Tail piece reduction

[basswraith]

I am working on a bass now and the string length under the bridge to the fret of the tail piece comes out to be around 5 inches. Looks way to short. The tail Piece seems too close to the bridge. The bottom half of the bass is shorter than usual and the tail wire is cut to the right length. Should I cut the tail piece at the bottom to give the after length some more length to the string? The idea being that it might free up the bass and resonate better. Any thoughts?

[Matthew Tucker]

Why not just make another tailpiece? If it doesn't improve things you can put the old one back. If it does, well you have a spare tailpiece.

Or .... I suppose you could drill another two holes in existing tp a bit further up and string it up with the TP overlapping the saddle (endpin OUT!). If it works, trim it off, if it doesn't, rewind and plug 'oles.