Eminence RN

I seem to be on a run of acoustic bass stuff at the moment! Don’t panic, there’s more solid bodied stuff coming up, but I just couldn’t resist mentioning the Eminence Bass. I’d never seen one of these puppies before, have you?

I originally found the german page, and tested my European language skills to their limit. Thankfully I found a version of the page in English, which confirmed that there are two models: The ‘standard’ model, and the ‘RN’ model, with a removable neck.

So, here’s the deal with the RN: You slacken off the strings, pop them out of the bridge, strap them to the neck. Undo a screw to release the neck, and ‘tada!’ you now have an upright bass that fits into a Smart car (if you haven’t seen one, it is to the BMW what the mouse is to an elephant… roughly… tiny car…). It weighs in at around 40 pounds (that’s including the flight case!!!). Watch this QuickTime movie showing how to the Eminence comes apart.

It is pretty much full scale length (41-3/8″), and has quite a pleasing tone. Maple neck and Ebony fingerboard are standard fair, so no corners cut there. The body is a narrower than a traditional upright bass, but it still looks the part and is made with spruce. Oh, and there is a five string model too, which comes in just shy of $4,000.

If you are after more about double bass, then check out the double bass guide –  here – well written by Jonas Lohse, it’s full of great acoustic and double bass news. I’ve added it to the blog roll… Back to the speaking German bit, which is where I started after all. If your German is better than mine, check out http://www.kontrabassblog.de/ as well!

Happy slapping!