My electric viola da gamba is finally in working condition. When I got it from ErgoInstruments it was unplayable, the frets had unseated in shipping and fixing them was way above my skill level. I spent half a year looking for a luthier that could fix it, and now I have found one. A local wizard of all things technical went over it and hammered the frets back in position, filed and polished them for me. Better than new.
However, as I talked with Jesse Blue at ErgoInstruments about the problems I got the feeling that he thought that the gambas were more work than they were worth. Getting those very wide frets right on the curved neck of the gamba right is not easy. The frets on my Ergo gamba are not tied like on an ordinary gamba, but metal inserted in the neck like on a guitar.
Now I can finally play it, and it sounds great. Way better than I had expected. I run it through a Zoom B2 multieffect, the thing with the highest input impedance (1 MOhm) than I have access to. I tried my Korg AX1500G first, but it sounded very strange. I can’t find any spec sheet stating the input impedance on it, but I assume it is much lower. I tried to find a page for the AX1500G on KORGs web site, but it has become obsolete since I got it, the new model seems to be called AX3000G.
Gamba and friends
Also I have rearranged the furniture to move all my music gear away from the window, less crowded in the play area, but a bit less spacey around the dining table. On the picture above the gamba is in the middle, on the left is my Krappy tapper (now with fret markings) and on the right is my cello, also made by Jesse Blue. Strings must be my addiction, twelve on the Krappy, seven on the gamba and five on the cello.
www.ergoinstruments.com – ErgoInstruments, where I got my gamba and cello.
www.krappyguitars.com – Krappy guitars.
www.zoom.co.jp/english/products/b2/index.php – The B2 page at Zoom Corporation.
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