Tonehammer has announced the release of a new custom Bowed Bucket Bass library for Kontakt.

This is what happens when you build an instrument out of a 5 gallon plastic bucket, a wooden 4x4 and some cello strings. The bucket was fitted with tuning lugs and drilled out to allow individual strings to pass through, using the bottom wall as the bridge, so that sound projected outward and down. Then a 4x4 wooden beam was affixed to the bucket and the strings were then stretched up the heavy wooden neck, roughly nailed in place and hand-tuned. Remember that old string and paper cup trick from when you were a kid? Think bigger.

Bowing the strings produces a surprisingly clean, yet rich and beefy sound, with plenty of growl and low end and a nice bite. It's perhaps a little similar to an electric cello, but with a special rawness and plenty of body. For the percussion elements, Tonehammer simply banged on it like an idiot, producing sounds exactly as you'd expect - plastic bucket drums. They captured various bowed articulations from both inside and outside of the bucket and also plugged in custom polyphonic Sim-legato and Uberpeggiator systems in a number of the articulations, just for kicks. And of course, as a bonus, they've also created a variety of very cool lead, pad, ambient droning and unique special effect presets to take it to the next level.

The library includes 29 instruments, 545 MB, 568 Samples and bonus custom convolution reverb impulse files.

This is a standard open-format library, so the full retail version of Kontakt 3.5 or later required. The Free "Player" does not support it.

It's available for an intro price of only $24 (price goes to $29 on May 12th).

Visit the Bowed Bucket Bass product page here.