I purchased a new bass 2004 from Andy Stetson’s shop in Cincinatti called the Bass Cellar. It’s a German Hawkes built in the 1920’s sometime. It’s a fairly large instrument with violin corners and a flat back. Some naysayer’s warned me that flat back basses can be unstable but this one has held up fine.

It’s got wonderful sustain and bows with great openness and ease – there are none of those very tight spots that most basses have somewhere or other and remains so way up the neck. This encourages me to explore more up there. I have to admit that I took some white fingernail polish and applied a dot on the front of the fingerboard one whole step above the octave (A on the G-string) and another a fifth above the octave (D on the G-string).

This bass does not have the most explosive low end in the world, and a part of me misses this. But it makes up for it in clarity and evenness which pays off in an amplified setting both in our in-ear monitors and in the house.

The latest development is that I’m having a C-extension put on this bass by Michael Shank of Shanks Strings in Elizabethtown, PA. I did this to accommodate a couple of numbers on the new Nickel Creek CD. One used the low C and one the low D. In the studio we just tuned the E-string down. But as you bass players know the bass needs serious retuning when you do this which can be disruptive to the flow of a live show. It also leaves the low string pretty floppy. It will take some getting used to but will be a good thing in the long run to have easy access to this extended range.

TECH UPDATE

I’m currently using a variety of methods of amplification in the Nickel Creek setting, which because of the volume required is the most challenging I perform in these days.

I am running the old Fishman top of the bridge pickup (I think it’s called a BP-100) and an internal mike through a Battaglia blender. The mike is a Shure SM-98. I used to have this in a piece of foam in the F-hole. But I became curious about whether there might be a better place to mount the mic internally. I put it on a piece of coat hanger (hard to beat coat hangers and duct tape as attachment methods) and fished it around inside the bass while playing and listening. Of course no place inside the bass sounds great. But it seemed to lose some low rumble and boxiness when facing up at the top (and close to it) between the legs of the bridge. So I bent my coat hanger around to accommodate this and taped it to the legs of the bridge to secure it.

I’ve got an Ashley 5-band parametric to help me shape the mic sound. I run the Fishman through a little foot peddle EQ which cuts a bunch of high end when engaged which serves pretty well to tone it down for arco parts. I’m running this pickup/mike mix into a Walter Woods amp hooked up to a 2/10” cab coupled with a 12” cab. I’m looking into exchanging the two cab thing for a 4/10” cab when finances or an endorsement permits. Of course no one else on stage has an amp so I don’t run it at very high volume, but a little air moving in the low end is helpful to all of us.

I’ve also got Fishman’s more recent Full Circle pickup on the bass (this is the one that’s inside a bridge adjuster) and this gets sent to the house board. The sound guy (Phil Crumrine) likes to boost this a bit for arco parts because it gives some air to the bowed sound. They also mike the bass amp, and this gets mixed with the other sends for the desired end product.

I must mention that I still use my old Fishman Blender quite regularly as well, generally for non-Nickel Creek gigs. It’s small, versatile and dependable. I regret to say that the particular model I use is no longer available, but I know they’re making some kind of bass blender now. Whatever it is, I’m sure it works with the same consistent sound and dependability that all of the Fishman gear has.

{ Top of this page }