30" scale P Bass owners

[NonsenseTele]

Hello! How are you guys?
Any short scale pbass owners?
I've a 33" handmade pbass and sounds mean.
Thinking in build a 30" for a friend who is tiny and worried if it will work... Mainly playing rock and metal.
Pickup might be single coil pbass hot by Duncan, like mine. A mean pickup...

 

[NutBehindTheGuitar]

Well I'm not a P Bass owner, but I'm not quite understanding the question.

Of course it will work there are lots of short scale bases out there, they all "work".

If your friend is of short stature, or a lightweight build you might want look into getting a lightweight body.

Maybe these links will be of assistance?

https://reverb.com/news/you-just-do-it-talking-heads-tina-weymouth-on-the-secret-of-great-basslines-bacons-archive

https://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=16212.15

Hope this helped

https://web.archive.org/web/20081206031839/http://www.bassplayer.com/article/tina-weymouth/mar-97/5958

 

[AcrylicSuperman]

It will work. The mustang bass is a thing. There is even a PJ version.

 

[Rick]

The genius of love.

 

[NonsenseTele]

The doubt is the genre of music. Never saw anybody playing metal with a short scale........

 

[Jebberz]

I had a Jaguar Short Scale, and play any genres including Metal, and it worked.

It was my favorite bass up until a year ago. It will work.

 

[amigarobbo]

In my (limited) experience short scales sound slightly different, slightly less deep bass, slightly less high end, but in a different not worse.

And I like them to play.  :bananaguitar:

 

[mayfly]

HI Fernando!  I'm still rocking the Trans-contenental Tele! 

Oh - don't think there will be a problem with the short scale bass.  Might have to go a notch heavier on the string gauge, but that's about it.

 

[Re-Pete]

I own a 30" Squier Jaguar Bass that has P/J pickup configuration. The P bass pickup is a beauty. Works well at that scale.

 

[swarfrat]

Quick check - tune your 34" scale bass to D and capo at the 2nd fret. Presto - you now have a 30.2" scale bass.  Over on Talkbass there are loads of people who malign 32" scale and shorter while also obsessively never playing an open string.  :laughing7:

We obsess over minutia sometimes. Honestly I think 98% of this guitrivia was born of a combination of guitar magazines trying to sell issues and eccentrics who were paranoid about someone stealing their sound so they just made up stuff. The irony being of course that for a period of about 15 years every guitar player on the planet sounded exactly like one of the worst offenders.

 

[Re-Pete]

I have to say I can manage to play bass guitar better on the shorter scale than the full 34". The shorter scale is less a physical effort for me.
And most of my guitars these days are 24.75" rather than 25.5".

 

[DaveT]

It does depend on what your aims are, but never playing an open string is a dashed useful way to play if you job is playing bass for singers that want to sing in a different key to the one you learned the song in!

All you have to do is move the pattern up or down a fret or three and job done.
Still doable if you learned the song the lazy way using open strings but much more of a headache when the time comes!

The 30" scale bass has a definite and IMHO very pleasant low-end sound, worked for Jack Bruce to name but one.
Yes, I do often down-tune my 34" bass to D and use a capo, not quite the same though and a definite cause of 30" GAS...