Beautiful Music and Beautiful Wood

[Rev. Rye]

The strange thing is it's probably not the only sort of bass I've seen of its kind. I say probably because I remembered that there was another bass made with a stupefying number of strings that actually had the range of a grand piano. That said, I just decided to look it up, and it turned out that that version only had 12 strings.





That said, I do expect to see it in action in about a month when ZZ Top plays Ravinia with The Ship of Theseus Lynyrd Skynyrd.

The problem with instruments of these sort is that they hog up bandwidth. If you use them to their full scope, there's very little sonic room for any other instruments. Keyboard instruments get around this by their unique ASDR envelopes, either acoustic or electronic, but stringed instruments with overlapping ranges clutter a mix and make mud, unless you're playing solo.

For what it’s worth, it seems like Garry Goodman’s 12-string bass seems to be for solo performances. Maybe accompanied by a drum kit, but not much else. When you’ve got a bass with all the range of a Bösenforfer Imperial (yes, even more than a regular 88-key piano) at your hands, one probably doesn’t need much else. Of course, maybe the Chapman Stick style he seems to use on that bass changes the ASDR envelope enough to make bandwidth less of a problem, at least if King Crimson’s any indication.