Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
Double Bass and Beyond - Gary Upton of Upton Bass
Timber Tones and the Art of Bass Making Mastery
Dive deep into the resonant world of bass-making with us, where the choice of wood isn't just a detail—it's the soul of the instrument. You'll come away with a newfound appreciation for the meticulous craft that shapes the dark, rich tones of an orchestral bass and the bright, punchy sound of a soloist's pride. We'll walk you through the impact of grain orientation, the debate of flat versus round backs, and why a medium-grained spruce top could be the secret to a responsive bass. Ever wonder how softwoods like Italian poplar can change the game? We've got that covered, too.
Then, lace up for a journey through history with our exploration of the delicate craftsmanship that hails from the traditions of Italian, English, German and Czechoslovakian luthiers. As we traverse the nuances of wood carving and bracing, you'll learn how each choice—whether it's bright maple, soft poplar, or willow—affects not only the bass's sound but also its aesthetic and structural integrity. This episode isn't just about the hows but also the whys behind matching each musician with their perfect bass, transcending budget constraints and elevating performance. Join us for a symphony of insights that could very well fine-tune your understanding of what goes into creating a bass that sings with character and quality.
Hey guys, it's Gary Dupton Bass. So I've been doing these podcasts intermittently and I'll probably continue to do them intermittently, but I thought this morning I would talk a little bit about wood. I talked to a lot of my clientele about different models of instruments big basses with deep ribs and broad shoulders and different things that make those kinds of instruments playable. And then we talk about sound. Right, we can talk about wood in the context of beauty, being, you know, flame or figure. You'll even see spalting and funky things in some materials. We use one piece back, two piece back, three piece backs with a no center seam. Instead, we'll put a plank down the middle and flank it with two smaller planks. What I've come to be able to explain to people is you can take a smaller model, like our car model, or a three-quarter bohemian, and, depending on how I arrange it being a flat back or round back, and then the wood selection I choose, I can voice it very much so like a bigger bass, and the same can be done for a bigger bass. A big bass can be, you know, boomy, boxy, maybe a little closed, and it's sound, especially as you move up the fingerboard. And I can take a bass like that and utilizing materials like wood, I can select something that's harder, brighter, more rigid. So I'm not saying that every bass can be made all the same just by varying the material, but I kind of am what I mean by that. Let's take a Breschen model bigger bass of ours pushing up on the you know marketing hype word of a 7-8 size bass.
Speaker 1:You call me and you say you want a Breschen bass and you want it to be as dark as possible. You're looking for a really, really rich section bass sound and you want to hear that pipe, organ-y, ena string like you hear on the big, big basses. So first thing we're going to do, we're going to take that flat back and I'm going to say, hey, let's make it a round back. I'm going to add a little extra capacity to the body, a little extra closed darkness to the body. I would then take that back and I would do it out of a softer material, soft material being something like Italian poplar, or we'll even use a European willow. And then you might say, well, how do we even make that darker? Well, we wouldn't want a quarter song, we'd want it flat song, so that you're really kind of working on that softer, more flexible grain lines within the wood as opposed to the quarter songness. So if we go all the way to the left, right, if I'm laying out a color spectrum of sound and what wood creates, you say give me your darkest, deepest, creamiest bass. I'm not worried about necessarily definition, not to say that anyone's saying that but you're looking for a dark, creamy, rich under the bow sound. We're going to take a big bass with big rips and we're going to add to it a soft back. So a soft brown back would take you there about as far as possible. We can take that same bass and say, well, we want to keep a lot of that character, so let's make it a flat back. So we make it a flat back, we stiffen up the back a little bit, combined with a different voice top, and we'll get a lot of the same thing. What I mean by different voice top is the grain structure within the spruce of any bassist top.
Speaker 1:What I'm not looking for as a maker is guitar or violin type wood, and now this is a big misnomer, because I see guys that are making basses and a lot of amateurs. You know people that have made a handful of basses will want the best quality wood they can get. So they'll call a wood vendor and, naturally, by virtue of pricing alone, someone will say well, this top is $400 and this one's $500 and this one's $800. Well, if I want to make a good bass, I have to go with the highest grade wood. Here's the issue.
Speaker 1:Now you have generally selected, because of how the wood industry works, a very tightly grain spruce top and we've all seen the bass that's overbuilt with the top. It's too thick, the grain's too tight, the back and sides are too bright and it just doesn't do the bass thing. So that might work in the treble world, the way in which, you know, higher frequencies react and sound with very, very stiff wood. However, in the bass world, what I look for is a nice medium grain top that has nice flexibility, good stiffness. It still needs a good amount of stiffness, but nice flexibility and some broader grading. So if I can look at the, the grading of the spruce top, I'm not looking. If I, if I zoom in on an inch by an inch, I don't want to see 20, 30, 40 plus great growth lines. That's a very, very stiff top. I'm looking for something more like the Italians would do with a broader, more medium grain where I might see five or 10 grain lines over that same inch. So back to the back and the sides of the bass.
Speaker 1:You say to me hey, I want a really small, easy to play bass I'm thinking almost a solo sound, a bright sound. But I still want that bass to be able to cut it in jazz and cut it in orchestra. I don't want a one-trick pony. What I'll do in that situation is select a softer back. So a softer back and sides. Maybe you know some of my maples that are softer, like a big leaf maple, some more sinewy, like slower growth, even some of the spalt stuff. What's nice about that? It's it's almost rotten in a sense. So you're having you know that the effect of old. You know soft, creamy material. So I'll select a softer back, perhaps round, perhaps flat, again depending on what you're after.
Speaker 1:You say, hey, I want a car model bass. I'm going to play jazz, but I'm looking for something that really sits well for orchestral work too. Okay, let's do a round back with a medium grain maple. So I have some really, really bright white maples. I've got some darker maples and then in the middle I'd probably pick like a domestic American maple for the back and ribs and then a medium to tighter grain top, but not too tight. That from my experience and again, this is over 3000 basses here that from my experience would kind of give us the best of both, both worlds, within the dimensions of the instrument that you require. So this is why I push people to kind of select a model. You know, there's a sex appeal element of picking the right model. I want you to look at your bass and want to play it. That's. That might be as simple as violin corners versus gamma corners. So you'll you'll say, well, geez, gary, you know you're telling me about the brechin and the midwalth.
Speaker 1:Yes, those two bases have a lot of the same characteristics, very, very dimensionally similar. One is just a violin corner versus a gamma corner. That begs the question Well, what's the difference in? Those were just the ribs. What does that do different? I would debate that the violin corner ribs are a little bit stiffer and being made the same way, I would generally deepen the rib set. So the actual ribs of a brechin will be a little bit deeper to match that up a mitten wall. So a maple back, let's, let's use a, an English, a maple back, brighter white maple back on a brechin and a mitten wall. Gary, how do you make those two bases sound similar to each other? Well, I could do two things. I could make you a flat back, deeper rib brechin and I would compare that to a slightly shallower rib round back mitten wall. And this again brings another debated thing Flatback bases are problematic.
Speaker 1:Well, lots and lots and lots of bases were imported from Germany and Czechoslovakia in the late 1800s, early 1900s, that were made very, very, very thin. It's a great way to make a base sound good, but it's not a great way to make a base live a healthy life as such. These instruments that were lightly wooded, lots and lots and lots and lots of them cracked and broke. So therefore, we have all these data points and people say, hey, flatback bases are problems. Ok, let's turn over to the Italians and the nice French bases and the nice German bases and the nice English bases. Let's take a look at one of the characteristics of those instruments Lots and lots and lots of very healthy flatbacks.
Speaker 1:If I'm acting as a jury consultant and many of you have heard me say this if I'm acting as a jury consultant and I'm asked to understand, is a flatback less durable than a roundback? I have to say yes, if I'm allowed to elaborate. Oftentimes in a court situation like that they would say yes or no, mr Upton, and I'd say, oh gosh, I don't like to answer this question. But yes, the flatback's less durable. That being said, a maker does not make a flatback Dimensionally when they've made a few of them. I say a few hundred. You don't make a flatback the same way you make a roundback. And the way in which a back is braced also comes into question, because we've got years and years and years of ladder bracing, that's the grain-oriented bracing on the back of a flatback that contradicts the grain of the back of the base. So one's going one way, one's going the other. I do a what we call a diagonal propeller brace. The sound post sits on the middle of it. It pulls most of the back into the pumping action of the instrument.
Speaker 1:But let's go back to wood. What I'm trying to explain is, on the spectrum of wood we've got bright, bright, bright maple. Right in the middle We've got flat and roundbacks. We lean to the left and we have softer maples. Then we've got very, very soft, creamy maples. They start to kind of have a crossover characteristic of that of the poplars, and then we take the poplars and we move into the willows and some of the funky stuff. Now you'll see, I've used things like macoray, very stiff, very bright, exotic wood that sits more, if not even more, so brighter than what we'd see in the maples, which we then have to control with our graduations, and I would highly encourage an instrument being made out of that, having a roundback. What I'm not talking about, and I'll mention quickly, is how the bases are thicknessed when we're carving them.
Speaker 1:Every piece of wood is different and we take a very, very close look, tapping, touching, feeling, listening to and building off a matrix of lots of time, knowing what certain woods will do. But every piece of wood to result in a similar end product does not get treated the same way. Because for me, a brand my brand it's not really got legs, it's not really got durability, it can't stand the test of time and consistency that you rely on for an upton based sound. If I'm making one base, it sounds great. One base, it's mediocre, one that needs this, one that needs that.
Speaker 1:The goal here as makers is as we learn to control, just like a chef we learn to control the ingredients we're able to serve up. What we know is our methodology, our tone and who we are. So we go back to that little spectrum. I'm kind of drawing left hand, right hand in the middle and I'm putting together kind of a spread for you. That I know is a little improvised as it sounds, but we're talking about maples, softer materials, harder materials. The rule is you have to know what you're doing with it. You cannot do the same thing with a bright, rigid piece of wood as you would do with a softer, creamier piece of wood and expect the same result. So that's why I begin with the pattern.
Speaker 1:I go after the pattern that the client obviously physically works. I want them to enjoy its appeal and how it feels and looks to them. I want them to walk by their base and just want to play it. And after we've established pattern based upon the desired direction the player wants to take the base, we then talk about materials. Obviously, budget comes into play for everyone at some point and then budget lays out where we go directionally with oh, we can do this material or that material. And if there is no budget, then all I'm listening to is what are you trying to accomplish? What pattern are you after? And what have I learned is the best way to get us to that end goal, that end result that will make you very, very, very happy and pleased with your base.
Speaker 1:That comes to what I essentially do with everyone when they walk up into the showroom is I say, hey, what are you trying to accomplish? I want you to be a brat. I want you to explain what you want your base to do, what kind of sounds you're after, and at the end of our communication, which can be quite lengthy, I'm going to come up with a recommendation of, let's say, the Conquer Base, with a flat back made out of a harder maple, a broad spruce top, and you're going to have a great all-around base that's got a good honking, very clear-speaking pizzicato sound up in thumb position but still gives you a nice, nice creamy tone under the bow, but not as big as it could be, because if I take you as big and as dark and as funky as I can, then I'm going to lose you a little on the upper register. Again, take into account graduation, graduation heights, the arching of the top, the arching meaning how high or low the top goes from the bottom, from the sides of the base to the top where the bridge sits, and then the shape of that arch you'll see in some bases you can see the arch happen quickly. You can see it start slowly and just kind of go up very gradually. Sometimes you'll be deceived. I have a very gradual arch on our bases and people will say, oh, it's not very tall. No, it really. The hill it's a very long, slow hill that comes to a peak, essentially, and then descents in all directions.
Speaker 1:So I hope this provokes some thoughts about materials, some questions. Let's throw in there things like European ash, like I said, macquarie, hey, why not mahogany? It's been done, you'll see it in guitars. Again, it's knowing what to do with these brighter woods, these softer woods, having the experience of hearing them played on lots and lots of different models and having a clear picture of what they resulted when they're asked to do certain things. So if you have a wood question, hit me up. I hope this little brain dump is fun for some to hear and go ah man, you've answered some questions and you've created five more. That's what I hope to do and I look forward to talking to anyone about base dot fit, base wood and so on and so forth. But hit me up, keep following us here for more and more of these podcasts. I've got another one coming up I'm going to do on Wednesday, I think this week, and we'll talk to you soon, guys. Thanks, it's Gary from Upton Bass, over and out.