Afterlength

[Roger Davis]

I've looked through the Newbie links on setups and can't find any clue in the titles, so pl forgive me if this topic has already been covered.

One of my basses, imported from a USA shop with a reputation for setup has a long tail wire, so much so that the bottom of the tailpiece is 50mm above the tailnut (sorry, I'm sure it's not really called that). Most basses I see have little or no wire showing at all, in fact my other bass is like that and when the G string is tuned correctly I can 'ping' a high Bb on the afterlength. I remember someone saying that this is the ideal setup.

Can someone please confirm that this is the case and also give me an indication of what sort of improvement I could expect if the afterlength on the USA bass was adjusted accordingly.

[Eric Hochberg]

If you do a search for "afterlength", tons of stuff comes up. FWIW, in my experience, raising the tailpiece higher from the saddle (correct term) seems to soften the feel of the strings when playing pizz. Afterlengths can be tuned to different intervals. Before I started experimenting my luthier always went for two octaves and a fifth. Obviously, a compensating tailpiece will have different intervals for each note.

I haven't noticed any difference other than the feel thing when changing the tailpiece position. I can't say the sound changed much, if at all.

[Jake deVilliers]

Roger, the length from the bridge to the saddle varies widely among basses so the length of the tailwire will vary. Tailpieces aren't all the same length either....

I (and others) tune the afterlengths to 2 octaves and a fourth above the string ie C, G, D, A. It makes a big difference to the quality of the sound.

Unless I've made a compensated tailpiece to suit the bass, I have to approximate and get as many strings close as I can; usually its the G & D or D & A.

I will often show my customer what I've done and how it works so they can use the afterlengths as a quick check to see if the bridge has shifted. Ping, ping.

[Eric Rene Roy]

A quick "in the ball park" way of getting it right is to divide the string length by 6. So on a 42 inch string length you should have 7 inches of after-length. Some fussing from there can be done if your going for serious tonal adjustments, of course.

[Roger Davis]

Thanks for the helpful advice, guys. I'll go and play.