www.StringRepair.com - Falling Down

When this nice basses owner fell down a flight of stairs...the bass was kind enough to take the hit in protection of it's owner.  The bass was in need of some attention in the bass bar area anyway, and the owner agreed that since so much was needed to repair the damage from the fall we might as well go all out and fully restore the whole thing.

All the old cleats and parchment patches were removed and the inside of the top, back and ribs were cleaned.  All of the old cracks were taken apart to be cleaned and re-glued, as well as all the new cracks needed to be addressed.  Diamond shaped spruce cleats were fit, as well as some eyebrow patches to reinforce the damaged ff hole wings.  For the top, neck and end-block doubling were needed to repair years of aggressive repairmen pulling off tops and a broken corner was replaced.

A new bass bar was in order, and serious deformation of the lower bout due to the weak old bar needed to be corrected.  The entire top underwent a plaster cast.  It took several months of daily attention to press the arching back into shape.  The area under the bass bar that was severely cracked received a large patch to both reinforce the crack and support the re-trained arching.

The neck was set significantly deeper into the new block to bring the string length from 45 inches to just under 43 inches.  Budget restraints did not allow for a neck graft which would have completely modernized the string length.

All of the new ebony accents were cut from the original board.  Some touchup and a complete setup capped off this 6 month restoration, and the owner is quite happy to be playing this monster double bass again!

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Share your opinions on what this basses province might be!

The restoration is pictured in the chronological order in which we have been working, rather than re-sorting the pictures in an order to show the A-Z of each individual repair component of the restoration.   We have kept the photographs in this order so that you might get an idea of how we work.  Although we have a clear "map" of where we want to be, we find it works best to let the restoration "flow" and tackle the job in this artistic nature.