Tirol bass?

[Vince Jesse]

Hi. Someone brought in a bass to me and I'd like to see if anyone has seen something like it. If it's German it looks older than any German bass I've seen.

The scroll has been grafted onto that neck. There are patches in the scroll cheeks for French style tuners.

Rib depth is 210 mm consistently until the break then tapers to 190mm. Very slight break angle. Body length is 1050mm. 610mm wide at the lower bout, 515mm at the break. Looks like a 5/8 bass.

Looks like one of the corner blocks is original and it's wider, like I've seen on some French basses. Wraps around the ribs farther.

The top archings are very tall, looks like an upside down bath tub.

The back is quartersawn but doesn't look like maple to me. Ribs are maple.

String length is 41" with this neck anyway.

Any thoughts?

[Vince Jesse]

more pics here.

[Ken Smith]

This to me does not look like the same model we have seen known as 'blockless wonders' although unless you can prove that neck block is original I would say it was born blockless.

Now, I don't see anything like French tuners on there now or before. The scars show it had plates with German hatpegs. The gears on there now or German as well.

I think this is a Southern German Bass but not Mittenwald or the Tirol, north of those places.

The measurements you give are metric. Why? In USA almost no one knows these numbers without converting them to inches. Speak English, please. The String length is 104.14cm by the way, you missed one..

[Vince Jesse]

On the other side of the scroll are the rectangular patches for the previous French worm gear assemblies. But the round patches are big, like they carried wooden hat peg spindles. Probably had several tuners sets over the years.

The south German basses with club necks that I've seen don't look as nicely done as this one. Very narrow purfling. Someone has used 1/4" ebony dowels to 'decorate' the back. The dowels are superficial and don't go all the way through to the neck and endpin blocks - like the decorations around the button on some French basses.

I don't know what's original - there are about ten different styles of cleats here.

[Arnold Schnitzer]

I agree with Ken that this bass used to be blockless. The ribs used to tuck into slots in the side of the neck heel. What I find odd is the extremely wide distance between the top eyes of the f holes. I'll break with Ken though, and guess that it was made in the Tyrol. My other long-shot inkling is that it may be from New England, though I'd need to look at the wood up close. It reminds me a bit of a Woodbury I once had (Vermont, 1840-ish).

[Ken Smith]

Arnold, look at the back button;

That looks German and it was the wide FFs that took me north of the Tirol but still in the south of Germany. Not a prolific maker but one that followed the Tirol style. The wide FFs can be anything including Bohemian but this guy didn't make many basses before this one from what it looks like to me.