Is the acoustic bass, the most failed instrument?

[Fiddy]

Just wondering what people's thoughts are.. I have played the odd one here and there out in the wild, and yeah they suck..

[Telliot]

I'm assuming you mean a 4 string acoustic bass guitar, and not a double bass? If so, then yeah. Totally agree.

[JSett]

I think the problem is, to sound good and amplify the lower fundamentals enough, a bass - of any kind - needs a minimum amount of actual mass to vibrate and a large enough soundbox for the longer waves to generate. Electric basses are pretty chunky, as a rule, and are obviously helped along by the wonders of electrical physics. Double basses are massive and heavy. Acoustic bass guitars are just too light and not enough wood to vibrate.

Obviously this then comes into the issue of having the body actually thin enough to vibrate as well. So a larger body would be needed (see dreadnoughts Vs parlour guitars as a prime example). I feel you'd need an acoustic bass at least double the size that they usually are to even stand a chance of it sounding good.

Otherwise, plunk plunk plunk

[marqueemoon]

Live they usually are not great unless you are the Violent Femmes and turning their liabilities into assets.

I think it has real possibilities for recording. I’ve miced my hollowbodied electric bass guitar with flatwounds and DI-ed and blended the two. Was cool. Will do again.

I think with tapewounds and a good pickup (and controlled playing) some cool sounds could be had.

[MrFingers]

Purely acoustic: yes.
With a piezo-pickup. Njeh... you can make it work, but then again, with a piëzo there is hardly anything acoustic left, so...

The acoustic bass: as useful as tits on a bird.

[windmill]

The acoustic bass I have is only useful for playing with one other acoustic guitar in a very small room. For any other purpose it doesn't produce enough volume.

If you amplify it, you may as well use a solid body bass. There is not enough differentiation in sound to warrant using the acoustic.

Imho

[Flurko]

Obligatory relevant Hard Times article:
https://thehardtimes.net/culture/acoust ... stic-bass/

[Larry Mal]

It's just not a good instrument. As has been pointed out, it is not a particularly loud instrument, far more quiet than the upright bass is. However, the upright bass also had tremendous dynamic range and can easily to quiet to loud, and the acoustic bass isn't as good as that.

So you are faced with an instrument that isn't as good as an already established instrument, the one advantage the acoustic bass has is that it's a more familiar format at this point.

You play it, then, and in anything except the most quiet environments your instrument is getting drowned out and there's nothing sadder than a bass instrument that can't be a strong presence.

So now you have to plug it in, and then you are in a situation where your acoustic bass has no advantages over the electric bass but does have a lot of deficiencies that the electric bass does not.

It's just a bad idea.

[Flurko]

I know someone who uses a Washburn acoustic/electric as his main instrument and has done so for a while, but it's more like a cumbersome electric bass, he's always plugged in :

https://youtu.be/lYrJLWzeSN8

To be fair seeing play it several times made me think those particular Washburn basses were kinda cool in their own way.

[burpgun]

I've been goofing around with acoustic bass guitars since the late 80s, starting with a Kramer Ferrington that eventually ripped itself to pieces due to poor construction. Tried to busk with that thing and yeah, it just doesn't work in an unamplified situation. I did play with it plugged in for a later band that was bass/drums/violin and folks seemed to like it, but it was not easy taming the feedback and I'd never try that again. Now I'm on some sort of Fender medium scale.

What I would say is these instruments are great for practicing and writing, they can be effective for recording if you mic them, but don't bother with any built in pickups. The second you need any amp, just use a normal bass. ​

It's not easy to find, but Jonas Hellborg made an album called The Word back in the nineties. Acoustic bass, string quartet, Tony Williams (!!!!) beat the crap out of the drums. It's pretty cool and one of the more effective presentations of the instrument. That album's producer, Bill Laswell, made a solo acoustic bass record called Means of Deliverance, and it's very chill. Played a fretless Warwick Alien acoustic, if I recall. Laswell also did acoustic bass on a Ginger Baker solo album he worked on. Anyway, if anyone wants to talk Axiom Records, I'm game!

[burpgun]

I know someone who uses a Washburn acoustic/electric as his main instrument and has done so for a while, but it's more like a cumbersome electric bass, he's always plugged in :

https://youtu.be/lYrJLWzeSN8

To be fair seeing play it several times made me think those particular Washburn basses were kinda cool in their own way.

I think The Cure's Simon Gallup also played those acoustic Washburns live around the time of Disintegration. No idea if he recorded with them.

[sessylU]

I think there aren't a real thing.

Basically, at their best, they are funny looking electric basses.

[seenoevil II]

They're so fun though. Something about chunky bass engineering being applied to the birdlike delicacies of acoustic guitars. They're very evocative of the 90's for me personally. I feel like they're owned and played exclusively by that lanky dude of indeterminate age who only comes into town in his conversion van with a black flag sticker to accompany his hot wife, the art teacher, at open mics.

[Fiddy]

That's my point, obviously its loudness being limited by its frequency range, the acoustic bass fails as an instrument.

Next to a loud acoustic, you can barely hear the damn thing... It forces you to play harder, which might not necessarily work for certain songs..

Two songs later my hands/wrists feel pretty beat up usually..


Review

I give the acoustic bass a 3 out 10. Would not recommend.

[mackerelmint]

They're pretty bad.

A guitarrón mexicano is quite a bit better at being an acoustic bass guitar, despite not really being one.