Author: clarnibass
Date: 2006-05-28 04:46
OK, I looked up my past emails with Volta which have some answers.
Chris P - about your problem Volta explains how important are the reeds: "The use of reeds that are too soft (or too hard) is especially inadvisable because the attack is much more random/unreliable. The airspeed and the quantity of air used must be exact in order not to saturate the sound (strong reed) or delay its start (soft reed)."
So it seems trying different reed strengths should help your problem, and I understand it did.
Jack Kissinger/Peter - here is a quote from Volta: "As to the shape of the neck, it has no effect on the ease of playing these intervals (we have done lots of experiments) but it does change the general tone-quality a lot."
Regarding intonation and the neck angle: "The earlier Selmer basses, which I know well, didn't have this problem because they used very large register tubes, but the sound was very aggressive and intonation was impossible!!!!"
According to Volta the Selmers (I think he means models 37 and before, since they all have a very big register hole), which had the less angled neck didn't have better intonation. It doesn't seem at all that the more angled neck cause intonation problems that need to be fixed by a smaller register hole. Also as Volta says with the bigger hole "the intonation is scarcely affected; higher on B-flat, B, and C" which means the intonation change that comes with the bigger hole is basically meaningless, and that is my experience too.
I know length and width really affect intonation, but I'm not sure about the shape/angle, as long as you keep the length and width exactly the same. My assumption right now is that it doesn't.
Nitai Levi
Jerusalem, Israel
Post Edited (2006-11-19 18:14)
|
|
Keepers
