Why did Paul choose the Höfner violin bass in the early Beatle days?

McCartney in 1961 with his Rosetti 7 guitar (converted to a lefty bass!) playing the guitar upside down with three strings. George Harrison in the background.

 

And there's a fair chance that the three strings were ... ahem ... "borrowed" from a piano.

 

Paul holding the bass over his head like a sword goes way back to the Beatle days. Watch the Shea footage. I think that's more a "Paul thing" than just showing the bass as an icon. Of course the photo Mickey shared might prove otherwise.

I do wonder, though, how many of those violin basses does Paul carry on tour? I've seen him a few times, but have I ever really seen THE Beatle bass? It stands to reason that Paul would have a few that look identical, which would make for easier set up and tuning during long concerts. He could switch out and use multiple Hofners during shows. Doesn't the "original" still have that Beatle set list taped to it?

I really haven't overthought this. It just stands to reason that all of Paul's original basses would be locked up at home instead of on the road. He also does that bit where he tosses the bass to the tech. Seems awfully risky a thing to do for such an iconic instrument.

TB

 

Paul's & George's Rosetti guitars were actually made by Egmond Guitars in Sweden. Egmond marketed their instruments as "Rosetti" in the U.K.



John Lamers with his Egmond double neck

cool history of Egmond Guitars:
➡ http://www.egmond.se/egmond_se_History.html

 

Here is a interview with Pauls guitar tech showing his tour guitars

 

I was round at a friend's house last night, watching the Eight Days a Week documentary, with this question floating around in the back of my head. I'm drawn to the raft of footage available from the Beat Club archives on Youtube as well, as it shows something interesting! Namely, Fender basses didn't entirely rule the roost in the early-to-mid '60s. Watch old bands doing their Beat Club performances from 1965/66 and you see all sorts of basses, and a surprising number of Gibson basses most notably. With these bands, and McCartney as well, the amplification just wasn't really up to scratch back then. At best 100 watts, but more like 50, with almost no clean headroom to speak of. Speakers that would fart out under pressure, in small sealed cabinets. There is little chance to none that any of those amps back then could reproduce a solid bass fundamental down below 100 Hz, or carry that fundamental over any distance. What the Hofner bass offered, as well as Gibson basses back then, was a fat low-end tone that compensated somewhat for the limitations of the amps. Fenders, with their treble and grind, probably didn't sound as good through some 50 watts of Vox amplification. Listening to the Eight Days a Week soundtrack and the bass comes through loud and clear! There was probably a whole degree of studio cunning employed to tease it out the original recordings, but the bass is there, which is amazing in and of itself.

 

Bass amplification was and is an ever evolving phenomena, still a work in progress as far as I'm concerned, that seems to follow two distinct paths. (1) A more bandwidth limited, warmer, "sit in the mix" style that probably reached its pinnacle with the Ampeg SVT for stage use and lower output versions for studio work. (2) the extended range version that emphasizes the ultra lows and highs that employs a crossover and multi band approach. SWR, Eden and a variety of companies seem to fall in this camp and tend to offer rigs that give bassists who play solo bass and instruments that push beyond the standard low E and high G 4 string. Paul used to talk about his "coffin" rig, that was originally used by Adrian Barber of the Big 3. Beatles+50: Paul's Coffin Barber's bass cabinet was a 15" bass reflex that was driven by a variety of amps (Quad 50 watt, Selmer TruVoice 30 Watt, etc). Paul says it was "bass as we know it today." That reflex speaker was probably very efficient and re-inforced the fundamentals to the degree that even the mid-heavy Hofner had some "whomp" to it in the low end (my experience with vintage Hofners, they do NOT have a "fat" low end. They are more mid-heavy, but are not completely lacking in fundamental bass frequencies). I am pretty sure Paul used it quite a bit until the Beatles got their Vox deal. Barber's experimental rig was unknowingly kind of a blend of the two approaches above. It sounds like Paul might have used it for longer if the "coffin" had been more portable and matched the cosmetics of the other's amps (Brian Epstein was ALL about uniformity). Unfortunately, that little Germanium solid state Vox T60 amp, through a 2 x 15" cab was pretty anemic sounding. Paul's bass tone would take some time before it had a consistent low end fundamental presentation. Lots of experimentation was used in the studio in their early years to get a workable bass tone for Paul. Some more successful than others. I think the "coffin" got used occasionally as well as some rigged up Quad amps with custom speaker cabs from the EMI engineers. Later, the bigger AC100's were implemented along with some Bassman amps and DI's (along with Geoff Emerick's "reverse speaker" mic technique).

Paul was not alone in the ever evolving rock and roll bass rig in the 60's. As we all know, bass frequencies challenge amplification and wattage in the 60's came at a premium. Tube amplification was the norm, with solid state just starting to evolve. Wattage beyond 50 watts was not an easy task, so speaker efficiency was largely responsible for providing the extra spl's needed to get a rock n roll band across a crowd of screaming teenagers (or a loud drummer like Keith Moon or Ginger Baker) And in all actuality, reproducing the actual fundamentals of a bass guitar is problematic. Most bass fundamentals are so low, it creates more rumble than pitch specific tone. Its the overtones ABOVE the fundamental that provides definition for the bass guitar. An artful combination of the fundamental and the octaves above is generally what makes for a pleasing, easy to mix bass tone for a rock combo context. Extreme bass fundamentals are also a challenge for disc cutting; not a problem these days in the case of digital and inexpensive wattage, but for the analog 60's and the largest power amps at the time being in the neighborhood of 50 watts (and a few 80 watt) it was easier to simply limit the amount of bass fundamentals one employed.

Thankfully, I also think that much of Paul's bass tone comes from his fingers and his natural instincts as a musician. So even when, at times, the limitations of the amplification and recording techniques of the 60's kept Paul's bass tone from being as "there" as he would have liked, there was enough low end information that later "tweaks" could bring some of that out.

 

Why? Youth and lack of experience.

Iconic it may be, but there are much better playing and sounding instruments. His work with the Ric gives you an idea of what a difference the instrument can make on his sound.

 

The first Hofner was cheap when he got it in Hamburg and that is the reason he bought it plus he had seen Little Richard's bass player play one. The second Hofner, the 1963 was FREE because it was given to him by Hofner. The second "at no cost" one is the one he still uses.

 

It would be interesting to see a listing of recordings each of his Hofner's has appeared on.
I would imagine the original (missing) Hofner appeared on all of the Please Please Me and With The Beatles albums but on what afterward? The 1963 would likely appear on a larger number of recordings being used for over fifty years even though I don't think it was used at all during the Wings years.

 

Oh Paul McCARTNEY! I was baffled at first. I didn't think Paul Simon played bass, and Paul Simonon never played
with the Beedles.

 

Yet they don't put dots over the O on many of their own instruments.

 

Probably for similar reasons why Bert Kämpfert changed his name to Bert Kaempfert?
Bert Kaempfert - Wikipedia

Or: Why did Paul choose the Höfner violin bass in the early Beatle days?

 

Great video! Obnoxious music track, both in selection and volume.

 

From the video - any idea why both the Epiphone acoustics have the Detroit Red Wings logo on them?

 

I had a Hofner violin bass available to me for a while. It was fun to play - light, and it actually had a very appealing woody sound. A few years later I saw Peter Tosh in San Diego and Robbie Shakespeare was playing one. You wouldn't think you could get a big bottom-heavy reggae sound out of it, but he had no problem.

 

ironically, as shown in that clip, Olsie Robinson played a gibson EB (also known as the EB-1), which has a solid body and sounds nothing at all like a hofner 500/1.

 

Wonder if that first bass that was stolen will ever show up...

 

The first guitar is Paul's own original instrument. The sceond is Paul's copy from the replica run that was made and sold by Epiphone. It is accurate down to the sticker.