London 'bass, circa 1770.

Posted by: u5227470736789439 on 27 January 2009

Dear Friends,

I have waited a long time to try to post this photo of my old London bass.

In the early part of the Twentieh Century it was the property of Gustav Holst, and when he died it became the property of Pates School in Cheltenham, where it fell into a terrible state of disrepair.

I bought it from my second bass teacher in about 1990, after he had bought it from the school, to stop it getting further damaged.

I had it restored, and played it till I sold it in 1993.

Sadly it was badly damaged after a concert, and as I could not afford to insure it, I put the repairs in hand with no idea how they were going to be paid for.

It worked out that I sold it to cover the costs.

However, it is certainly one of the most handsome double basses I have ever seen, and it played magnificently!

Notice the use of plain gut strings on A, D, and G, and the round silver wire covered E string. A real classical set that Haydn would have recognised ...

ATB from George

PS: I apologise for what is a photo of a photo. Somewhere I have the original negative, but I have no idea where ...
Posted on: 09 July 2009 by shoot6x7
It's just like anything else, it's easy to hear the art in the music through a 72, a 52 may be more technically correct, but inadvertently masks the art ?

Does that makes sense in a right-brained way ?
Posted on: 09 July 2009 by u5227470736789439
I think you have the very reason why I prefer the 72 to the 52 even though it is impossible to argue that the 72 is the better piece, technically.

[Anyone else; left wondering what I am talking about here should look at the two images of the old bass - the one in the opening post and the scan done in a technically cleaner way to understand this analogy being driven at. I liken the 72's performance to the "collect" image in the first post, and the 52' style to the scan shown above. Clearly the images are of the same double bass [the music being listened to if you like], but one catches the warmth and beauty of the instrument [music], and the other is simply clinically accurate and catches the flaws perfectly. The live music performance might be likened to the instrument itself of course, whilst the most apparent [and still available] beauty still resides in the first gerneration recording [the original print], which in spirit at least is largely represented in the first picture, far more than the second "scan"].

ATB from George
Posted on: 09 July 2009 by u5227470736789439


Like the 72, splendid, but accurate? Perhaps a pleasantly warm and beautiful "version" of the original, while ...



Shows the typically analytical perfection aassociated with more hifi pieces like the 82 and 52, where every flaw is perfectly presented, but the original warmth and beauty are thrown into the background in the priority, even if they actually manage [as the scan does] to seemingly present more detail, if in a stark sort of way. The spirit is much closer in the apparently less accurate version, as judged technically.

Which is more accurate to the original warm and beautiful image?

Ironically the actaul colour of the varnish on the top picture - the collect - is rather accurate, whereas the scan gets a clear but bleached result as comapred to reality.

Dabranoc, George
Posted on: 08 August 2009 by u5227470736789439
The bass I used on the 13th April 2008 for the birthday concert of a friend, who was 75.

Here is my one housemate of the time pretending the thing is a large guitar!



This is a sixty year old plywood bass and actually belongs to a former pupil mine as their third instrument! Czech made.

ATB from George