Well, in my quest for a quality shortscale bass I asked TBers to help me compile a list of shortscale basses.
"Seamonkey" suggested that I try stringing my bass BEAD and putting a capo on the 5th fret. That was indeed a great suggestion, but I found that the face dots were all in the wrong position which means I would have to be careful not to hit the wrong notes in songs I am used to playing in the traditional way. Also, sometimes when playing a song the traditional way I may have to play on the 11th fret or higher. Putting a capo on the 5th made me play those notes on the 17th which for me wasnt ideal, but doable.
With a little more experimenting I tried putting the capo on the 2nd fret and tuning accordingly. This is perfect because...
-it gives me the ease of playing shortscale
-the heavier strings give me deeper tone
-I dont have to hunt down and purchase a decent quality shortscale bass
- the capo presses the strings close to the fingerboard which means the action is very low.
The only disadvantage is that what is traditionaly the 14th fret is now the 12th, but up until you hit the 9th fret the dot position markers are still the same. This makes it much less confusing. It will still be a small adjustment to adapting to the face dots being "off" after the 7th fret, but it wont be too bad.
If you havent tried this you may want to. Call me a wimp, but I find it much easier and more enjoyable to play this way. No more stretching for that low F!
Edit: I ended up taking the B string off and replacing it with a higher tension E (Fender flatwound 105). The .132 B girth was huge and I found it a little annoying. The E I put on seems to be working fine even though I had to downtune it a bit.
