Jane was assisting someone at a hospital appointment in Nottingham yesterday and I was acting as chauffeur. Parking is pretty bad at QMC so the plan was that I would go and find somewhere else in the city I could put the car and it just so happened that I found a place near Alfreton Road, which is home of The Music Inn, a long-established music shop.
As I browsed around, my eye was caught by an Ozark resonator bass. I’ve got a resonator guitar, which has a metal body with an integrated speaker cone to acoustically amplify the sound and I’d heard of bass versions before but this was the first time I’d seen one. Of course I tried it out and I found it to have a powerful, punchy tone. I reckon that, unlike most acoustic bass guitars, it probably could keep up in a small session without needing to be plugged in.
On the downside, the metal body means it is very heavy although I was surprised to find that it still suffered from a tendency for neck dive. It was also without an upper strap button so to wear it standing would mean tying the top end of the strap round the headstock, which I find less comfortable that a body-mounted attachment at that end. Most importantly as reasons for not buying it though were not really needing it and certainly not having proper room to accommodate it!
So, no new bass for me but hopefully it will fall into good hands.