I'm new here. Forgive me, but I'm not a full-time pro bass player anymore, otherwise, I'd probably be here a lot. These days, I mostly work on mid-century Chicago-built catalog guitars.
I've fixed up a couple of Kay Value Leader basses (24" scale, IIRC), a couple 30" Kay basses, and I'm currently working on a couple of Valco/Supro/Airline Pocket Basses (24 5/8" scale).
After all those years thumping my old '66 Precision, I never thought I'd enjoy a short-scale bass, but they're kind of fun.
Sometimes heavy strings are the only way to get these even close to intonating. I don't know if anyone else has experienced that sinking feeling when you put a nice brand new heavy flatwound E string into that tiny little Kluson tuner, start turning, and . . . snap. The core breaks.
Last week I talked to Jim at Juststrings.com, and he referred me to Dave Cowles at GHS. Dave was very helpful. After discussing the problem, here's the solution we arrived at to shorten the string at the bridge end:
I used brass rod from the hardware store, drilled for the strings and tapped for 6-32 set screws. The first few funky tries:
Before all the strings trimmed:
Second set are a little neater:
Jim suggested I post this here as it might be helpful for someone else. There may be better solutions out there, but this is what I came up with, and it works well. Thanks again to Jim and Dave! Thumpity thump.
I've fixed up a couple of Kay Value Leader basses (24" scale, IIRC), a couple 30" Kay basses, and I'm currently working on a couple of Valco/Supro/Airline Pocket Basses (24 5/8" scale).
After all those years thumping my old '66 Precision, I never thought I'd enjoy a short-scale bass, but they're kind of fun.
Sometimes heavy strings are the only way to get these even close to intonating. I don't know if anyone else has experienced that sinking feeling when you put a nice brand new heavy flatwound E string into that tiny little Kluson tuner, start turning, and . . . snap. The core breaks.
Last week I talked to Jim at Juststrings.com, and he referred me to Dave Cowles at GHS. Dave was very helpful. After discussing the problem, here's the solution we arrived at to shorten the string at the bridge end:
I used brass rod from the hardware store, drilled for the strings and tapped for 6-32 set screws. The first few funky tries:
Before all the strings trimmed:
Second set are a little neater:
Jim suggested I post this here as it might be helpful for someone else. There may be better solutions out there, but this is what I came up with, and it works well. Thanks again to Jim and Dave! Thumpity thump.
