Can I use an acoustic bass for this course?
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Hey Melanie! Yeah that’s totally fine. The main difference is you won’t be able to rest your right thumb on the pickup when playing the E string like I’ll often talk about, so you’ll have to choose between letting it float, lightly resting it on the body of the bass, or on the edge of the fingerboard. Not a huge deal.
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Wondering if anyone else who’s used an acoustic bass guitar for the Beginner to Badass course would chime in and talk about how it was. Any challenges?
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I have since changed to an electric bass. After switching what I realized was the acoustic bass was so much more bulky it made some tasks a little harder.
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Yeah that makes sense. Acoustics are definitely clunkier in general. What kind of electric you playing?
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My boyfriend is a bass player and he’s letting me use one of his. It’s a Sawtooth. My boyfriend is Tony Cavazo, you may know his name from the 80’s he and his brother, Carlos founded Snow, then he moved on to Hurricane and Carlos moved onto Quiet Riot where he and Tony wrote “Bang Your Head”. I signed up for lessons because I wanted to get started and then once I’m to a certain point, he’ll take over teaching me. I showed him one of the lessons last night so he could see what I was doing. He gives me tips along the way to help me exercise my hands and fingers.
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That’s awesome! You guys have so many bass duets in your future. 
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For anyone else reading this, I just found a cool solution to the acoustic bass guitar thumbrest problem -
https://kalabrand.com/collections/u-bass-accessories/products/u-bass-thumbrests
These are marketed for U-basses, but if you’ve got a spot to stick one on an ABG should work just fine. Has anyone here tried these beore?
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Josh, My name is Michael Bellizzi and I am doing your course with an Acoustic bass. I play upright bass mostly but wanted something different to lug around, so I bought this Martin bass and a small bass amp. Your course is great and I am learning a lot. I play Old Time Fiddle music and hope this will work with that. So far it has been working just a lot more to it than just the 1, 5 cords like I play on the upright. Good for me to learn more ways of playing and adding some more notes is a lot of fun so far. Great Course. I just ordered the thumb rest, been using the fretboard and will be nice to have these. Thanks
Michael
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Hey Michael, I’m glad you’re enjoying the course! I hope some of the material on chord progressions, Nashville numbers, and root-fifth bass line construction later in the course will be useful in understanding the music you’ve been playing on upright too!
P.S. You can change your forum username if you want by going to your profile, if you don’t want people accidentally calling you Laurie. 
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Acoustic bass should be played with a pick if you want to be heard. Finger plucking does not sound great, although you certainly can practice that on an acoustic. Rest the thumb on the body when plucking the E.
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Welcome to the forum @Nickb, feel free to come Introduce Yourself!
I see what you’re saying, but you could compensate with technique and EQ.
Recently found an alternative to this, which I reviewed here!
Looks like he’s out of stock right now, but they seem to come back in regularly:
https://reverb.com/shop/toms-boutique-171
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