Short Scale Electric Bass
Posted: Tue May 31, 2022 2:29 pm
Hi all,
This is a bass guitar I made for myself that I finished up back in March.
I took a 1 week electric guitar building course in Perth back in 2015 and well and truly got the bug. I decided to buy some timber and all the hardware and have a go at building myself a bass. I think there's an old build thread on here where's I've messed up gluing the fretboard on and asked for help to get it back off again. In the process I badly cupped the fretboard and didn't have the confidence/ability to flat the neck blank back again. I shelved the whole lot for a few years.
During the covid lockdowns I decided to have another crack at guitar building. In that case, I built just a normal 6 string electric. I'll upload pictures of it another day. I used the body timber from the original bass project for that, so if I wanted to use the hardware I had sitting in a box, I needed to buy a new body and a new neck blank. I'd been keeping my eye out for Australian timbers, I like the idea of building with stuff that's more local to us. This body cap came up and we were away.
Anyway, specs:
Body: Bunya Pine
Cap: Qld Maple
Highlight detail in the body: Tassie blackwood
Neck: Qld Maple
Fretboard: Ringed gidgee
Fretboard binding and fret markers: Bunya pine
Pickups: EMG PJ active
Bridge: Hipshot D type
Scale: 30"
Strings: Really expensive, 30" scale specific strings that don't actually fit a 30" bass with a string through (would have been nice to know that before I dropped some serious coin on them.
)
Some other notes:
I'm not really a fan of battery boxes being visible for active pickups, they always look like an after thought to me. I decided to hide it under the main cavity cover. At the same time though, I thought it looked messy to have the wiring all hanging out when changing a battery, so I've got an electronics cavity cover which is screwed down permanently (hoping I'll never need to access it), then the main cover is held on with magnets. It's a small detail that no one will ever really notice in real life, but I like knowing it's like that.
I decided to keep a pick and a right angle adaptor for the jack in the guitar; completely unnecessary, but I have to hide all my stuff away from our toddler, so finding a pick when I want a quick jam isn't as straight forward as it should be. Ha ha. To hold the adapter in place I sank a blank 1/4" jack in from the top of the bunya pine body before I glued the top on.
I wanted to try out short scale as I find full size basses just a bit gangly. I'm so glad I did, it's absolutely great. The whole thing is so easy to play, plus the overall size is not much bigger than a strat.
This is a bass guitar I made for myself that I finished up back in March.
I took a 1 week electric guitar building course in Perth back in 2015 and well and truly got the bug. I decided to buy some timber and all the hardware and have a go at building myself a bass. I think there's an old build thread on here where's I've messed up gluing the fretboard on and asked for help to get it back off again. In the process I badly cupped the fretboard and didn't have the confidence/ability to flat the neck blank back again. I shelved the whole lot for a few years.
During the covid lockdowns I decided to have another crack at guitar building. In that case, I built just a normal 6 string electric. I'll upload pictures of it another day. I used the body timber from the original bass project for that, so if I wanted to use the hardware I had sitting in a box, I needed to buy a new body and a new neck blank. I'd been keeping my eye out for Australian timbers, I like the idea of building with stuff that's more local to us. This body cap came up and we were away.
Anyway, specs:
Body: Bunya Pine
Cap: Qld Maple
Highlight detail in the body: Tassie blackwood
Neck: Qld Maple
Fretboard: Ringed gidgee
Fretboard binding and fret markers: Bunya pine
Pickups: EMG PJ active
Bridge: Hipshot D type
Scale: 30"
Strings: Really expensive, 30" scale specific strings that don't actually fit a 30" bass with a string through (would have been nice to know that before I dropped some serious coin on them.
)Some other notes:
I'm not really a fan of battery boxes being visible for active pickups, they always look like an after thought to me. I decided to hide it under the main cavity cover. At the same time though, I thought it looked messy to have the wiring all hanging out when changing a battery, so I've got an electronics cavity cover which is screwed down permanently (hoping I'll never need to access it), then the main cover is held on with magnets. It's a small detail that no one will ever really notice in real life, but I like knowing it's like that.
I decided to keep a pick and a right angle adaptor for the jack in the guitar; completely unnecessary, but I have to hide all my stuff away from our toddler, so finding a pick when I want a quick jam isn't as straight forward as it should be. Ha ha. To hold the adapter in place I sank a blank 1/4" jack in from the top of the bunya pine body before I glued the top on.
I wanted to try out short scale as I find full size basses just a bit gangly. I'm so glad I did, it's absolutely great. The whole thing is so easy to play, plus the overall size is not much bigger than a strat.