The Squier Mini Precision Bass Club

[DavesnothereCA]

I have GHS Precision Flats on my Bronco, Gretsch Junior Jet, Mikro and Mini P. My basses go Bung, not BOOOOOIIING. They stay in tune and they intonate just fine. I have Dunlop Flat Wounds on my 5 string Mikro. Same results.

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Interesting.

I have not asked this previously, but I wonder whether the varying results might be influenced by how hard a player plucks their strings ?

The character of sound produced by looser [lighter gauge] strings ought to be more sensitive to variances in plucking than heavier gauge strings, but short scale basses may just make that factor more obvious.

On my Hofner Ignition Club bass, I put short scale LaBella Low Tension Flats [yes, those do fit, at 32.25" of wrap], and I have not noticed tuning nor intonation problems, though I understand the theory about why some folks might be having such problems, and originally steered away from the lightest available sets beforehand, even in LaBella.

Those strings are fairly light [42-56-75-100, IIRC], but not as light as some of the other examples being discussed, so yes, my own results are inconclusive.

On my 2010 USA Gibson SG bass, I put short scale GHS Brite Flats, which I already liked in long scale light gauge on my Ric, and which just happen to be only available in the heavier gauge in shorts, and they seem fine too, but as I said are a good deal heavier [49-62-84-109, IIRC].

Thing is, with the overall % of people who have posted about poor results with the lighter gauge short scale bass strings, I see no point in spending [potentially] extra money just to see how such strings might behave [or not] on my short scale basses, the most recent of which is a Jay Turser JTB-40.

And I'm leaning towards ordering short scale LaBella Deep Talking Flats for it, in 43-104 gauges, which is their 2nd lightest in those.

Regardless of what the truth of the matter might be, I do find it interesting that LaBella offers, without special order, more different gauge choices in sets for all scale lengths of bass strings, than any other string maker which I have recently researched.

LaBella must see enough demand to do so, and as I have said on other occasions, I do not mind paying a bit extra for having a choice.
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[Splash7]

I have LaBella Deep Talking flats (39-56-77-96) on my Hofner Club bass. I am teaching myself early Beatle songs and to my ear, they sound just like Paul's.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

I have LaBella Deep Talking flats (39-56-77-96) on my Hofner Club bass. I am teaching myself early Beatle songs and to my ear, they sound just like Paul's.

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Our band plays pretty much only Country, so I have not had a chance to evaluate what my Hofner LTFs do for Beatles songs, but I am pleased with their sound for the Country tunes, and very smooth externally so no sliding noise.

I was hesitant to go for the lightest LaBellas which you have, and their LTFs were the next ones up which were available to me at the time.

I also did not want to put the heavier GHS Brite Flats on it, in case they were heavy enough to hurt it structurally, hollow body and all.

BTW, one difference published by LaBella is that their DTFs are hex core and their LTFs are round core.

That is one reason why I want to try the DTFs on my newest short scale bass, even though it is not a Hofner, to get a partial idea whether there is a difference in feel between them, and anything else which I can maybe isolate from the instrument's differences.
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[Noodlebra]

Good day all!

I signed up on TB (long time occasional lurker though) because I'm interested in that mini PBass... But not as as a bass. Sounds weird, but bear with me. I'm rather looking for a baritone guitar, but I like to mix-and-match when it comes to instruments (even my Cabronita bass has a Mike Dirnt neck), and I like the shape and layout of the PBass.

Moving the bridge isn't an issue, but I was wondering about the neck pocket and plate? Is it the same as a Strat? I've photoshopped this a few times, and sometimes it seems it would be a direct fit, sometimes it's a bit off, but pictures are sometimes taken at an angle that screws up proportions... But the pocket width looks the same.

If someone was to do some maintenance/work and had a non-Tele Fender/Squier guitar neck to try it on, could you confirm (or not) that the neck pocket and plate fit on the bass body?

Thanks a lot.

For those who are curious: yellow is the neck mounting pattern for the Strat, blue is for the Mini PBass. They don't align exactly; however due to distortion in the original pictures I know they each are slightly off, but not to what extent.

Here are the neck pocket measurements @DavesnothereCA

View attachment 4009710

Thanks! A lot have changed for me since July, but I still keep the project in mind...

 

[SBassman]

I have GHS Precision Flats on my Bronco, Gretsch Junior Jet, Mikro and Mini P. My basses go Bung, not BOOOOOIIING. They stay in tune and they intonate just fine. I have Dunlop Flat Wounds on my 5 string Mikro. Same results.

How did you do it. Did you cut them or unwrap them ?

 

[Splash7]

How did you do it. Did you cut them or unwrap them ?

No, they all fit fine except the E string on the Mini P. A little fat wrap around the post.

 

[SBassman]

No, they all fit fine except the E string on the Mini P. A little fat wrap around the post.

But then you cut the E yes?

 

[Splash7]

Why would I cut any of the strings except for the extra taper? These are short scale strings.

 

[macmanlou]

Why would I cut any of the strings except for the extra taper? These are short scale strings.

The Mini P's scale is about 1 1/2" shorter than "short scale".

While there are some strings out there that may tolerate having part of their wound section wrapped around the tuning post, many will not.

 

[SBassman]

The Mini P's scale is about 1 1/2" shorter than "short scale".

While there are some strings out there that may tolerate having part of their wound section wrapped around the tuning post, many will not.

That is my experience as well. It also gets down to gauge. There are strings out there that will tolerate a cut of 90 or 95, but the same design in 105+ will not tolerate the cut.

 

[HaphAsSard]

Cutting strings is not a good solution. Strings are pulled to playing tension when wound. If you just cut a string designed for a longer scale, it is never pulled to its intended tension. This will affect the sound, usually to the muddy end.

This is likely how short scales got a bad rap over the years - player cutting long scale strings down to use and giving really muddy sound.

There is no such thing as strings designed for a longer scale: most manufacturers make short, medium and long-scale strings that are identically made across sets save for winding length. Using a long-scale string on a short-scale, unless damage occurs at the tuning post, is no more improper, tone-wise, than using it on the "intended" scale but tuning down a step.

Many people believe that, but my experience is the opposite: fatties for full scale, lights for short. 90s and 95s feel / play / sound better than 105s and 110s on my short scales. And vice versa.

I think it is a complex function, with diminishing returns: if you brought this reasoning to the extreme consequences, you could still succeed in tuning your (22" scale?) mini-VI project to your originally intended pitch (E1-E3) by choosing even *lighter* strings than those in the Bass VI set (024-084) you've tried on it. However...good luck playing that!

What I think is that there is a "sour spot" for specific gauges and pitches for specific scales, and in order to de-mud the tone (mud being in the ear of the be-player, of course), you need to either go heavier (with increased inharmonicity up the neck) or lighter (with possible playability issues, depending on touch and style): both can result in a tighter tone (with peaks in different spots of the spectrum).

 

[SBassman]

Has anyone had the nut out yet?

On some designs, the nut is properly in the slot with just a little weak glue in place.
Other times, they get carried away and make it hard to get the slot out.

Anyone know? Have you had the nut out? I'm contemplating a graphite nut, but only if the stock one comes out without a nuclear explosion.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

The Mini P's scale is about 1 1/2" shorter than "short scale".

While there are some strings out there that may tolerate having part of their wound section wrapped around the tuning post, many will not.

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And I'm not a person who is willing to spend good money on buying strings which would nudge me into taking that risk, neither am I into cutting nor unwrapping the strings.

Spacers to pull them back at the bridge ?

Maybe.

That all said, I just hate the road that instrument and string makers expect us to travel, by not catering properly to us.
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[HaphAsSard]

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And I'm not a person who is willing to spend good money on buying strings which would nudge me into taking that risk, neither am I into cutting nor unwrapping the strings.

Spacers to pull them back at the bridge ?

Maybe.

That all said, I just hate the road that instrument and string makers expect us to travel, by not catering properly to us.
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Unless the bean-counters didn't actually conclude that drilling string-through-body holes was going to bring up the price point of the instrument by a non-trivial margin, I agree with you: however, the scale being shorter, and the resulting lower tension, probably also brings down the risk of breakage of a (commonly-gauged) low-E string being wound full-diameter at the post. It is, in part, a matter of OCD. OTOH, I definitely share the OCD!

 

[DavesnothereCA]

There is no such thing as strings designed for a longer scale: most manufacturers make short, medium and long-scale strings that are identically made across sets, save for winding length....

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Yes and no.

Not all string makers publish detailed info on this, but of those which I have found who do, there is a term called 'unit weight', which may shed some light on this.

D'Addario for example seems to say what you just said about theirs, as all scale lengths of a certain gauge of individual bass string have the identical unit weight.

However, GHS states that their short and medium scale versions of bass strings of many types DO have a different unit weight than their long scale strings of identical gauges, which means that something is different among them, either in the materials and/or in how they are put together, and their rep Jon did recently admit this in another thread here, but when asked to elaborate, he chose not to go into details as to exactly what they are doing differently [trade secrets, I guess].

In construction, it could be core size vs wrap thickness, and/or how many wraps it takes to reach the final outside diameter of a string, especially on the thicker gauge strings in a set.

That [construction] would also go a long way towards explaining why some strings of the same gauge 'feel' stiffer than others, when installed onto the same bass.
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[HaphAsSard]

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Yes and no.

Not all string makers publish detailed info on this, but of those which I have found who do, there is a term called 'unit weight', which may shed some light on this.

D'Addario for example seems to say what you just said about theirs, as all scale lengths of a certain gauge of individual bass string have the identical unit weight.

However, GHS states that their short and medium scale versions of bass strings of many types DO have a different unit weight, which means that something is different among them, either in the materials and/or in how they are put together, and their rep Jon did recently admit this in another thread here, but when asked, he chose not to go into details as to exactly what they are doing differently [trade secrets, I guess].

In construction, it could be core size vs wrap thickness, and/or how many wraps it takes to reach the final outside diameter of a string, especially on the thicker gauge strings in a set.

That would also go a long way towards explaining why some strings of the same gauge 'feel' stiffer than others, when installed onto the same bass.
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I'm well aware of what you mention, and concede that there are exceptions: I often quote the old D'Addario EPS170S (short-scale XL nickel-plated steel 50-105 set), whose strings were shown to have higher unit weights than the corresponding long-scale strings of same gauges in the old D'Addario string tension chart .pdf (they don't bother making them that way anymore), and the super-long scale Thomastik-Infeld Jazz Flats (JF364), having 3 out of 4 strings whose unit lengths calculate very close to the corresponding long- and short-scale versions, with slightly larger gauges, which I tentatively attributed to them having a larger silk inlay but otherwise identical metal components, in order to bring down the twang of the treble strings on a super-long scale instrument.
The differences in linear mass between two GHS strings (from the same product line) of same diameter but different winding lengths may be due to specific tonal and/or tension goals for the "intended" scale: what I meant is that using either on the other scale (one such experiment being of course harder to set up, unless one can magically lengthen a short-scale string for it to fit a long-scale bass...) will not result in bad tone due to the string being intended for a different scale, but simply a different tone. Perhaps very slightly so.

Finally, I still believe that the majority of manufacturers do in fact not make, say, a short-scale .105 nickel-plated roundwound and a long-scale .105 one that are any different in construction other than in length.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

Unless the bean-counters didn't actually conclude that drilling string-through-body holes was going to bring up the price point of the instrument by a non-trivial margin, I agree with you.

However, the scale being shorter, and the resulting lower tension, probably also brings down the risk of breakage of a (commonly-gauged) low-E string being wound full-diameter at the post. It is, in part, a matter of OCD. OTOH, I definitely share the OCD!

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Yes, a looser string is less likely to break if it is abused by wrapping the thick part around a tuning post, but two wrongs do not equal a right, as is usually also the case in other aspects of life.

Regarding bean counters, rest assured that the crappy support and choices which bass players receive from many manufacturers for some issues IS mainly driven by money.

And again, I will state FTR that I would be quite willing to pay a few dollars more for a better instrument, and/or for strings which fit and tensioned up better and more evenly, or at least the choice to buy such products.

And as I observed a few posts upthread last night, LaBella seems to think that there is a market demand for offering that level of choice.

Obviously their bean counters went to a different school than those of many of the other string makers.
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[macmanlou]

Spacers to pull them back at the bridge ?

Maybe.

Worked for me on an Ibanez Mikro 5 string that I put short scale flats on. For the cost of good spacers I believe it's worth a try on the Mini P.

 

[DavesnothereCA]

Worked for me on an Ibanez Mikro 5 string that I put short scale flats on. For the cost of good spacers I believe it's worth a try on the Mini P.

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Yes, except that they cannot solve my main issue with that bass - the Jazz-width nut, which as some of us now know, is also misrepresented by its maker as being wider.

The JTB-40 which I just snagged has neither of those issues, and weighs not much above 5 pounds.
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[SBassman]

I noticed something last night. Fender/Squier Does know what a black pickguard is. They ship a blackguard on the super low end Affinity P bass.

Now, why couldn't they do that for ours?

[I love that bass, but the white pickguard continues to haunt me. I just have an OCD thing about not liking white pickguards. Spoils an otherwise beauty.]