I’ve made a bit of progress with the bass.

I made a side spacer to replace the bit of bent tube the Palatino comes with. Works much better and mounts in the same place as the original tube. Might be a bit narrow but I can see how it goes. It is based on a picture of a bass.

I’ve got rubber under the piezo and between the bridge feet and the piezo as recommended on the Talkbass Palatino discussions. Sounds good.

I’ve fitted low tension D’Addario Helicore Double Bass Strings. They seem to work well and were easy to fit. No problem with length, although they needed shortening slightly to fit the shorter peg box. The sound is excellent, even if the price was painful to someone used to ukulele strings. With these strings and the rubber it isn’t necessary to use a wedge under the bridge to get the angle right.

One of the major problems was the pain involved in holding the string down with the left hand. While some of this was poor technique, a lot of it was a huge amount of scoop in the fingerboard. Scoop is the curve of the fingerboard to allow the string to vibrate. The fingerboard seemed to be particularly high at the nut.

I spent some time scraping the fingerboard down at the nut. This made a big difference and wasn’t hard; however it was a very slow job. Instead I asked Julian Batey to finish it off – £72 all done. Far better now.

I trimmed the bridge down to match the profile in Strobel’s book on measurements. It is possible to bow now.

One job I need to sort properly is the tailpiece – it rings and sounds like feedback on certain notes – roundabout B ish. Very weird. I need to jam some rubber into it to stop it ringing.

I bought a Carbon Fibre bow from Julian Batey – it seems excellent.

I have a lesson booked to help me sort out the technique. Then we’ll see what needs doing next.