shortening strings

[Brett Giesey]

I've seen mention on a few threads about shortening strings by crimping something above the ball. Can anyone tell what you use to do this and does it stay in place?

 

[GTHintz]

You might be able to twist the ball where it wraps to the end wire and get a little bit of length taken out from it. Another trick that I prefer is using spacers slid down the string and that would take up some slack as well. I wish I would have thought about that before I popped a couple b strings that were a little long for my bass.

 

[iiipopes]

Two solutions:
1) If you have enough room behind the bridge, use a piece of steel tubing to run the string through. I have done this to fit regular scale strings onto a mid scale bass.
2) Some folks crimp a brass ball fitting to a string at the point required. Others crimp a cable fitting.

 

[michael_t]

I once experimented with a couple of small hex nuts as fillers on an E string to keep the unsilked part of it from wrapping around the tuner post.

NOTE: This was done on my Am Std P bass with the thru-body option. This method may or may not work on your bass depending on the bridge design.

 

[LetItGrowTone]

I'm currently using the above on an EB. Works perfectly.

 

[Brett Giesey]

Thanks for the input

 

[Prodigus Filius]

I've seen mention on a few threads about shortening strings by crimping something above the ball. Can anyone tell what you use to do this and does it stay in place?

Have you seen this posthttps://www.talkbass.com/threads/the-official-short-scale-bass-club-part-2.646396/page-9#post-9594487

The poster mentioned that this approach was no good for flats and I assume this is because the smooth surface wouldn't allow solder to take. I'm fooling around with a few Chrome test strings with a similar method but replacing solder with super glue for now (what I had laying arround) but later I'll try it with strong epoxy like PC-7, which, unlike solder, will bond to the flatwound smooth surface. Have to make hole in ball ends bigger for strings 115 gauge and up

I've had this Chrome .050 on for few days now and so far so good. Holding well. Epoxy should really nail it. I'm more partial to this approach than others I have see. The method of removing outer wrapping from the peg end sux for people with poor eyesight I reckon

 

[Karl Kaminski]

ive used aluminum spacers for both EB and ABG