Ebony Performance Mute for Upright Bass
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Description
The new piece you're playing has a direction for con sordino? Sounds like you need a mute!
Made of ebony, this bass mute is the classic three prong style. It's designed for performance muting; by attaching it to the bridge, it dampens the instrument's vibrations and results in a "softer" sound. It does not notably decrease the volume of the instrument. (For that, you need a "practice mute," which is usually a big, heavy rubber contraption that more fully deadens the sound.)
It is temporarily attached to the top of the bridge, by friction with one "finger" between each pair of strings. It can be easily placed and removed with one hand, as needed, to suit the requirements of the piece you're playing.
Very nice quality, real ebony!
A note about fitment: It is expected that this mute may not fit your bridge right out of the package. Various luthiers (people who work on/set up stringed instruments) may have different interpretations or philosophies about how thick a bass bridge should be at the top. Your bridge might have a bridge top that has been sanded thinner, or your setup person may have left it thicker for their own reasons. With these differences, there's no way for the mute-maker to predict the thickness of every bridge top, so it would be impossible to make a "one-size-fits-all" mute out of a hard, inflexible material like ebony wood.
So you can plan ahead: the opening on the mute is about ¼ inch, which gradually narrows over the 1½ inch slot. If your bridge is particularly thick, and the mute does not fit "as-is," you can easily use sandpaper or a flat file to widen the inner surfaces of the mute to better accommodate your bridge. Having the opening too small is clearly better than the alternative, which would mean that the opening would be too wide for some bridges, and would not work at all for a large number of customers. After all, you can take wood away (with sanding/filing) but you can't really put it back! ;-)
Click the second TAB, above, to access a downloadable/printable PDF sheet with more information on fitting this mute.
Important Fitment Notes -Printable Tip Sheet
Fitting this mute to a bridge that has not been "thinned out" at the top can require making a little sawdust - either on the mute or on your bridge. Here is some additional information, in PDF format, for you to read/print out/share with your luthier if necessary.
2 Reviews
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Wooden Mute
This does a MUCH better job of creating a muted sound than a rubber mute, but it needed to have a long meeting with sandpaper and a chisel before I could use it well. It still needs to be chiseled a little more before it REALLY fits the bridge. That's the only reason it gets 4 stars, because it took a lot of work (and sending to my luthier) for it to do its job. Still, I recommend this as a solid performance mute.
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Too small...
The mute arrived with a wonderful paper assuring me that the mute is the correct size and that it is my bridge that is too large. Very few bass bridges are 4mm at the tip, and that doesn't account for the bridge getting thicker further down. The gap should be 5mm-6mm at least to accommodate average bridge sizes. I've had mutes that I needed to widen so they fit further onto my bridge, but this mute does not even go on at all. I wish I could review the sound of this mute, but first I need to buy a wood file to make this fit my bass.
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