30" scale six string advice

[MPU]

I'm making a 30" scale six string bass for a client. Alder body, maple-wenge neck with rosewood fretboard. Is there something special I should do to get the B-string sound good? With my experience I'd say a bit stiffer neck, good neck-body joint (this will be bolt-on, threaded inserts perhaps?) and heavy B-string. What else?

 

[Triad]

I made a few strange basses... like 32" sixers, 30"s... don't honestly recall if I ever made a 30" 6 but I'm sure you'll be fine.
The thing is, the bass will sound good but the tension will be low on the strings, not much you can do about it.
Remember the B won't like to be bent around the tuner on such a short length... try to recover some extra room by making it go thru the body etc.

 

[Geoff St. Germaine]

Alembic has done some short (30.75") scale six strings. I have read comments from Mica on them saying that "the customers knew what to expect".

With the same strings you're looking at about 77% of the tension on a 30" string vs a 34" string (a bit less compared to 35"). I would suggest using a heavier string, keeping in mind what Triad mentioned concerning getting the string to properly wrap on the tuner post. You'd probably want to look at custom string sets for it. I didn't easily come up with many returns for short scale strings suitable for a low B (> 0.120").

I honestly that otherwise you have it covered... I don't think that threaded inserts will help (even though I use them, only for durability really) as a proper wood screw is going to have tons of holding power for that application. A big thing with such a short scale B is really going to be the players touch.

 

[HaphAsSard]

try to recover some extra room by making it go thru the body etc.

^ This. +1
Or a reverse headstock! Either way, planning ahead for the instrument to accommodate standard long-scale strings would be wise: there's simply a lot more choice of strings available, and as mentioned off-the-shelf 5-string sets or single low B strings are hard to find, which would force the owner to go custom if, or every time, available strings don't meet his/her needs. Making it standard-string-ready would leave room for experimenting with gauges.

 

[Triad]

I think a "thru-body" option, with the string running parallel to the body (in length, basically) would make things easy enough.
You don't need to do it for all strings, just for B and E. A, D, G and C will be fine.