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Homemade low A extension for bass

I made something like this for my bari several years ago, so why not make one for bass too. This one gives a perfectly in tune low A on my Noblet bass.

I started with a 56oz Coffee Mate Creamer can from Sam's Club or Amazon. It's about 5.5" in diameter and 8.5" long. Just cut off the bottom and attach some weather stripping that extends past the end about 1/4-1/2". The self adhesive isn't quite sticky enough, so I run a bead of super glue to make it stick permanently. I rubbed off all the printing with some acetone (nail polish remover). You could just as easily paint over it if you prefer.

I don't know the inside bell diameter of American or Chinese basses, but the 5.5" + .25" of foam fits very close to the beginning of the flare on my French one.

I can still play low C in tune with the extension in place, but can't play low B natural or Bb of course.

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Not sure why my previous post was deleted, but the knee trick is impossible on bari and bass, and very difficult on tenor. So it's either $6 for my extension or $25,000 for an Eppelsheim low A bass.
 
Not sure what post you are referring to. There is nothing in the moderation queue.
 
I have to ask: What is the purpose of a low A on bass sax? Obviously I can see the usefulness on baris, but bass? It will give you a concert G, and you lose your B & Bb in the process.

@Gandalfe how often do you use the low A on your bass?
 
There's nothing practical about bass sax. I did it mainly because I could (like climbing Everest), but also for my own mental health. Since I've owned this thing, I'm constantly looking for ways to rationalize buying it. As we all know, bass only goes 4 semitones lower than a low A bari, not much. And gigs are practically non-existent. Adding a 5th semi-tone plus elbowing my way into a Dixieland group that gets a lot of paying gigs helps me rationalize its existence in my house. Actually there are a couple of tunes I can make it work on where there's a bass line that ends on G concert that I'd otherwise have to take up an octave. Will the audience ever notice? Will the song sound significantly better? Of course not. Will I get any satisfaction out of it? A little.

It actually took a lot of trail and error to find something that worked. I tried all manner of cylindrical and conical objects. But none worked except this one. Get the diameter wrong, the note won't speak at all. Get the length wrong, it's out of tune. I thought for sure a truncated traffic cone would work great. Didn't work at all. Similarly, PVC pipe I had on hand, plastic drain pipe, coffee can (several sizes) and soda bottles all failed. And of course what works on my horn may not work on a different make/model of horn. Hopefully anybody else itching for a low A on a budget will get some good ideas from this thread.

I do have to be quick on the draw in order to not lose B & Bb. I make notes in my charts on when to insert/remove it.

As an aside, @Helen, I love your website and am slowly working my way through all of it. But it's been offline for about a week. Is it gone for good, or do you plan to bring it back? Please do put it back online if you can.
 
My website is having "technical issues". Sigh... It will be back. Sorry about that. It is a major pain in the ass.
 
As an aside, @Helen, I love your website and am slowly working my way through all of it. But it's been offline for about a week. Is it gone for good, or do you plan to bring it back? Please do put it back online if you can.

My website is having "technical issues". Sigh... It will be back. Sorry about that. It is a major pain in the ass.

Should be fixed, now. We had issues with our domain name provider and our new host not really talking to each other. Sorry for the outage. FWIW, it looks like the new host is a lot faster.
 
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