C-Extensions

[Arnold Schnitzer]

Hi Jake. I'm not Jeff. He's busy gloating about last night. He deserves to do so. His bass sounded great in Bill Blossom's able hands!

About extensions--all C extensions are an imperfect solution to a major problem (needing to reach the low C to Eb). If professionally constructed and installed, they work well and sound good. In my opinion, the machine types are very problematic and I do my best to convince players to avoid them. Also, it is in vogue to get extensions which go down to a low B. I think this is a bad idea. There is too much torque pulling the neck and extension out of whack when you make the piece that long (hanging off the scroll about 4 inches). Every one I have seen, even relatively new, has been warped, with the center of the extension lifting up toward the string.

I think the trend toward chromatic-gated extensions is here to stay. I also think it makes the most sense to have this type made all at once, not to have the extra gates rigged up later.