Rattlebrained

Brushes are great with washboards! The only downside I can think of is that the metal ones can get stuck between the wood and the metal rubbing surface when you play which is a nuisance since that can damage the brush as well as screw up the song you’re playing. For that reason I’ve been using nylon brushes because they aren’t as fragile; they don’t sound quite as nice but close enough. I’ve also put tape along the bottom of certain washboards, covering that gap.

However once you’re playing with…

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Since I wasn’t too satisfied with how my first electric washboard turned out I’ve been wanting to experiment further and finally got around to doing it. Since the frame of a Columbus washboard isn’t really thick enough to add much, I began by making a new frame out of beech wood taken from the legs of an old saw horse. The idea being that a harder wood will hopefully give a bit more focus to the vibration than the softer pine most washboards are made of. How will I know it it works? Obviously I wont unless I make an identical one with pine…

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This week I made a suitcase kick drum, something I’ve been wanting to do for sometime but kept on putting off since I didn’t have a suitcase. However just last week the art gallery I work with in Zürich asked me if I could come play for their open house (next week – more on that soon), and it seemed the perfect type of event since a drum set is pretty much out of the question.

I was fortunate to find a perfectly sized suitcase at only the second second hand shop I visited which gave me time that afternoon to figure out how to attach the old broken kick drum pedal that I had recuperated some time ago. The first step was to give it a decent batter since the synthetic fur of the original was worn through in 3 spots. I tore that off, exposing the cork interior but wasn’t that keen on how that sounded..l.

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At first I had thimbles on all my fingers and also had made aluminum “whackers” for my thumbs, but when I started to play with brushes too, I had a hard time not losing the thumb whackers so they ended up remaining in the box. Then since thimbles on my pinkys never seemed that useful I gave up on them too. With three thimbles on each hand I can pretty much get all the sounds I want, plus I can still hold things between the two non thimbled fingers. I should add that I’ve never been that good at tapping and don’t really use each individual finger separately; I kind of rub and tap with one or more thimbles depending on how thick the sound should be.

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I received some thimbles made out of maple from Bone Dry Music== last month and think they are pretty neat, especially for softer acoustic music in situations where you would like your washboard to be a tad more laid back and mellow.

The wood has a softer contact with the washboard’s surface which removes the bright “metal to metal attack” and accentuates the board’s lower frequencies. This makes a drastic difference on both my Columbus zinc and stainless steel washboards and a less obvious and more subtle difference on my brass boards and Zinc Kings. This is most likely due to the relative softness of brass and the fact that the Zinc King’s metal rubbing surface is in contact with it’s wood backing and also that mine have been repaired with two composite epoxy glue which already gave them a thicker sound…

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This is a series of 20 short videos from YouTube user tambourine21 that more or less show 19 washboards from the Jug Band Fest 2007 in, I’m guessing..

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Uh-oh, this week I noticed that I had rubbed through a few ribs of one of my Zinc King 703s! Not surprising if you use them like I do, but unfortunate nevertheless…

First things first: take the washboard apart and reassemble it with the backside forward, so that the rubbed through “top of the ribs” holes will become “inside of the rib holes”, if you get my meaning. The only issue with doing this is that thin brushes can get caught in the holes…

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