Video: Double Bass Setup for Playing Rockabilly Style Music

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Set your double bass up for rockabilly style playing and learn how with tips from our expert double bass player in this free music lesson video.

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Video Transcript

I’m Ken Steiner. In order to play slap bass you’re going to need a lower tension setup than perhaps a lot of you are used to, you know a lot of jazz players like to have low action they use steal strings with fairly high tension, you’re going to real trouble playing slap bass with that kind of a setup. A lot of people who play slap bass will use gut strings I use to use steal strings when I started to play slap bass I went out and got myself some gut strings and I really loved them, I used them when I played my jazz gigs and all my gigs now. Some people don’t like them there are alternatives to the gut strings, there’s thomastik vike strings, I believe Milt Hinton great jazz player and slap player use to use tomastick vike but there’s also a technique of going out and getting solo strings that classical players might use and those generally are suppose to be a tune a step higher go out and buy them and don’t tune them a step higher you’ll get the lower tension. You might also be a little surprised the price of gut strings they are more expensive than the steal strings, if you just want to give it a shot you might go I believe you can get a nylon string I believe it’s a brand called weed-whacker which are fairly cheap some people probably really like them too. The other thing you’ll have to look at is your bridge setup and the action some slap players really like to have high action, I don’t but I don’t like to have can’t really have very low action either I simply in the middle you probably will sacrifice some of your dexterity but that’s what you’re going to have to do if you want to play slap bass. Here’s a shot at my bass and the setup I have is far as the action goes, if you could see I can sort of fit my fingers in between there, a lot of players like to have them really low so they can get great dexterity but that’s just not going to work for slap bass. As you can see I have an adjustable bridge those are those metal wheels that you see on my bridge, you can also see my pickup I won’t really discuss a lot about pickup there’s a lot to be people say these pickups are best to use, these are not, this one seems to work fine it’s a KMK pickup and I like it just fine.

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Double Bass Setup for Playing Rockabilly Style Music

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