I have been struck by the importance of balancing my performing/teaching career with the business of music in the 21st century.  It’s not easy to focus on being an artist…no wait, a teacher…no wait, a businessman…no wait, a person.  There are many, many ways in which those things combine to create a less schizophrenic Rick, but sometimes those things are disparate entities.  As an art-driven person, it has always been easy for me to live in a musical fantasy world, stepping outside of it long enough to articulate aspects of that world to colleagues and students.  But harder has been the quantification of that realm, translated into a business-model.

In the 1980s, the trick was to find a way to document your work somehow, and it took a lot of expense and time to get that done.  In the 1990s, things became less expensive to document, but relating it to the rest of the world was still tricky, depending upon how you feel about the intersection of music, technology and business (remember the old Napster?).  Now, it’s super easy and fairly inexpensive to document your work, but getting the new, global, digital audience to pay any attention whatsoever is still hard.

The tool in the 1990s that most musicians I know used was a minidisc (MD) recorder.  This was a relatively inexpensive, decent sounding recording device which enabled the capture of an artist’s music for later dissemination.  The “capture” was easy, but the “dissemination” was very hard.  Convert to cassette, or burn a CD?  If you can imagine, there was actually a time when the MD recorders (one major manufacturer comes to mind) would not allow a musician to record his/her own concert on the MD, transfer the file to the computer, and then burn a CD of it.  Sure, you could record all you wanted to, and you could even upload your files to the computer.  But no burning.  I understand why that decision was made, but it rendered the entire MD experience useless because the practical application of the product vanished the moment you tried to use it for anything but archiving.

I have a real chip on my shoulder about that because it meant that the only reasonable tool was a disaster of sound recording.  Remember this:

Most of my friends, way back when, actually used this to record concerts and rehearsals, and then to make cassette demos.  Cumbersome!  Time consuming!  Uh, not very fantastic sound!

Ok, well lots of time has passed, and the RIAA and Napster have come to some kind of agreement which has meant that consumer recording devices are actually made in a way that is reasonable for musicians.  I have a Roland Edirol, which I love, but there are some issues with it – it’s very big, and lately I have been having problems with setting peak levels, so I get lots of distortion.

When Sanyo’s people asked me about reviewing their Xacti, I sent this back to them:

I have been using the Sanyo Xacti for the past month in a wide variety of situations, from concert performances and rehearsals, to teaching classes and private lessons.  For about 10 years, I have been searching for a reasonable replacement for my minidisc recorder, which I used religiously, but I couldn’t find anything that met my expectations for 21st century/digital convenience, plus sound quality.  The Xacti fills this gap nicely, adding things like portability – it is tiny – and on-board editing tools to the equation.  Connecting to the computer to recharge the battery seems strange at first, but this combined with the easy back-up of files makes this very, very reasonable.  An excellent companion for gigging/teaching musicians.

So, I like it.  I’m using it.  It’s a good thing.  Really.

Wait a minute – that wasn’t funny at all!  Well, here’s a link to Krusty the Clown’s product endorsement agreement, and list of endorsements.

Best, R.

This was also a great moment for me, what with this being my first flight with the AlterEGO.

Best, R.

Best,

Rick McLaughlin

Endorser of AlterEGO instruments and Gallien-Krueger amplifiers.

• French, 1880s double bass
• German, 1964 hybrid double bass (carved top, plywood body)
• Alembic Series II electric bass
• Yamaha BB330F fretless electric bass with Bartolini pickups

These are all fantastic instruments, really. But my new bass is a really exciting, interesting, fun, fascinating addition to the crew. It is a 4-string AlterEGO Acoustic Figaro. You can view photos and info, and even audio files of the whole line of instruments at the AlterEGO website. What follows is a description of my bass. No, it doesn’t have a cute pet name – I don’t do that.

Ok, so first thing’s first: it’s an electric upright bass (EUB). This means that it is an instrument that is designed to look somewhat like, and feel and sound very much like an upright bass, aka, a double bass. This instrument is much more successful than most at all of the above. It looks more like a double bass, which really isn’t all that important, except that people hire me to play the double bass, not something that looks like it came off the cargo hold of the Death Star. It feels more like a double bass, thanks to the design of the neck, the proportions of string to bridge to body, and thanks to the shoulders and the leg extension. It sounds like a double bass, or at least like a double bass with a pickup through an amplifier – which is what any professional bassist is using anyway. N.B. that brown thing in front of the tailpiece is a quiver, for my bow – there is a beautiful tailpiece underneath. And so, without further adieu, my bass:

So starting from the top. The scroll is designed to be similar in appearance to the scroll of a traditional double bass. There is a hole drilled partway through each side in order to address balance issues. There is at least one EUB on the market that has a more elaborate scroll which throws the weight of the instrument off, and in that instrument’s case, drastically. The tuners are 25:1, which is a huge improvement over my French bass’s tuners. It often feels like they are 2:1, resulting in more or less “in tune” strings. These tuners work fantastically. The nut, like the rest of the fingerboard is ebony, and the neck is maple. The choice of these great woods is significant. It means that the signal being sent to the pickups is similar to what a double bass creates in the first place (more on that later), and in the meantime, it feels natural to the double bassist. Currently I have Spirocore Orchestral strings on the bass, and even though they sound great, I’m looking forward to the day when they don’t sound quite as new.

And so, the shoulders. The shoulder closest to the bassist’s body does two things, and amazingly. First, it orients the player to the fingerboard in a way that feels like a double bass (in terms of distance to and angle with the neck), and it is adjustable to the bassist’s taste. Second, it transmits vibrations from the body of the instrument to the body of the bassist. The vibrations are so strong, and so similar to what I am used to from my French double bass, that I have been able to play this instrument unamplified in a conference exposition room (read: IAJE conference, exposition room with dozens of instrument makers and hundreds of interested musicians noodling on any instrument they can lay their hands on – I think I heard every bebop cliché in every possible key and register…), and know exactly which notes were ringing on the bass. The shoulder farthest from the bassist’s body is also adjustable, and orients the bassist to the location of thumb position. The fingerboard on this, well I’ll just mention that it is clear that the luthier who cut this knows what he is doing. It’s unbelievably smooth and feels incredible no matter where you are on the fingerboard.

My neck is a D neck. The heal of the neck has been placed just right, making this neck feel fantastic. Also, this is the Tournee model, which has a bolt through the neck so I can pop the neck off and pack it away in a hard flight case. You can see the line in the heal where the two pieces join in this picture.

A side view of the body gives something of a glimpse into the brilliance behind the design of the top, although this is difficult to show through photographs. Essentially, the top has been cut as if it is a cross-section of a double bass, with the top functioning like the top of a double bass. There are bass bars on each side of the top, ensuring that the signal being sent into the pickups are the closest thing to a double bass one can create without the body or sound post.

The leg extension affixes to the back of the bass via a knob, and is adjustable to the bassist’s left leg. For those who stand with legs equal to shoulders, this is probably not the most important thing. But for people like me who put all their weight on the right leg and use the left leg to balance the bass, this will feel incredibly natural.

The pickups are two piezos (one under each foot of the bridge) and a Schertler. When I first heard the Schertler on this, it was one of those (many, as far as this instrument is concerned) “Ah-ha” moments. It sounds like a Schertler. Ok, so whether or not you like the sound of a Schertler is not the point in this case. The fact is that it sounds like a Schertler means that the signal being sent to the pickup is similar to what a Schertler would receive on a double bass. This is not insignificant. For double bassists interested in getting an EUB, it means that they can more easily dial in a sound that works, a sound that is reminiscent of – or the same as – what they are used to.

The preamp is located halfway down the body on the bassist’s side of the instrument. It has four knobs: Fullness controls midrange frequencies; volume is volume; piezo controls which piezo pickup is used, and blends between them; and blender mixes the piezos with the Schertler. There are two line outs: one for an amplifier and one for headphones. It takes one 9-volt battery, or can be used with a power adapter. I’m using a battery currently. The preamp is pretty amazing, making this instrument nearly plug-and-play, and by nearly I mean that anyone looking for the sound of a double bass can just plug it in and go. For people like me, looking for a very specific sound, it takes a little more work, but I’m getting closer and closer every day. My colleagues have all been surprised by the quality of the sound, which means that I am free to work on getting my sound, since they are all more or less happy with the results as is. This may seem like a non-issue, but I can assure you that it is an incredible feat.

The endpin is housed within the body of the instrument, and “fixed” into place by a knob. This is one of the few weaknesses of the instrument, in my view, but it is barely of any significance. I would have liked a wider base for the endpin – something more in the 2″ in diameter range so I could put a nice, fat cane tip on the end.

So I have tried many of the competitors. The Eminence doesn’t feel right, but it feels better than some. Unfortunately the sound is horrible – I say that knowing that many bassists purchase the Eminence because it is so cheap and it comes sort of close to sounding like a double bass. Sort of, but not really. The Yamaha feels terrible to play, the balance is totally off, and the sound through an amplifier is no closer to a double bass than what I get using flatwound strings on a fretless electric bass. The Steinberger is an amazing instrument that neither feels nor sounds like an upright bass. The non-EUB bass that most people are talking about these days are the Czech-Ease “double bass” which to me neither feels like nor sounds like a double bass, and despite the marketing hype, does not solve the travel issues either.

So that leaves me with this instrument. I love it. I love it so much that Alter Ego and I are working out some kind of relationship because hey, this thing is amazing and it deserves to be played by every double bassist in America.

Ciao and thanks,

Rick McLaughlin