Lighter Bows?

[Drake Chan]

Originally Posted by David Powell

I recently stumbled upon some advocates of longer and heavier bows for bass. These are bows that are 80 cm long and weigh 200 grams or more. Has anyone tried anything like that? My heaviest bow is in the mid 140's.

There's a bassist in my orchestra that uses a French bow made by Hietbrink, I think. It's made of South American ironwood, swarti-something or another. It is really, really heavy and much longer than a normal bow. You can probably club someone to death with it.

I've played it a few times. It produces a prodigious amount of sound compared to my bow, probably because it is so heavy that it plays the string by itself. If you're always saying, "Use your arm weight and bow weight only, and no muscles" to rookies asking about playing the French bow, this is the bow for you. ......

The bow is pretty stiff, and is balanced decently for such a heavy and long bow. It's a very well made bow as it should be.

But otherwise, this is a bow like none other. You can pick up any normal bow (regular size and weight range) and still play it like you normally would. With this bow, you'll be fighting to even hold it normally because of its immense weight and size. Then when you start playing, you'll have to get used to the bow before you can try anything fancy.

All in all, you'll have to spend a lot of time playing the bow to get used to it. After that, you will probably be playing it normally. However, I would imagine that quicker passages will be a good deal harder with it. And with its massive inertia, so will quick and/or frequent string crossings.

I suppose that you can try out a longer and heavier bow to see if you like how it feels. But personally, I would not advocate using one.