New Acoustic Bass Day

BillDL

I'm not a bass player.  I have two Precision Bass copies that I like to mess around with from time to time and plan to use for recording, and I know how to set them up.  Did I mention before that I'm not a bass player

I kept seeing a B-Stock acoustic bass in the bargain bin on the Artist Guitars website reduced to £89.  They don't have any new ones in stock, but I think they were around £150.  I've never had an acoustic bass.  I've played one at an informal man cave jam before and was surprised at the volume, so I've always been curious but not enough to pay £89 for something I may never use.  I saw it drop in price overnight to £65 and I thought I would just grab it before somebody else did.

It looks to have been a customer return, but if so I'm sure it's not been played.  The details just said there was a small crack next to the neck.  It's actually just s tress fracture in the lacquer of the soundboard close to the neck to body joint and, when under no string tension and in a back bow as it arrived, the binding has cracked vertically in two places up near the heel.  When tuned to tension and the truss rod relaxed for optimal relief the hairline cracks in the binding close together and the instrument is very stable.

It's an Artist Guitars ABJ60CEQ (Acoustic Bass Jumbo 60 series Cutaway with EQ), i.e. a big-bodied beast with an undersaddle piezo strip and a Fishman Presys II Pre-amp.

Neck: Okoume / Okumen, off-white plastic binding, composite ("eco-rosewood") fretboard, 44mm Tusq nut, dual action truss rod, Scale Length 30.5".

Body: 20.5" long x 16" across lower bout x 11.5" across upper bout x 4" deep.  Laminated Spruce soundboard, laminated Ash back and sides ("antique pine" shade of stain), herringbone purfling, rosette and back seam that look as though they are of preformed dark/light wood rather than a decal, "eco rosewood" bridge and what looks like a bone or Tusq saddle.

Machine Heads: Chrome sealed die cast, butterfly style buttons (do I call them buttons on a bass? 

Strings: guage not given but measured at around 45 to 100 guage silver coloured winding.

This came out the box with the strings slack and with a slight back-bow that required an eighth of a turn to relax it under tension to a nice relief.  The action at the 12th is around 2mm low E to around 1.6mm G string but that will come down when I file the nut slots a bit deeper, given that the nut action is higher than it should be.

As expected with a budget instrument the fret ends will require some rounding and smoothing.  The spec wasn't given for the frets but they are surprisingly skinny at just 2mm wide and just over 1mm tall.  I thought they would have been chunkier, but they feel OK and seem to be quite level.  Time will tell as it settles.

The sticky pad with the small cable tie used to secure the wires against the back or underside of soundboard has come loose, as often happens on cheaper instruments, but is easily enough addressed.

I am immediately struck by how loud, resonant and bassy this instrument is.  There is a fair amount of top end, but the bass is most certainly there and it almost growls.  There's a fair amount of finger squeak from the strings that is enhanced by the acoustic body, and this is picked up very easily along with careless finger taps on the soundboard, so I'll have to try and be more precise.

One thing I do like about it is that it has the dished out area on the bridge for the pins to sit down lower than the remaining surface of the bridge, so it maintains a good angle up to the saddle.  It's been well designed and executed.

I bought a couple of sets of 80/20 Bronze 40 to 95 gauge strings in the Black Dog Music closing down sale.  Being a bit thinner than the 45 to 100 that are on it at the moment they might be more twangy and less bassy, but that will have to be seen in time.

Overall I am really pleased with the playability and sounds from this budget instrument, and after I set it up properly I think I'm going to enjoy playing it acoustically and through an amp.  I'm not sure I would have bought it had it been new at £150, despite it actually being a tremendous bass for that price.  Had I bought it at the initually reduced B-Stock price of £89 I would have been pretty pleased, but for the further reduction to £65 I am very happy.

Maybe at some point this could well be converted into a fretless bass.  Hmmm.

ICBM

The hardware alone is probably worth £65 there, so you can't possibly go wrong!

It's unfortunate that you've already bought the bronze roundwounds - there is a very common but wrong-headed idea that acoustic basses should have bronze strings - presumably because acoustic guitars do, so a lot come factory-fitted with them. They sound *terrible*, and feel worse... worse than the nickel ones that are on it. It would be better to get some flatwounds, or even black nylon tapewounds - they just sound much better on an acoustic. It will stop the finger squeak and give a softer but more percussive tone, a bit more like a double bass.

My acoustic bass is now my most-used instrument - I take it to a jam session most weeks. Despite being impressively loud and bassy when played by itself, it isn't actually enough when it's competing with a couple of guitars and a vocal or two - not far off, especially if you play hard, but it doesn't have enough depth like that really. I use a Roland Micro Cube RX, which is small (although surprisingly heavy) and fairly discreet in an otherwise acoustic session, and sounds fantastic.

UnclePsychosis

I'm not a huge fan of acoustic bass but that looks a steal for £65.

44mm neck is proper chunky though. I'm not sure my fretting hand would like that much!

BillDL

It is a pretty chunky neck in terms of profile and width, @UnclePsychosis, and the string spacing will take a bit of getting used to, but I do have pretty large hands.  My main problem is that I have nails on my plunking hand that I maintain for acoustic 6-string playing and hybrid picking, so trying to get a fleshy pluck on the bass strings is hard.

Thanks @ICBM. ; I only paid £5.50 for the bronze strings from Black Dog Music's stock reduced in the closing down sale.  Olympia brand, so budget ones anyway, but I bought some of the electric and 6-string acoustic ones reduced to £2 and £3 a pack respectively, and they are actually pretty good.  I just grabbed them when I saw them and I haven't wasted much money on them if I don't use the bass ones though.  I had actually been wondering about flatwound strings to reduce the finger squeak though, so I'm glad you confirmed what I had been musing about.  How does the overall tension of nickel, bronze, flat and tapewound generally compare?  The guitar itself feels pretty rigid and there's very little upward deflection of the laminate soundboard behind the bridge with the nickel wound strings so I'm sure it could take a bit more tension.

ICBM

Generally flatwounds are a bit higher tension than rounds for similar gauges - not least because for the same measured outer diameter, a flatwound contains more metal as there are no gaps! - but the construction (core to wrap ratio, number of layers etc) varies more than roundwounds, so some can actually be lighter.

One thing I forgot to mention is that they don’t like to be bent sharply, so you need to be careful to get the right scale length (so only the core goes onto the machineheads) and that the string holes in the bridge are ramped or radiused so the string isn’t bent through a right-angle where it exits.

ElectricXII

I reckon you've got a bargain there @BillDL ! I'm a bass player turned guitarist and I often still have a hankering to play bass. I've still got the Aria Super Bass SB700 which I bought in 1982. No bass amp any more, but perhaps an acoustic bass would be the thing.

I inherited a fully hollow 1963 Hofner Senator bass many years ago, but sold it to buy an acoustic guitar.

xOilCityPickups

My acoustic basses get the most use too ... can't seem to get the right strap for them though ... 

BillDL

@OilCityPickups.  That black double bass is a really mean looking instrument now, and all the work you put into it paid off.  I must admit though that I do prefer the natural finish one. Comparing the shape of the natural one with the black one, the natural one is like a Gibson "slope shoulder" guitar compared with a Martin dreadnought, but it might just be the perspective.

@ICBM.  You actually read my mind there with your additional information about choosing the correct scale flatwound strings.  The low E string was overwound on the post of the tuner right down to being forced down onto the top of the hex collar and pushing the winds above it right up high on the post.  When I removed the string to cut it a little shorter I noticed that the thinner tail was down into the hole and that the winds around the post started straight off with the full thickness of the string.  I had to carefully bore out the hole down into the post a tiny amount with a blunt rat-tail file so I could fit the full thickness string down into it.  This had me thinking about what scale length strings there are.

@ElectricXII.   Back in the early 80s I always loved Aria guitars with the contrasting multi-laminate through necks, or maybe some were just pseudo through necks with bodies jointed in the middle to look like it.  The bassist in the band we were trying to get together had an Aria bass with a dark wood body and the lighter laminates and I loved the look of it with its really long upper horn that reminded me of a Thresher Shark's tail.  He also had a fretless Eko acoustic bass with an oval sound hole and an archtop type bridge and tailpiece.  It didn't sound very good to my ear back then and he said it was a pig to play, so it just hung on his wall.  I never realised there was a Hofner Senator bass version.  My 1961? Brunette Hofner Senator 6-string was unfortunately wrecked when I accidentally stomped on it.  I loved the look of that guitar.

I deepend the nut slots so it now has a nice nut action and it's a lot more playable.  I don't have bass nut files but I have some very shallow taper round needle files that work well.  I don't know what the assembler used for the G slot though, because it was way too wide.  I needed to take it down a fair amount so the slot is now the right width, but it's a little unsightly with a wider chasm above it.  Action is now a hair over 1.75mm on the bass side and a hair over 1.5mm on the treble.  I had a look inside it and it's fairly well constructed, but you can tell it's built to a budget with the glue runs and some random rags of wood here and there.

ElectricXII

BillDL said:

@ElectricXII.   Back in the early 80s I always loved Aria guitars with the contrasting multi-laminate through necks, or maybe some were just pseudo through necks with bodies jointed in the middle to look like it.  The bassist in the band we were trying to get together had an Aria bass with a dark wood body and the lighter laminates and I loved the look of it with its really long upper horn that reminded me of a Thresher Shark's tail.  He also had a fretless Eko acoustic bass with an oval sound hole and an archtop type bridge and tailpiece.  It didn't sound very good to my ear back then and he said it was a pig to play, so it just hung on his wall.  I never realised there was a Hofner Senator bass version.  My 1961? Brunette Hofner Senator 6-string was unfortunately wrecked when I accidentally stomped on it.  I loved the look of that guitar.

Mine's a proper through neck Aria, with the early batwing headstock:

BillDL

That's exactly the bass my mate had.  You're not Kenny L. formerly from Lanarkshire by any chance?

xOilCityPickups

BillDL said:

@OilCityPickups.  That black double bass is a really mean looking instrument now, and all the work you put into it paid off.  I must admit though that I do prefer the natural finish one. Comparing the shape of the natural one with the black one, the natural one is like a Gibson "slope shoulder" guitar compared with a Martin dreadnought, but it might just be the perspective.

You are absolutely correct about the bass shoulders ... though what surprises folks is the black one is richer and louder than the blonde one and that even though it looks smaller, it's a longer scale length so has more grind and punch. Blonde for rockabilly, black for psychobilly ... 

ElectricXII

BillDL said:

That's exactly the bass my mate had.  You're not Kenny L. formerly from Lanarkshire by any chance?

It isnae me officer!

ICBM

BillDL said:

Back in the early 80s I always loved Aria guitars with the contrasting multi-laminate through necks, or maybe some were just pseudo through necks with bodies jointed in the middle to look like it.  The bassist in the band we were trying to get together had an Aria bass with a dark wood body and the lighter laminates and I loved the look of it with its really long upper horn that reminded me of a Thresher Shark's tail.  He also had a fretless Eko acoustic bass with an oval sound hole and an archtop type bridge and tailpiece.  It didn't sound very good to my ear back then and he said it was a pig to play, so it just hung on his wall.

That's quite remarkable... I have an Aria SB-R60 fretless like the one above but red, and an Eko BA-4 acoustic fretless too!

The Eko is actually very good-sounding - at least amplified, it has a piezo bridge pickup which I think is factory original. Unamplified it sounds OK, but not loud enough to play along with acoustic guitar unless you really thrash it and then it has no bottom end. I find it easy to play, although I shouldn't because it has a quite a big neck - but in fact it dictates that you play it 'classical style' with your thumb on the back, and then it's fine.

BillDL

ElectricXII said:

BillDL said:

That's exactly the bass my mate had.  You're not Kenny L. formerly from Lanarkshire by any chance?

It isnae me officer!

That's a pity.  I lost touch with him around 1991 and I wouldn't have minded catching up with him again.

@ICBM.   That particular mate had a peculiar "deformity" in that his thumbs were very slim and not unlike shorter versions of his pinkies.  He did play with his thumb behind the neck but it lacked a lot of strength and he had trained his hand to fret without using his thumb for most of his guitar and bass playing.

Dave_Mc

Nice score @BillDL , hard to go wrong for £65 as @ICBM said!