Double Bass My king bass has had a facelift

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Well done! I gave up once I got down to the primer on my Roadking. Ended up using a few coats of walnut polyurethane and a dollar store comb to simulate wood grain over the primer. A few rockabilly guys got mad at me for taking the flames off, but I was getting a lot more country & Western swing gigs at the time and really don’t like bringing my ‘53 Kay to bars, so the flames had to go.
Because I didn’t remove the primer, I don’t really notice a difference in tone acoustically, but that’s not really what I use the Roadking for anyway. If I want acoustic, that’s what the Kay is for.
 

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View attachment 4248875 Well done! I gave up once I got down to the primer on my Roadking. Ended up using a few coats of walnut polyurethane and a dollar store comb to simulate wood grain over the primer. A few rockabilly guys got mad at me for taking the flames off, but I was getting a lot more country & Western swing gigs at the time and really don’t like bringing my ‘53 Kay to bars, so the flames had to go.
Because I didn’t remove the primer, I don’t really notice a difference in tone acoustically, but that’s not really what I use the Roadking for anyway. If I want acoustic, that’s what the Kay is for.
That’s bad ass! I love the pick guard you added - so cool!
 
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Thanks! I saw an old player (Huey Moore?) who had something similar and thought I’d try something like it.
As much as I hate to admit it, half of the “show” aspect is aesthetics. :)
Of course. Our guarantee went up $100 when I got my Kay 26 years ago. One club stopped booking us when I left the band for a bit in the early 2000s cause they used EB then.

I’d like to put one of those drum skins on mine and try and hit it with a brush while I play like the old bluegrass/Western swing guys did at times.
 
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Of course. Our guarantee went up $100 when I got my Kay 26 years ago. One club stopped booking us when I left the band for a bit in the early 2000s cause they used EB then.

I’d like to put one of those drum skins on mine and try and hit it with a brush while I play like the old bluegrass/Western swing guys did at times.
I made a brush bass attachment and messed around with it for a while. It was fun, but I sort of felt like I would need the right project to justify the hassle and time to perfect the technique. The little black thing on the bottom right is a clip on clamp style piezo. Worked fairly well to amplify it.
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Do you guys have any recommendations for western swing bands to listen to/watch?

Western swing/rockabilly bassist seem to have the performative aspects of shows down rather than just the playing the music
Western Swing is a pretty niché genre.

I think you HAVE to start with the originators like Bob Wills, Tommy Duncan, Leon McAuliffe, Spade Cooley, Milton Brown, etc.
Then you move on to more modern artists like Wayne Hancock, Hot Club Of Cowtown, Asleep At The Wheel, etc.

I always sort of think of Western Swing as rockabilly that has room for fiddle & pedal steel because they fired the drummer ;)

I’d also add that I think playing in a Western swing band with no drums “can” limit your mobility because you ARE the drums. With most rockabilly there’s a lot more freedom to showboat with a drummer.
 
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Western Swing is a pretty niché genre.

I think you HAVE to start with the originators like Bob Wills, Tommy Duncan, Leon McAuliffe, Spade Cooley, Milton Brown, etc.
Then you move on to more modern artists like Wayne Hancock, Hot Club Of Cowtown, Asleep At The Wheel, etc.

I always sort of think of Western Swing as rockabilly that has room for fiddle & pedal steel because they fired the drummer ;)
Thanks I'll check them out!

It seems like historicaly bluegrass killed off western swing because it was more convenient and could be melded into mainstream folk songs. I'm a bluegrass guy but I'd love to explore some of the cousin genres
 
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I made a brush bass attachment and messed around with it for a while. It was fun, but I sort of felt like I would need the right project to justify the hassle and time to perfect the technique. The little black thing on the bottom right is a clip on clamp style piezo. Worked fairly well to amplify it. View attachment 4249423
That’s really nice work. It would be a cool attachment to use during train songs.
 
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It seems like historicaly bluegrass killed off western swing because it was more convenient and could be melded into mainstream folk songs. I'm a bluegrass guy but I'd love to explore some of the cousin genres

Bluegrass didn't "kill off" western swing. Different audiences, different locales. Western swing is/was music for dancing; Bluegrass is not. The western-swing bands of that genre's heyday (1940s) were large, with horns, woodwinds, and of course drummers, pianos, accordions, and many strings, and the big size of those bands was supported to a degree by movie appearances. Some of Spade Cooley's recordings featured a harp! Big bands of ALL kinds, facing money challenges, shrank from the late 1940s on. Rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and country and western came to fill the needs for dance bands.