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Wouldn't anyone play a metric bass?

Yes, but US money is based on 10. It always amazed me watching my class mates struggle with the metric system, knowing that bit of info. At the end of the day, no matter how you measure your tally-wacker, it's still the same. So it doesn't really matter if your PBR sez 12 oz or 355 ml on the can your getting the same amount of swill either way.
Woah! Oh OK. PBR is your beer. I thought you were really bragging there for a moment. I was blinded before I saw the oz/ml things.
 
I tried. I think I heard something break. Does anybody else smell feathers burning?

I've read several papers that suggested that "Time doesn't exist. It is something humans do to codify their existence." If you're up for a really deep rabbit hole, google it. Not recommended for those with hangovers.
Yeah pretty much everything we see as being fixed in our existence is really just some artificial boundary invented by the man to keep a brother down. I can say that right? Now that none of it's real. :lock:
 
Playing a metric bass is more a matter of prospective than measurement.
Just convert it and it's a metric bass.
It's still units of measure however you prefer to express them.
 
well, if you look up Invalid Link Removed, the scale is written in both ways: 34" (863.6 mm). for guitars they do the same, like: 25.5 inches (648 mm).

if your question was about like "why they don't make bass guitas with 864mm scale instead", well, guitars often have 650 or 640mm. or 660 (26 inches is almost spot-in for this one). length of double bass' scale can be like 105cm or 115cm or anything in between.

why the typical bass guitar is 34", i.e. 863.6 not 864mm... well, maybe just because Leo started it that way. 863.6mm is not weirder than, say 41.3 inches for a double bass.
 
The recent threads about scales got me thinking that I'd never seen a bass built on anything but Imperial units for the scale length. Even the top notch European builders spec their scales in even inches with an odd number metric equivalent listed. It's remarkable that this is so engrained in the industry that builders who use metric for everything else in their lives would design basses with inches.

I'm sure someone will bring up some metric European basses to prove me wrong and that's OK.

Most basses are 86.36 cm scale. Now do you feel better?
 
Couldn't read the whole thread but I'll avow that I WISH we hadn't wussed out in the 70's and that we did use metric here in the colonies.* Doing the math by lopping off or adding zeros is something even a drummer can do. What can you expect though since we were invaded/settled by people who measured things in rods, leagues and cables and weighed stuff by stone. They can also take a perfectly acceptable word like "forecastle" and turn it into something like "fux-'ole".

*Was it called colonization before Cristoval Colón?