Bass Nation

…an NS Design Wav 4 Electric Upright Bass ! Just look at this thing. Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve been interested in playing electric upright for years. Back when I was living in DC, I went to Atomic Music with some friends of mine right before Christmas and I saw an electric upright. I don’t even know what brand it was, but I tried it out and immediately realized that I had to have it. So my plan was to come back right after Christmas and put a down payment on it with Christmas money. I guess everyone else had the same idea because that sucker was gone.  What I probably should have done was picked up a fretless electric, but instead I got an acoustic so that I could jam with my friends and their acoustic guitars.

Jump ahead 6 or 7 years to the present. I was at a new Trader Joe’s with my wife and daughter and I saw that there was a music store right next door. I went in and what was the first thing I saw but a Palatino Electric Upright . I played it briefly and loved it, and found it to be very affordable online. Though as I read more reviews, I saw that there were some issues with it.

Then I started looking at the NS Designs Wav 4. It looks incredibly slick, and it’s an affordable version of their much higher end instruments. Since I had played the Palatino, I really wanted to play one of these just to see if it felt right, and a month or so later I had the opportunity. A friend of mine had gone to a jam at a recording studio where they had one of the higher end models and brought me along the following week to give it a try. It was the 5 string bass cello. The difference, besides several thousand dollars in price, is lots of active electronics and a neck length and scale the same as an electric bass guitar. I got on it and just started grooving like nobody’s business. It was amazing. I felt like my playing was just set free. I had no trouble at all with the extra string, the rounded neck and the upright position.

Unlike the Palatino, the NS Design basses have fret markers to help transition between a standard fretted bass guitar. It also has less body to make it easier to hit the higher register. And while the Palatino tries to emulate a big bass fiddle in look, this looks like something completely different.

I have a sneaking suspicion that my boss got me a Wav 4 as my Christmas bonus this year. He’d been asking me what I wanted and I’ve been talking about this thing for a while. We’ll just see.

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