Neal Heppleston - Double Bass Maker

The Heppleston Double Basses workshop is located at Holme Bank Mills in Mirfield, West Yorkshire. From this 19th Century cotton mill I create beautifully made, bespoke, hand crafted double basses for musicians around the world.

Each double bass encompasses many hours of intricate and detailed work. I use a combination of traditional methods and modern techniques to maintain exceptional standards as well as to work efficiently. Utilising historic and contemporary research I work to improve acoustics, playability and to refine my craft.

I use beautiful and outstanding quality materials for every double bass that I make. I carefully consider each piece of wood that I use for it’s tonal qualities, aesthetic features and biological make up. From just looking at a piece of wood it’s age and years stare straight back at you. By simply counting the grain lines you can roughly trace the wood’s life span. Often double bass wood can be over 150 year old, pre-dating recorded sound, air travel, the invention of cars, electricity, computers, and two world wars, so there is an enormous sense of responsibility when working with it. Each double bass is a timeless instrument which preserves the excellence of the wood that it is carved from and is built for longevity to ensure that it can be used to make music for generations.

Every double bass has a unique and outstanding sound, born of the individual materials and the work that has gone into carving, shaping and finishing the instrument. Balanced tone, versatile dynamics, sonorous and resonant lows, rich and powerful highs, strong projection and vast sustain all coalesce to produce the instrument’s own singular personality.

My journey making instruments started in 2011. I was playing double bass for bands in Sheffield, whilst working a day job and wanting to find a new creative outlet. I decided that it would be a fun challenge to build myself a double bass. I knew that making one with no knowledge of how the construction of the instrument was undertaken, would be impossible. So, on a cold and dark September night I took my first trip to the internationally renowned Newark School of Violin Making, where I enrolled in an evening course, hoping to learn the basics of violin making. Dipping in and out of that incredible world, once a week, truly sparked my passion for instrument making so I enrolled in the full time course. Over the next four years I studied violin and viola making, varnishing, repair and restoration techniques and built my first two double basses.

I graduated from Newark School of Violin Making in 2016 and set up my first workshop at Exchange Place Studios in Sheffield. After a few years, I moved to my current workshop in Mirfield in 2019.

I now dedicate my time to making new double basses for musicians across the world, to serve them in their careers and to enjoy as a tool to help them realise their creative dreams.