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Is making a strat- bass a good idea?

bad or good idea

  • Sounds fun but don't try it!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Just do it.

    Votes: 110 87.3%

  • What did i just read?

    Votes: 10 7.9%

  • Horrible idea, never attempt it.

    Votes: 6 4.8%
  • Total voters
    126
  • Poll closed .
#21
Depends on what you want to do. There have been some successful sub-short scale conversions using the stock neck, too. You could easily make a short scale conversion with a Bronco neck or something. Going full 34" scale would be a challenge on an actual Strat body.

I thought about mating some old Ibanez bass parts to a Strat copy body I have lying around. The 22-fret neck would have helped with the scale length, but the bridge would have been right at the heel of the body, and the arm contour would then get in the way and be a factor. So I never did anything more with it past the "line it up and eyeball it" stage.
 
#22
I'd much rather have the opposite.
One of these with only the middle pickup and two knobs.
ComS6_Hnybrst_MP_10inW.jpg
 
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#25
Pudge Fish said:
Do it. I'd give it a whirl if it had a P-neck!
Click to expand...
I do. Mighty mite. Though i'm putting that on a custom p at the moment. Ill either build from scratch or buy a cheap ebay body and make a snazzy bass. I'm going to go shorts scale on it and fretless most likely u less i make a copy of my mighty mite and make a lined fret fingerboard
 
Last edited:
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#33
Yeah, you are definitely going to have to use a larger-sized body, due to the simple principle of the longer scale-- even a 30" scale would probably be too large for a Strat guitar body.

Godin's Shifter seems to be the best example of a truly workable design for a 34" scale "strat bass." Personally, I would start with a blank P-bass body, then route the pickup cavities and control cavities yourself-- there is certainly no standard template for something like this.

As for pickups? I might go with 3 of these, from DeLano in Germany:
jsbc4he.jpg


They're slim, and they're fully-humbucking, so you can do any combination of three pickups you want without having to worry about 60-cycle hum.

I would set the rear pickup no closer to the bridge than the rear pickup of a '70's Jazz bass. I would avoid extreme pickup locations (like right next to the bridge or right next to the 20th fret of the neck) in order to maximize the versatility of the instrument's tonal palette. Thump is useless if it's muddy, and Punch is useless if it's twangy and nasally, IMHO.

Just add a Kahler bass tremolo and cut out a pickguard and voila!
 
#35
I remember Schecter making a 4-string Hellcat bass with 3 Kent Armstrong "lipstick" Jazz-style single coils. I know it's not quite the type of thing you had in mind, but I remember thinking "that's a pretty good layout for a 3-pickup bass", regarding the pickup positions. Does anyone have a picture? They stopped making them more than 10 years ago...
 
#40
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