If there’s such a thing as an “everyday” bass player – we love hearing from you, send us your story! Here’s Jeff:
I am forever grateful to everyone at Upton – a fantastic company, a fantastic team. Buy with absolute confidence. And don’t wait – life is too short for bad tone!
…once I explained the extreme humidity and heat fluctuations we experience in the Canadian prairie winter where I live, Eric actually talked me out of a carved top bass, straight to the laminate. (Jeff mentioned -56 degrees Celsius! – Eric)
I am a southpaw, and left-handed basses of this quality for the price do not exist on this continent anywhere. The main goal of purchasing this bass was multi-faceted, my regular gigging bass literally exploded to the point of no repair, and my old bass, which is a beautiful right-handed 1963 Kay strung backward, that just has so many miles on her, I sort of retired her.
Upton should get some kind of humanitarian award for being one of the only companies that make an incredible left-handed instrument affordable and is just an absolute dream to play.
I am not sure how deep your specific understanding of the mechanics of building a lefty bass, but a lot of not entirely instantly apparent changes must be made, and Upton clearly appreciates the details (as do I).
I definitely did my homework and had heard nothing but great things from folks I respect, so word of mouth very much influenced my choice as well. It is so rare that I get to express genuine good reviews of anything in this maddening era of disposable plastic junk, and encounter a hand-built, finely crafted ax for less than a half years wages of gigging. The final aspect, and most satisfying, is that I have an instrument that is so enjoyable to play and resonant, I literally cannot walk by her and play just a few notes even, the tone is there, the bottom end is there, it is just a pleasure to play. Especially in a small space, or in a corner of a room, one can feel the air moving by playing the low notes pizzicato.
Thank you, Upton Bass! Eric, you told me what you would build me on the phone one the course of 45 minutes – a left-handed contrabass that he would blindfold test next to an expensive pedigreed European carved one and it would hold its own. Felicia, thank you for tolerating my weekly inquiries, all y’all delivered and then some.
– Jeff
We considered everything when we went about building a better left-handed contrabass! We’ve built LH basses since we began with modifications informed by the musicians who play them. Features include:
- Bass bar is reversed
- Soundpost is reversed
- The fingerboard arch is directed to the left-handed player as we would do with a typical right-handed bass.
- Tuners are reversed in a direct mirror of a right-handed bass
- Endpin key is reversed
- For our advanced carved basses, our graduation patterns are inverted in a mirror-image of the patterns we use for a right-handed player