Yita Music

[Katie Long]

It's a modern snakewood bow, french style. I'll ask him to tell me some more about it.

[Katie Long]

I had a go with the snakewood bow yesterday in my lesson... it's very long and quite flat, eg there isn't much camber in it, and the tip is fairly flat too. I tend to like a bow with a fair amount of camber so it didn't suit me very well. Nice and long though, and the balance is good. It's probably a matter of personal preference, there are some bassists I know who play with almost a straight stick with no camber at all. Peter really likes it though and it sounds ace with his bass. He actually reccommended that I buy one of the carbon french bows with silver tips that they are selling as I'm in the market for a spare bow (having totally destroyed my other one, whoops) so he obviously trusts them. They have good ebay reviews as well.

[Katie Long]

While I'm here, those aren't baroque bows. They are gamba bows. I have a baroque bow and it's nothing like them. Plus I think the bend of the stick is wrong...? Or maybe its just a later bow. I have a 'Baroque' bow from Roger Doe and it's very different to what YitaMusic are selling.

[Katie Long]

Hi guys, my new carbon fibre bow arrived today. It's a lovely bow actually, it's nicely finished. Doesn't draw the sound as nicely as my pernambuco bow, of course, but still its a good solid sound with a nice amount of grab on the bottom two strings of my modern bass (helicore orchestrals at the moment). I've been switching between the two in my rehearsal this afternoon and it is doing fairly well although the white hair it came with is really not to my liking and very cheap I think! Planning to get it rehaired with some black hair and then I'll let you know what that does to it. As a second bow, it's really good for the money so far.

[Katie Long]

This is a great bow for the money in my opinion. For £60 worth of bow it's a very good buy, nice straight stick and Peter had a good play with it in my lesson the other day and was very impressed - apparently I have some knack for finding lovely bows! Anyway on the whole its a good buy for the money and I'll be using it as my second bow from now on.

[Drake Chan]

Originally Posted by Katie Long

.... it is doing fairly well although the white hair it came with is really not to my liking and very cheap I think! Planning to get it rehaired with some black hair and then I'll let you know what that does to it. As a second bow, it's really good for the money so far.

It's weird that these mass-produced Chinese bows all have that crappy, weak bleached-white hair on their bows.

I bought a KSB bow from Ken about a year and a half ago (you can read the review at the top). It's a really nice bow considering that it is mass-produced, and it draws a big, deep sound compared with other bows that have a similar weight. It is a ton better than my old Upton $99 bow in almost every way.

The one aspect that the Upton definitely had an edge over my current bow was with the hair. Both bows came with white hair. I bought the Upton 2 years ago and just recently sold it. When I packed it into a shipping tube, I noticed that the bow hair looked like it hadn't been used much; all the hairs were pretty much intact and looked brand new. Sure I used it for only half a year and another bassist used it for another half a year, but still, I was amazed with how good it looked. My C. Loveri bow on the other hand is close to losing half its hair, and the Shostakovitch that's coming up won't be kind to the remaining hairs. I'm definitely looking forward to rehairing my bow when I get back to NYC.