"The Montreal Symphony Orchestra is the only orchestra that owns one of these unusual instruments"
They actually have three. https://www.osm.ca/en/octobasses/
Here's a video of one being played (sort of): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K3VdVbBOxw
For years, a friend of mine (in San Francisco) and I (in New York City) have sent one another an image [1] of one of these being tuned any time we’re doing coast-to-coast software debugging (especially relevant when we were working on a realtime collaborative text editor).
Kinda funny, my son recently started playing both guitar and bass guitar and quickly got into building them. He mashed up a Ukulele with a fretless Guitar and put two bridges on the Guitar so it has a harp section. Just before this got posted he came around and asked me about the physics of building an (electric) bass guitar tuned an octave or two octaves lower than a normal bass guitar.
The Musical Instrument Museum is one of the best things to do in Phoenix. It's also one of my favorite museums in the world.
I do remember this tall bass. A very cool and unusual museum, BTW. Phoenix is a fun town. The Botanical Garden too is not to be missed.
“Some of the instruments fall below the human hearing range, only the vibrations can be felt,” feels unreal to me for some reason. I can’t imagine a vibration rattling through me without hearing something at that power.
"Bass! How low can you go?" (Public Enemy - Bring the Noise)
Saw it in Phoenix.
Definitely big.
Wouldn’t recommend for slap.
"With a range so deep it goes lower than humans can hear"
To be fair, the difference between "sound" and "air pressure" is vibes. A tire inflator is probably putting out infrasonic frequencies, too.
Co-Builder of the last two in Montreal here, actually the octobass shown in the article is incomplete, it lacks the pedals that are present on the original one by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. These pedals allows for legato, which is not achievable if you play only with the levers.
About those in Montreal, one of them is a replica (+ minor upgrades) of the original one, and two of them are driven with motors.
You can see some close up in [1]
[1] https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2024/08/14/irez-vous-voir-...