Oxford 3/4 scale upright bass
Oxford 3/4 scale upright bass
Saturday, June 1, 2013
I first picked up the bass guitar in the summer of 1987, when Sound System's bass player went AWOL in the middle of a day of recording. He'd left his Rickenbacker 4001 bass behind, so I used it to record the last few songs with the band, and he came to pick it up a few days later. In the meantime, I'd gotten to be reasonably good at the bass guitar after just a few days, and had come to the conclusion that it would be a good idea to learn to play the bass so I'd always have a player I could count on. So I bought a cheap Matador electric bass in a pawn shop a few weeks later, and a bass amplifier a few months after that.
Pretty much from the day I started playing bass guitar seriously, I knew I wanted to branch out and play the upright bass too. Granted, there would be some hurdles to overcome: The upright is a very large instrument, so I'd need space for it in my dorm room, apartment, or house, and I'd need a large enough vehicle to carry it in, like a van, station wagon or mid-size hatchback. The much longer scale and absence of any frets or markers would make it more challenging to play, too.
But the biggest hurdles, at least from my perspective as a poor college student, would be price and availability. Even as early as the late '80s, all but the jazz purists and classical players had pretty much made the transition from upright basses to bass guitars, for many of the reasons I've already pointed out. Used uprights, if they could be found at all, were either priced out of my range, or not in playable condition. And a new upright could cost well into the thousands of dollars, far out of my reach at the time. So no upright bass for me, at least for a while.
The upright bass (also called a bass violin, double bass, contrabass, bass fiddle, or doghouse bass) has a long history in classical music. It traces its roots from the viola da gamba of the 14th century, and the viol family of the 15th. Its modern look, with its sloped shoulders, is more similar to the viol family, but has other features common to the modern violin family as well, including a shaped (as opposed to flat) back and wire-wound (as opposed to gut) strings. The common name "double bass" comes from the idea that it provides low-end support to the cello, which itself is effectively a bass viola. Large modern orchestras might have six or more upright basses in the string section. (Incidentally, the Des Moines Symphony has seven bassists.)
Orchestral bassists play the instrument using two techniques: by bowing the strings with a horsehair bow, or by plucking the strings with the fingers and thumb (pizzicato). Folk, jazz, blues, bluegrass, country, rockabilly and rock players are much more likely to use only the pizzicato technique, each style having its own variations in plucking, thumping, or slapping the strings. The result is a soft, warm, percussive tone that simply can't be reproduced with a bass guitar. Because a single, acoustic upright bass doesn't project very far, it's usually either mic'ed for a performance, or connected to an amplifier using a piezoelectric pickup in the bridge.
Unlike the violin (GDAE), viola (CGDA) and cello (CGDA, an octave below viola), which are tuned in fifths, the upright bass (EADG) is tuned in fourths. This happens to be the same tuning used on a bass guitar, or one octave below the traditional Spanish guitar and electric guitar. This makes it fairly easy for a bass guitar player to move to an upright, or for an upright bassist to pick up a bass guitar. The main differences are in the scale length of the strings (much longer on the upright), the absence of frets or markers on the upright, and the playing position of the instrument. While a bass guitar is played horizontally (like a guitar), the upright bass is played vertically, with the player standing at the side of the instrument, balancing it against the player’s body.
Instruments, particularly strings, are sometimes scaled down for younger or smaller players. Common scale sizes for the upright bass are full-scale or 4/4, 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4. That's not to say that a 3/4 bass is 75% as large as a full-scale model, or that a half-scale is 50% -- in fact, a 3/4 bass is about 96% (1060mm string length) as large as a 4/4 (1100mm). A 1/2 scale is about 88% (975mm), and a 1/4 is about 81% (900mm). In comparison, most bass guitars are scaled at 34" (864mm) or 32" (813mm), with a few scaled 30” (762mm). Because a full 4/4 scale upright bass stands almost seven feet tall, all but the tallest players usually prefer a 3/4 or 1/2 scale bass, even for adult and professional use.
Back to my own story: I'd put out feelers with several local high school, college and university music departments, asking to be contacted if they ever wanted to retire an upright bass, and for over 20 years, no one had ever followed up on it. One morning, though, as I was visiting Solar Loan about doing some work on their computers, I found an upright bass on their sales floor that hadn't been there just two days earlier. I asked the owner about it, and he confirmed that it had just come out on the floor that morning. His asking price of $595 included the bass itself, a bow, a gig bag, and an adjustable stand. Anticipating my next question (I'm a regular there, after all), he told me he'd probably let it go for $525. I made a down payment that day, and paid the balance the following week, trading out some computer repair time as partial payment. Measuring a little over six feet tall, the bass and its extras fit nicely into my Ford station wagon, with room to spare for a guitar and a couple amps.
Learning more about this particular bass proved much more challenging. The only information I had about it was a label inside the instrument that read "Oxford, made in China." No model number, no serial number, no date, no web address -- just those four words. I started by calling local music stores to see who might carry Oxford instruments, but none of the stores in Des Moines, Ames or Iowa City were familiar with the brand. Further calls to university and college music departments in the area led to dead ends too. A Google search for "oxford upright bass" yielded lots of places to learn to play, or have your bass repaired, at Oxford University, or in Oxford UK, Oxford MA, Oxford NC, or Oxford NJ.
By refining my search to "oxford string instruments" I was able to find a few online dealers who sold Oxford violins, violas and cellos. I called a couple of these dealers, each of whom were helpful in their own way. AZG Tech was able to give me the name and number of the wholesale distributor of Oxford instruments: Lou Capece Music Distributors in East Meadow, NY. When I called the number, I was shocked when the owner, Lou Capece, answered the phone himself and happily answered a lot of my questions. He even offered some additional insights I hadn't thought to ask about.
Capece orders brass, woodwind and orchestral string instruments from a factory in China, attaches his own label, and distributes to hundreds of locations in North America. He imports about 150 upright basses a year (a bass takes up the space of 16 violins in the shipping container, so he rarely imports more than one at a time), and offers them in 3/4, 1/2 and 1/4 scales. The top and back are solid, not plywood like many cheap uprights. The top is spruce, the back and sides are maple, and the fingerboard is ebony. In all respects, this is a pretty high-quality instrument. At an MSRP of $1495 USD (all sizes), it's not the cheapest upright on the market. But it's far below the price of German- or Italian-built basses of the same quality, and less than I'd expect to pay for many used uprights as well. I'd say my $525 in cash and trade-out was pretty well-spent.
A few months after I brought the bass home, I took it to Rieman Music in Urbandale to have a pickup installed. Of the several models they had available in-store or by special order, I decided to go with a mid-price model, the Revolution Solo at $180 USD, and Rieman's technician Jim Wilson installed it for me for just $30 more. This pickup is mounted in the low shoulder of the bass bridge, and the 1/4" jack is attached to the underside of the G string to keep it from rattling against the strings or body. It's a piezoelectric pickup, meaning that it takes vibrations and converts them to electrical impulses, and requires no external power or battery to connect to an amplifier or mixing console. The sound is warm and believable for both bowed and pizzicato playing styles, although the connector can resonate and color the sound if the cord is not connected securely.
I've seen bass and cello players use a small rubber disk to protect the stage or floor from the metal floor peg of their instruments, and so I asked Rieman's about such a device, although at the time I didn't know what to call it. I described it as a "floor puck." The two sales clerks laughed politely and said the proper name is a "rock stop," but they both liked my description better. Besides, I'm a rock musician -- why would I want to stop? The Oxford's height-adjustable floor peg has a rubber tip, which does pretty much the same job, so I didn't really need one. But I felt it would be a good thing to keep in the gig bag, just in case. Rieman's had bass floor pucks -- errm, rock stops -- for about $10 USD.
I've used my Oxford upright bass in performance at the Carlisle Christian Church (UCC/DOC) and at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Indianola, before the pickup was installed, and it did fine as an acoustic bass in a small space, with a small audience. After the pickup was installed, I used it in a recording session with Rob Straughn. I ran the pickup to one channel and mic'ed the bass on another channel, recording each to a separate track. Again, I got a nice warm, believable sound from the pickup, but the mic channel picked up more of the attack that the pickup did not. By blending the two tracks, I got a good balance of attack to sustain that I'll likely use again in the future. All told, I'm thrilled with my Oxford upright bass (and the Revolution Solo pickup), and it's likely you'll see or hear it much more as I take it out more often.
Photo by Donna Jo Wallace