Posted on December 27, 2020May 20, 2025 by Dale Phillips Bass String Choices Bass String Choices by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #5, 1986 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie, Volume One, 2000 Fifty years ago, basses had gut strings, usually the top two plain gut and the lower two wound with wire. Whatever techniques a bassist wished to learn, classical, jazz, or the various folk/ethnic categories, they had to be within the limited possibilities afforded by this kind of string. Gut strings were at their best in the deep background tones of a symphonic bass section because they had a strong, true fundamental that stayed back where it belonged. Plucked, they had a punchy jazz rhythm sound in the lower and middle register, sometimes producing a delayed response that was known popularly as the “walking” effect. For solos of any sort, the range was limited because the high notes were feeble and uncentered. The first steel strings for bass, with a solid wire core, were stiff and had a harsh, metallic sound. But improved strings were developed with flexible, stranded cores and multiple windings. These were developed along the lines of two different design philosophies, and musicians had to choose between them. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 5, 2020May 14, 2025 by Dale Phillips Building a Plywood Bass Building a Plywood Bass by Richard Ennis Originally published in American Lutherie #3, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 see also, In Praise of the Plywood Bass by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Here is the basic design of one of the more unusual instruments I build in my workshop. This plywood three-quarter double bass of approximately 90 liters is built to a design that increases durability and ease of transport with reduced cost and maintenance. It has proved to be very popular with musicians and attracts the attention of nonmusicians as well. The demand for an instrument such as this is widespread. Quality double basses are scarce and very expensive, and certainly beyond the reach of beginners, schools, part-time bands, and those musicians who might take it up as a second instrument. An instrument of this design can be easily purchased and cared for and makes an ideal community instrument. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 9, 2020May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Praise of the Plywood Bass In Praise of the Plywood Bass by Frederick C. Lyman, Jr. Originally published in American Lutherie #4, 1985 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume One, 2000 see also, Building a Plywood Bass by Richard Ennis It has been said that in order to produce fine wines, one must have had generations of alcoholics in one’s family. Only then can one approach the problem with the necessary patience, devotion, and understanding that will result in superior, classic vintages. Mere cleverness or mere industry will not suffice; one has to be locked into the project by the merciless and irreversible forces of destiny. Similarly, those who are involved in the production of bass sounds seem to require a kind of demonic motivation. They must be attuned, in a special way, to the pulsations of the subaudible register, the tone-feelings that seem to arise from the nether regions. From this unholy obsession with the depths of auditory sensibility comes a fundamental understanding which will forever elude the fiddlers and flautists. What we mean is that bassists have a deep need to make those sounds, and they will find a way to do it. It’s not a question of what is practical or expedient or wise: Bassists are driven. They have a pathological fascination with deep sounds; they are not well without them. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on January 16, 2010June 6, 2025 by Dale Phillips In Memoriam: Frederick C. Lyman In Memoriam: Frederick C. Lyman March 7, 1925 – July 20, 2011 by Ken McKay and Tim Olsen Originally published in American Lutherie #113, 2013 Fred Lyman wrote a column in the Journal of the American Society of Double Bassists for several years. I was given twenty or so back issues way back in 1988 by my bass teacher Paul Warburton. I wanted to make my own double bass, and I devoured every article. I finally got up the nerve to write to Fred. I hoped he would maybe give me a few pointers, but he started an extensive series of handwritten letters. He was a practical man, more interested in the outcome than any one process, and he always encouraged my ideas, no matter how off-base. He would write things like, “That is as good a theory as any, but make sure to keep enough wood in the top so it doesn’t sink, years down the road.” I loved those articles and letters. They were nearly the only thing available at the time, and they turned out to be timeless. I found out later that he was even more generous with his time and knowledge than I had imagined. We met only one time in 1993 when my wife, my year-old son, and I drove from upstate New York down to New Jersey to meet up and get some wood. I traded him an old church bass that I had restored which really had no value at the time for as much wood as I could carry in my station wagon. He even asked if I had ebony for the fingerboard. He just wanted to help me get started and have success. We stayed all day while he showed me his shop and jigs, and taught me what he could with the limited amount of time. We corresponded throughout the years that I made my first instruments. I really feel that a little bit if him lives in every instrument I have made since. Rest in Peace, Fred Lyman. — Ken McKay Fred Lyman at the 1980 GAL Convention in San Francisco, where he lectured on bass viol design. Photo by Dale Korsmo. Fred Lyman was a constant and gentle presence in the GAL from the mid-1970s through the 1990s. He was a generation older than most of us Lutherie Boomers, being already an accomplished self-taught bass builder in his 50s when we met him. I learned from his obituary that he earned a Purple Heart in WWII, graduated with honors from Yale, and became an art painter. So he was too old to have been a hippie, but perhaps he had a beatnik phase; I don’t know. Sometime in the 1990s he sent me a long dreamy CD of free jazz by his band The Squealers, a quintet that included two bass viols. Right from the start it was a constant stream of quiet generosity as he wrote letters and articles for our publications and attended GAL Conventions, sometimes as a presenter. Back in the ancient times when we offered paid lifetime memberships, he was one of the first to sign up. I never visited his shop, but I came to imagine it as a sort of Wonka Chocolate Factory of a place, based on the evidence supplied by the stream of artifacts that flowed from it to the GAL Benefit Auctions, starting at our first auction in 1984. Boxes began to arrive from Port Murray, New Jersey — lots of boxes. I thought we must have cleaned him out. But the Oompah-Loompahs must have been busy, because that proved to be only the beginning. Several more Benefit Auctions benefited from Fred’s generosity, the last being a record-setting trove of lutherie treasure at the 2008 Convention, when Fred was already in his 80s. Fred and his wife Charsie were true friends of the Guild in tough times, and the GAL staff remembers this with deep fondness and gratitude. Fred will surely be missed. — Tim Olsen
Posted on January 14, 2010May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Review: The Setup and Repair of the Double Bass for Optimum Sound by Chuck Traeger Review: The Setup and Repair of the Double Bass for Optimum Sound by Chuck Traeger Reviewed by James Condino Originally published in American Lutherie #84, 2005 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Five, 2008 The Setup and Repair of the Double Bass for Optimum Sound Chuck Traeger with David Brownell and William Merchant Henry Strobel ISBN 1-892210-06-1 www.henrystrobel.com Every once in a while a book comes along in a particular field that sets a new standard for future titles to strive for. Chuck Traeger’s The Setup and Repair of the Double Bass for Optimum Sound is one of those gems. As a regular gigging double-bass player and luthier, I have been waiting for this text since I first picked up the instrument. Failed neck joints, broken scrolls, huge moisture cracks, and the general wear and tear of dragging around a very fragile refrigerator-sized item are part of daily life for the bass player and repairman. Chuck Traeger, who is referred to as “the Mercedes-Benz of (bass) repairmen” by his longtime friend and customer Ron Carter, didn’t come upon this overnight. He made his first professional jazz recordings in 1945 and played the double bass for over twenty years prior to becoming a repairman who specializes in the bass. His customer base and writing cover both the jazz and classical sides of the instrument. Chuck is a trained civil engineer from Columbia University. As such, his approach is that “there is a reason for everything. I want people to think in a different way about... the instrument, its repair, and setup.” To him it is a specialized art. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
