User:Robobass/sandbox

User:Robobass/sandbox

C-Extension: Early History

The Double bass C-Extension has been very poorly documented compared to other aspects of stringed-instrument practice and development. The first extension appears to have come in 1897 from a collaboration between Berlin bassist Max Poike and Markneukirchen luthier Ludwig Glaesel jr. This was a "keyed-extension", meaning that the extension notes were executed by means of a mechanical device like you see on woodwind instruments. A set of buttons are placed next to the lowest part of the fingerboard, and by pressing them the player activates a system of levers to stop the extended notes.

This system and its apparent popularity in the early 20th Century in Germany is documented in a 1929 article in "der Kontrabassist". The article, starting on page four (English translation in process) describes the frustration with the E-A-D-G (from low to high) tuning of the time and the options for allowing the basses to get down to the "C" to fully double the cellos in octave. It mentions the five string bass, tuned B-E-A-D-G as well as a system of half the basses tuning B-E-A, or B-E-A-D, and the other half tuning the lowest string to E, as was normal practice. The author of the article comes out in favour of the extension.

The Poike-Glaesel extension (or variations on the theme) seems to have been quite popular in mid-20thC. America, as documented by this photo of the Philadelphia Orchestra bass section circa 1940. This device had limitations, however, and in the following decades German orchestras came to overwhelmingly favor the five-string bass. In the USA, by the 1960's, the system had also begun to lose favor, as operation produced mechanical noise, and adjustment was difficult. It seems American orchestral bassists gradually dropped it and went back to four strings - E-A-D-G, deciding that the loss of the full octave double was a worthy sacrifice.

Enter the Fingered C-Extension

The writer can find absolutely no documentation on this, but sometime in the 1970's it seems that some American bassists started experimenting with a C-Extension without a mechanical closing device. There was usually a latch to stop the string at the "E" so that the bass would play like a conventional four-string bass, but with the latch open, the player would have the option to stop notes below the E with fingers. This provided the advantage that the player was in full control of intonation, and could use vibrato, but at the expense of easy execution, compared to a five-string bass or mechanical extension. As time went on, this idea gained popularity in American orchestras. Later the idea came up that, if the E can be stopped with a lever or latch, then why not the other extension notes too? If any of the extended pitches could be temporarily stopped, then much of the technical difficulty associated with the fingered extension would be eliminated. And so, from the 1990's on, we began to see bass luthiers building "Fingered C-Extensions with chromatic gates", "Chromatic latches for the fingered C-extension", "Bass Capos", etc. It must be mentioned that there are acoustical advantages of the extension over the five-string bass in that the low string is 25% longer, so it is more responsive to the lowest notes, and that a fifth string increases pressure on the vibrating table (top) which reduces an instrument's resonance overall.

Today, the major western European orchestras continue to use the five-string bass (or sometimes a mix of five and four), while the "Gated-fingered-extension" has become quite dominant in American orchestras. This is not to say that mechanical extensions are not still popular. Modern versions such as the "Faucet" and "Stenholm" are still widely in use, especially in UK. Another innovation worth mention is "Bass Capos" which is a universal latch system for fingered extensions. Here, the C-Extension builder can install pre-made "latches" eliminating the effort of hand-making each closing device.