Small Basses
By Robbie McIntosh
Published in the Violin Society of America’s magazine, The Scroll.
Volume 9 No. 1, Spring 2024
Every bassist wants a bass that has plenty of bottom, clarity in all registers, evenness of tone quality across the strings, clear pitch whether playing pianissimo or fortissimo, and the ability to project all of the above in the context of the ensemble and beyond the stage. What kind of bass will deliver all of these attributes? Does size matter?
In 2019 I restored a half-size bass made ca. 1845 by August Bernardel (body length 37-3/4”, 96 cm.) (on the small end of the half-size spectrum). It came to me in pieces and neither the owner nor I had any idea what it might sound like. We were pleasantly surprised when we strung it up. It had a big, deep sound and played evenly across all strings. In December of 2021 I completed a copy of it and, again, I was pleasantly surprised. It has as much or more bottom than a full size bass, and has clear mid- and upper registers. Its string length is 36-13/16″ (93.5 cm.) !
The owner of the Bernardel, a tall jazzer with large hands, reports that he has been using it on his gigs and that people love the sound of it. It has a strong bottom, and in the lower register the pitch is clearer than a larger bass whose pitch often gets lost in the “puff”. There are a couple things he’s having to get used to: the strings feel rather tight, probably due to the short string length; and the volume is a little less when playing acoustically, but it amplifies better than his larger basses. Overall, however, the ease of playing opens a lot of possibilities. The stretch in half position is effortless. He can play comfortably sitting in a chair, not a stool. He describes the upper register as sounding like a fine violin, and when playing in thumb position on the E and A strings he hears a clear baritone voice. And the schlepping is much easier.
In 2010 I restored another 1/2-size bass (body length 37-1/4”, 94.5 cm; string length 38.5”, 97.5 cm.) made in 1891 by Eugenio Degani. Its top was made of Southern yellow pine — yes, the same kind of wood your neighbor’s deck is made of. The top was heavy, hard, and thick. (Weight of the top with bass bar was 3#-12oz.) The round back was made of some kind of poplar or aspen — soft and light. (Weight of back and ribs without neck was 7#-4oz.) My instinct at the time was to regraduate the top. Fortunately, the owner’s teacher knew the bass and told her, “No, don’t let him alter it.” That bass turned out to be a “cannon” — plenty of bottom, clarity, and projection.
Also in 2010 I restored 5/8-size bass made ca.1790 by Alvisio Piattellini. It was played by the late Dr. Philip Albright who taught at Ball State University. An identical bass is pictured in “Looking At the Double Bass” by Raymond Elgar. In addition to its small size (body length 41-3/8”; 105 cm.) and short string length (39-9/16”; 100.5 cm.) it has sloping shoulders, and an asymmetrical outline that favors the G-side where a player’s left arm will glide into the upper positions. My favorite comment from the players that played this bass was, “It’s like driving a Ferrari!” I’ve made four copies of this bass, and Helen McIntosh made a copy that won a Silver Medal for Tone at the 2023 ISB Makers Competition.
The owner of one of my 5/8 Piattellini-model basses (#12) has experienced a liberation of sorts from the physical limitations posed by the large bass she used to play. She can express herself without being constantly reminded of the small span of her fingers. Playing in various ensembles she reports that she has never felt like she was “drowning” beside the larger basses, indeed, she can hear that she’s contributing as much as anyone else in the section. As others have observed, the clarity of pitch that is characteristic of a small bass is a welcome addition to any bass section.
For a young person or a person of small stature, having a smaller bass allows them to get past the physical obstacles and to focus on making music. A small bass makes possible some of the virtuosic feats that are mainly the province of players with long arms and large hands. Yes, there are players who might be described as “petite”, men and women, who have led successful careers with large basses. But, as they get older, many of them wish for an instrument that has the tone of their large bass but is easier to play. I would argue that, to some extent, if they were to play a smaller bass long enough to “play it in” and to “teach” it to have the sound they love, they would discover that the sound they associate with a large bass is really their sound, not the instrument’s.
An interesting caveat I heard from a bassist who, like many bassists, was trained in Simandl technique: when given the opportunity to play on a 5/8 bass he realized that he could use all four fingers instead of just three — a new technique he would have to master. Looking back on the years of practice it took to master his intonation, he decided to stick with the full-size bass.
If you’re a bassist you probably already know, possibly from hard experience, that bodily injury is one of the hazards of straining to produce your sound. Back, neck, shoulder, elbow, and hand injuries are all too common, and the demands of modern bass repertory make playing the bass an increasingly strenuous activity.
So, why are large basses so predominant? In Chapter V of Paul Brun’s “A History of the Doublebass” the evolution of the bass is described from the perspective of 18th and 19th century composers who desired a 16-foot sound in the bass section. Technological obstacles stood in their way. In order to get a gut string to sound at all musically, the instrument had to have a very long string length. Even with ever-larger basses and metal windings on the low string, the sound was weak, the pitch unclear. Because the strings on these large basses were so thick and difficult to play, and the sound so unsatisfying, the quest for the 16-foot C was temporarily abandoned: the low string was eliminated, and “normal”-sized basses with only three strings became prevalent, tuned G, d, a. It wasn’t until 1871, according to music historian A. Vondrak, that a somewhat satisfactory result was obtained with overwound strings, and the fourth string became the norm again. It should be noted that “normal” meant anywhere from 43” to 45” (110 to 115cm.) — not a problem for the men in symphony orchestras, which were male-dominated until very recently. Small basses simply weren’t capable of meeting the composers’ demands. The provenance of the large basses associated with the storied careers of the men who were capable of playing the repertory composed at the time has endured. With that provenance, these instruments have become valued and sought after.
Brun cites a 1903 quote from Auguste Tolbeque who noted that the French luthiers Gand and Bernardel succeeded in making 5-string basses that could achieve a full-sounding 16-foot C — even a Bb — on a normal string length. Thus the popularity of 5-string basses in Europe grew. But there were technical drawbacks here, too, because of the added strain the 5th string imposed on the corpus, and the playability issues introduced with the extra width of the fingerboard.
This gave rise to the C-extension, an extension of the fingerboard over the pegbox and scroll that could be retro-fitted to a standard 4-string bass. This calls for an extra-long low E string and a mechanism to stop the string at the E and open the string to it’s full length at the low C. These were decried by many. As Brun notes, “Frederich Warnecke [in 1909] ……stated that, since a string cannot be lengthened without being thickened at the same time, one must consequently use either too weak a C when the string is lengthened, or too strong an E when it is not.” That was over a century ago.
At every step, the wild card in this evolution is string technology. Today the sophistication of modern string manufacturing is so great that these problems are literally a thing of the past. In his book “The Bowed String” Norman Pickering explains the physics of vibrating strings in clear language. “The tension, for a given string length and pitch, is directly related to mass — so saying that a string is more massive is the same as saying it is at a higher tension for a given pitch and length.” Referring to the evolution of strings through history, he says, “The advent of metal winding techniques… [meant that] ….the tension of relatively short, low-pitch strings could be increased without increasing diameter. With the range of materials available today, strings of any length can be made with nearly any desired tension and diameter….”
Yes, it’s possible to make short double bass strings, but it’s an expensive feat for a string manufacturer to pull off, given that there is less demand for fractional sizes.
For a long time, high-quality 1/2-size strings were only available from D’Addario (Helicore), Thomastic (Spirocore), and Pirastro (Obligato). In recent years more choices of 1/2-size strings have become available (Gollihur lists 12 kinds) but the selection is limited compared to what is available for 3/4-size and larger basses. To my knowledge nobody offers a 5/8-size string, but for the 5/8 model that I make, Pirastro’s 3/4-size Passione Stark strings work well, and I’ve had good luck using other heavy tension strings on shorter string lengths, notably D’Addario’s Kaplan.
The high-volume Asian makers (e.g. Shen, Eastman) are now offering 5/8-size basses, and they claim to have achieved what used to be considered the unachievable: a small bass with the tone of a large bass. The growing list of internationally recognized, award-winning makers who have made small basses includes Joey Naeger, Trevor Davis, Arnold Schnitzer, Chris Threlkeld, Dan Hachez, and Mitch Moehring.
Is there a trade-off between tone and ergonomics? Double basses and bows have as many different personalities as the players who use them, so it’s hard to make a definitive statement about this balance. In general, for the growing number of people who find that their calling is to be a bassist, there are more choices of quality instruments, from student-grade to professional-grade, that can help to level the playing field for bassists of all body types, and these smaller instruments are proving that they can hold their own amidst the larger basses.
Left to Right:
Jack Hill (6’ something) and Wendy Heller (5’ not too much) holding the half-size Bernardel copy and the Busan copy, respectively.
Robbie’s granddaughter at age 6 holding the original half-size August Bernardel.