lunedì 27 novembre 2017

Sticky Fingers.

Okay, I played at a blackboard concert last night.

You've already seen the photo over on Richard's Bass Bag*
and many jokes have been made about the wine glass.
What happened a few hours before the concert could have made things very tricky.

I think I'll need to explain what this is.

The thing in the picture is the part of a German double bass bow that is used to tighten and loosen the hair. It was built by the guy who build the frog that I used to change one of my bass bows from French to German. It was my only bass bow at the time - a very good bow.

frog


I'm not sure why this bit of the bow is called a frog - the name makes sense on the French bow, but not the German bow.
The guy who made this frog was very clever. It is different from most German frogs and is designed to balance better on a French stick. It works very well.
Shortly after the frog was fitted the wooden bit on the screw you use to highten the bow fell off. No big deal because I had the screw from the French frog and I simply fitted that.
This bow (for reasons I won't go into here) has had it's frog changed a couple of times and, when my current luthier has some spare time, it's going back to German.
I remembered that I had the broken screw bit in my drawer and decided to fix it. Now you don't usually use super glue on instruments but I decided that a bit of super glue would fix this piece of equipment for life. I'd bought a very good glue last week to fix an ornament that Shelley had damaged. The wooden bit has a hole where the metal bit goes in.
I poured in too much glue and, when I put the metal bit in, the glue went everywhere - including over my fingers. I was in a bit of a panic and noticed that some of my fingers were starting to stick together - it was bloody powerful glue!

Fortunately I was able to get most of the glue off my hands and to keep my fingers apart. It would have been challenging to turn up to the gig with one good hand and a clump. It was my bowing and pizzing hand that would have been the problem.
My advise: If you are a string instrument player, be careful wien using super glue.
Actually this applies to all musicians, except singers and trombone players.








* the original bass bagging site

5 commenti:

  1. That's funny. I'm listening to a Lee Child novel on audio-book - The Visitor.
    In the first chapter Reacher superglues a bad guys hands together.

    RispondiElimina
  2. Just saying but that's one of my least favourite Reacher books. Keen to see what you think.

    RispondiElimina
  3. I didn't like it when I first read it but it was the only reacher e-book available.

    RispondiElimina
  4. So, now that we've got you off that boring music topic, what's the new Lee Child novel like?

    RispondiElimina
  5. Okay. I think I've read too many - they're all a bit of a blur.

    RispondiElimina