Author: Jonas Lohse

New arrival in the workshop: a double bass from the Vogtland region. Before the bass is playable again, it still needs a little work, but the substance is very good and pleasingly untouched. Even the original varnish is still in good condition and just needs a little touch-up.

It is not known which workshop built the bass – the bass has no label. However, the dealer who resold the bass at the time attached a small metal label to the back with two nails: “Wilhelm August Otto | musical instruments & strings | Markneukirchen in Saxony.”
Metal labels like this, which were subsequently attached by dealers, are rather unusual on stringed instruments, but they are more common on (german) guitars. But at least the label gives us concrete information about the history of this bass, which often remains somewhat vague for most Vogtland instruments of this period.

Like me, Phillipp Hahn, the owner of the Jazzkeller, is a passionate everyday cyclist. The Jazzkeller is also not far from us – otherwise I would have been a little worried about his transportation method when he brought the Jazzkeller bass to me on his Omnium because of a few open glue joints. His father Eugen‘s old Rubner then got an all-round check-up, and now the bass is ready for Europe’s most famous jazz club again.

This bass came to our workshop with a 50 cm long crack in the lower bout. It is not the first crack in the ribs that this instrument has experienced. The bass has a label from Friedrich Meindl, dated 1892 – Meindl built it at the age of 66, two years before his death. Lüttgendorf writes about Meindl:

“Meindl, Friedrich. Würzburg, † 1894, son of Franz X. M., pupil of his father and Vauchel. He concentrated entirely on the construction of stringed instruments and trained in this during his time as an assistant in good workshops. In 1864 he took over his father’s (zither-making) workshop. He was a very clean and diligent worker until the end of his life and made many violins and violoncellos. He used beautiful wood and a self-prepared spirit varnish (golden-yellow ground and cherry-red colored varnish).”

Fortunately, he left the golden yellow base for this double bass – because cherry red no longer quite meets today’s taste …