Thanks to Sue for making a great bow, that bass with her bow turned a bad situation into a Miracle!
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