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The Recycled Resonator Guitars The 8-string fretless electric basses
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The Double-Bass-Banjo's
I have made three Double Bass Banjo's to date and there are three more on the way. The idea came to me from my step-cousin Matthew Armstrong who was making a prototypical one from a fencepost which was superceded by a neck etc. made by Peter Biffin (a maker of fine instruments -see the link spikefiddle.com) who has apparently made some others too. Here are some pictures of Matt's he sent me. I have now seen and played it and spent a lovely evening there tweaking it. We ended up liking it set up more like mine are which gave it more of an acoustic bass sound and less compressed dynamics. It features holes cut in the skin for a soundhole and to accommodate the support for the bridge under one side. The other side had slats of wood which can be moved to change the tone; closer gives more top end and further out from the support gives more bass at the expense of a bit of sustain, a brilliant idea which has a some advantages like less load on the skin. Peter Biffin's site spikefiddle.com shows this diagram of the design of the beautiful tarho where the pivoting of the bridge about a solid support under one of the bridge feet allows the second bridge foot to drive the turned wooden cone inside a gourd resonating chamber. Check it out, truly beautiful in every way. 
The double bass banjo was first created around the turn of the century when the banjo became really popular. All sizes were made from banjo-mandolin to bass-banjo in order to create a banjo big band. The bridges rested directly on the skin which unfortunately created a dominant tone related to the distance between the rim and the bridge, which colored the tone of all the notes with the corresponding frequency, especially up high, making it undesirable musically, hence the rapid disappearance of the instrument soon after. With a banjo that tone is further away and very high pitched so not so interfering and a characteristic component of that twangin' tone that almost sounds like a reverb. I have found a picture of a Leedy timpani bass produced in 1925. Oh how I would love to find a Timpani wrecking yard, or even a marching drum!
Thanks to the
I also found this picture of Duke Davis and his double bass banjo;
Another approach I found whilst surfing the net is for a spring loaded counterbalancer behind the bridge like what this rather enterprising and clever man has done here at xstrange.com. He even made the drum rim himself.
Another one I found was the 'jobass at jobass.com which is being played by none other than Victor Wooten. These use a standard fretted electric bass neck and stand on three legs. I think the drum is a snare. Les Claypool has one too they say. The sound clip sounded nice, very twangy and banjo flavoured.
The design I have used employs a grid work of cedar under the bridge, made strong enough to withstand the enormous tension by using carbon fibre reinforcement and still being lightweight. This component serves to make the skin stiff in the middle and progressively floppier towards the edges so as to make it behave something like a speaker cone without too dominant resonances, this is the crucial element of the design for getting a good tone and balance and has the biggest effect on tone/timbre etc. The tighter I dare to make the skin the louder and better it sounds and the drum needs to be well tuned too to really get the sound super nice. I suspect the wavefronts on the skin are mostly running around the circumference in a planar wave motion so there is no set wave- length (being circular.) In and out and tri-wave motions being relatively damped by the grid. The tone is very similar to a double bass only the attack is a lot livelier and the notes round out and fill out much quicker due the the lower soundboard mass which also gives considerably better volume. Bassist's when playing pizzicato on a normal double bass (as in jazz style) must accom- modate by playing harder when they play fast to get the sound to project as loud, it sort of goes clicky and loses bass response. On the bass banjo short notes have more body and a faster attack which is ideally suited for pizzicato playing and especially country/rockerbilly/hillbilly slap tech- niques where instead of a fretboard click on the backbeat you get a nice big punchy thunking sound. The Double Bass Banjo is not bowable (except for the A string), due to the lack of bouts .
The first one I called Birtha and she is based around a 22 inch Premier kick drum made from rock maple and has a rock maple neck with a Honduran rosewood fingerboard. She has been repainted, reconditioned and slightly modified and is probably going to continue to be modified experimentally, but is sounding in fine fettle. Here is a photo of the the neck and the fretboard in process, the foot, the headstock and one of her after the finish was restored and standing by the banjo bass viol. Lambertis in Melbourne has the individual machine heads from the Czech republic in case you were wondering.
The next one I made I called Fatima. She came about after a friend who played double bass tried out Birtha and was most impressed and asked if I could make her one too... I told her, "find a bass drum and I will make you one." Lone bass drums of quality are hard to find at a good price. She did managed to wangle a 40 inch (!) marching drum out of a local school where she taught music and so it began. The result was Fatima. The neck is from Blackwood (Acacia melanoxolyn,) the lattice is spruce and cedar. The drum is birch which I stripped and sanded for a wood finish (epic area to sand by hand at the time hen we had only a small solar system.) The head was $200 which was a surprise and all- together the parts came to about 1200. She is FAT! Bigger is definitely better for bass. The tone was much louder in the fundamental and the higher harmonics are more complex, I suspect due to the more modes of vibration possible with a large diameter skin. The top of the headstock is a figurative rufus bettong head (not the playboy symbol as some have suggested.) I am still searching for another 40" drum and waiting for the promised photo and sound sample...she hasn't been played hardly, languishing in storage so far, but may get out soon I am told. I found two photos of her, one next to Birtha the day she was completed and one of me recording with her in the perch creek jugband dome sessions of circa 2002.?
The next one is a Premier 18" floor tom with a Blackwood neck and has been completed. She was on display in the front window of The Bass Shop, Parramatta rd in Stanmore, Sydney. Thanks to Suzi and the lovely folks there for their support and advice, look no further for purchasing a Double Bass or getting repairs done, these people are the experts and very nice to deal with too. Playing their various antique basses (some 220 years old!) has been one of the highlights of my 08 year, if you are a bass freak like me it is heaven. Al (who was the owner and a really great guy, sorely missed by those who knew him) once gifted me some old bridges to butcher to make the first banjo bass and gave great encouragment and advice on setups too. I only wished he could have seen one before he passed on to bass heaven. Now it is finished; it has a nice new batter and a surprisingly bassy sound. I thought it might not be as wide as the bigger drums but as this drum is deeper (20 inches) it probably does have a similar open air resonance although the gridwork reaches almost right to the edge which probably helped too. It has a bit more punch, as I suspected it would, and a very pleasing top end too yet is very fat on the bottom string. I was very happy with the sound. Hard to describe just how different it sounds so I better get around to making a recording and getting them up on the site soon...
This is a photo of the 22 inc, the 24inch and the 34 side by side for comparison;
These photos are the bits for the 24" one which was completed but regressed a bit at the hands of a gang ofchild vandals but is now repaired and complete again and being used in my friend's studio. The neck is made ofblackwood and the fingerboard and tailpiece are Indian Rosewood. The lattice design is an experiment and thispattern worked well. This drum is of maple and it has a Blackwood and Moody Gum foot.I have had to fully stress test the new lattice for the first few months just too see how the skin stretching goes.I have had her strung up for a couple of months and it has stretched and stabilised and sounds very, very nice;reminiscent of Fatima in it's tonal complexity and nice and free and full sounding with plenty of bass and volume.She almost makes Birtha sound a tad dull and tight by comparison, (although to be fair her strings are very oldand grubby; Birtha sounds more like areal double-bass, not at all unpleasant but just not so rich and full, probablybecause the gridwork is a bit overbuilt and stiff and maybe also because it is quite a bit smaller than the skin.)I raked the neck back a bit further which looks and feels nicer but mainly to get a bit more clearance aroundthe bridge and see what happened which predictably increased the pressure a lot and I also made the gridworksubstantially lighter too which helps with the sound but there will be a limit to how far I can go there without itbreaking the lattice and stretching the skin too much. The tension in the strings on a double-bass is somewherenear equivalent to ten tonnes of weight hanging on the tailpiece, those strings really go when they go. I think I'llkeep playing her for a bit yet.
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web site, go visit it, I liked it.
