Who invented the G string?

[uwe]

No adolescent remarks about undergarments here, please, this is a serious and bass-related question. Who added the G string to hitherto three string basses? And which country was slowest to pick the new improvement up?

Uwe

[sniper]

ahhhh

Fi Fi La Boomb in France!!!

Actually it was not the G string, it was the E string that was added.

"In Italy an early tuning (cited by Planyavsky, 1970) is Adriano Banchieri's of 1609 forhis 'Violone in contrabasso', D'-G'-C-E-A-d. Later the number of strings was reduced, andthree-string instruments were preferred. Even during the early 18th century a three-stringbass tuned A'-D-G or G'-D-G was normal. It had no frets and with the growth of thesymphony orchestra it was logical that his more powerful instrument should supersedeearlier models. Not until the 1920s was the additional E' string expected of mostprofessional players. Until then any passages going below A' were transposed up an octave,resulting in the temporary disappearance of the 16' line."

ref: http://www.earlybass.com/slatford.htm

I have no idea about which was the last country to adopt this idea.

now back to Fi Fi.

[lowend1]

No adolescent remarks about undergarments here, please

A challenge if I ever heard one!

[uwe]

Darn, the sharpshooting canine is right, it wasn't the G string they added as the fourth string, I posed the question wrong! 

Ralphe Armstrong, the man who played with Mahavishnu and Jean-Luc Ponty and is now a college professor for music history, says in a current interview in a German bass mag that the fourth string was added in Germany in 1779, the "invention" then conquering Europe quickly with one exception: The Brits - as with the EURO or right lane driving, really ANYTHING sensible for that matter - held out with formal adoption until 1846! He also mentions that the bass tuner was a German invention - in 1778 by a chap called Ludwig Bachmann at the behest of the King of Prussia (who perhaps preferred his music in tune?).

And he confirms that he had an endorsement deal with Gibon for his fretless RDs and Victories and that it all went foul when Gibson fired its whole artist relations dept so that he would have had to negotiate a new deal which he didn't feel like doing. He plays Dean these days, the Edge SQ-5 and -6 models mostly. There are acouple of pics of him in the interview playing his fretless Victory Artist with sax legend Eddie Harris as late as 1986.

Trust Gibson to have someone with jazz rock credibility playing their outlandish basses and then mess it up!

[Denis]

Darn, the sharpshooting canine is right, it wasn't the G string they added as the fourth string, I posed the question wrong! 

Does that mean we may commence with the adolescent remarks?

[PhilT]

Does that mean we may commence with the adolescent remarks?

If you can make something of "Who invented the E string?", go for it.

Typical of the Germans to add unwanted weight and complexity to a perfectly functional instrument. And of the rest of continental Europe to cave in without a squeak.   

[uwe]

 

Himmel, you just downed me!

 

[sniper]

Himmel, you just downed me!

 

never, the spirit lives on in you:



it's like the reason for changing my I.D. as i refuse to acquiesce