A Savart-Style Upright Bass

Constructing a Simple 34" Scale Upright Bass Suitable for Bass Guitarists

by R.M. Mottola

Originally published in American Lutherie #80, 2004 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Seven, 2015



Regular experimentation on my part is directed toward the goal of producing the sound of the double bass from instruments that can be readily played by the bass guitarist. Many approaches are possible and the instrument described here is the result of one of these.

The design process began with functional requirements for the bass. This list was pretty basic. The target group of musicians was bass guitarists, and this constrained the scale length and a number of the critical dimensions of the neck and fingerboard to be similar to those of bass guitars. The instrument had to be musically viable in all styles in which the double bass is played pizzicato. It had to be transportable too, an easy design goal given the standard for portability set by the unwieldy double bass.

To that list I added one more requirement — that the prototype be relatively simple and cheap to build. The bass is just like any other instrument, only more so. Material cost is higher because there is more material. Construction time is greater because there is simply more to construct. The upshot is that a bass design experiment can consume a lot of time, effort, and money before the success or failure of the experiment is known. I wanted to keep both cost and effort down for the prototype.