Amplifying The Double Bass
Double bass players performing in traditional blues, rockabilly, jazz, folk, and bluegrass often blend the sounds picked up by a piezoelectric transducer with the sounds picked up by a small condenser microphone mounted on the bridge. The microphone picks up the resonance coming from the body and the sounds of the strings being plucked, bowed, or slapped against. The two sound signals are blended using a simple mixer and then routed to the amplifier.
Double bass players playing in genres where a louder amplified tone (emphasizing the fundamental frequencies) is desired for the bass may be more likely to face the problem of feedback. Feedback for double bass generally manifests itself as a sharp, sudden high-volume "howling" sound that can damage loudspeakers. When acoustic instruments with resonant bodies are amplified with microphones and piezoelectric transducer pickups, the common approach used for amplified double basses, they are prone to have feedback problems.
Read more about this topic: Bass Instrument Amplification
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