Double Bass Setups and Places to Congregate

We are back! Our boss has returned from his long needed vacation. Meanwhile we have been busily fixing and tweaking our various online sites over at MySpace, eBay, and here at Blogger. All this online social networking exciting has gotten us excited.

First off, for this posts' agenda: please check out David Heath's Double Bass Blog. For any of you bass players or makers, since there relatively few of you around, this is a much needed place for you all to congregate in cyberspace. David seems to be very active with numerous projects such as a podcast show "Contrabass Conversations" and his soon to be director position on International Society of Bassists. Some day, we'd love to have this blog as sophisticated as his but we're still a long ways from that.

Speaking of basses, when the sales rep from Texas came by with the bows, we happened to purchase a great carved bass from them to help ease their load in their already crowded van. What follows are some photos showing how this 3/4 size beast was setup.

Onto the operating table upstairs. The bass's back is protected from scratching with linen free cloth.
You can't see it in this shot, but we have a small neck rest to stabilize the instrument when the sound post is being propped up. Probing into the f-holes is the black sound post setter.

The shot of the bridge with the feet set in place seems to a simple "plop-and-drop" deal but this is actually the most difficult part. Les had to work on correctly carving out the feet of the bridge so they would match the top's surface. Small but proportionate details that can alter how the bass sounds.
This is a two man effort as the gear mechanism on bass is wound by one person and the other has to make sure the cable like strings anchored into the tailpiece and set on the right bridge notch.And there you go! Les takes it for a test drive and he's giddy as heck. It's the first time we've had a column of basses in the shop for him to try- but most importantly maintain them.