Short scale Bass Bodies and Necks?

O

OzziePete

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I think this has been mentioned before...  :icon_scratch:

If Warmoth could do Bass Bodies and Necks - particularly necks - in a shorter scale than the standard 34", therer maybe a market for them.

Often the smaller scale Fender basses are very low cost and one suspects the woods are not so great. But a custom short scale bass with better neck and body woods may be a keeper!

Warmoth already have the licence for the Mustang guitar body - would it be hard to get a licence from Fender to do the Mustang Bass too?
 
I'm not into short scales personally, but +1 to the idea.
I think it would be kind of cool to have short scale options.


 
Don't forget long scale basses. A 35" scale would be a favorite for a lotta guys I think cause of the snappier tone you get.
 
I know I said this before,but I would absolutely love it if Warmoth could do a multi-scale system!
I know it's a pretty much impossible suggestion, but it would be so cool!

 
rockskate4x said:
Don't forget long scale basses. A 35" scale would be a favorite for a lotta guys I think cause of the snappier tone you get.

Currently, the highest numbered:

unpainted strat: s3644
unpainted tele: t1608
unfinished flattop LP: lp36

unfinished standard j-bass:  b1555
unfinished standard p-bass: b1550
unfinished d5 j-bass: d200

There is already much less of a market for basses than for 6-strings. All 4-string basses are lumped into one single range of numbers and they still don't reach half the number of strats alone. I'd love a 30" shortscale bass but how many would sell (after the initial rush)? Half a dozen per year?

Same thing for the 35" scale. I have a 35" scale 4-string Traben that I just love, but if you want a 35" scale, why not just go for a Gecko 5-string? The number of people who fancy a 4-string one may be relativey large, but who would actually buy one?

 
carvin guitars seems to be doing fine with a 35" scale option for 4 stringers. I don't see why warmoth can't do the same (but better :icon_thumright:)
 
ByteFrenzy said:
rockskate4x said:
Don't forget long scale basses. A 35" scale would be a favorite for a lotta guys I think cause of the snappier tone you get.

Currently, the highest numbered:

unpainted strat: s3644
unpainted tele: t1608
unfinished flattop LP: lp36

unfinished standard j-bass:  b1555
unfinished standard p-bass: b1550
unfinished d5 j-bass: d200

There is already much less of a market for basses than for 6-strings. All 4-string basses are lumped into one single range of numbers and they still don't reach half the number of strats alone. I'd love a 30" shortscale bass but how many would sell (after the initial rush)? Half a dozen per year?

Same thing for the 35" scale. I have a 35" scale 4-string Traben that I just love, but if you want a 35" scale, why not just go for a Gecko 5-string? The number of people who fancy a 4-string one may be relativey large, but who would actually buy one?

Sorry if I appear dumb asking this: but what do those numbers mean?

Does it indicate the numbers of each type of body sold this year or what? :icon_scratch:

I can appreciate that the market for short scale basses is low, but I guess the markets for some solid body guitars like the WGD or Z bodies is low too. Or a bolt on Firebird body. But they are still offered.
 
OzziePete said:
ByteFrenzy said:
rockskate4x said:
Don't forget long scale basses. A 35" scale would be a favorite for a lotta guys I think cause of the snappier tone you get.

Currently, the highest numbered:

unpainted strat: s3644
unpainted tele: t1608
unfinished flattop LP: lp36

unfinished standard j-bass:  b1555
unfinished standard p-bass: b1550
unfinished d5 j-bass: d200

There is already much less of a market for basses than for 6-strings. All 4-string basses are lumped into one single range of numbers and they still don't reach half the number of strats alone. I'd love a 30" shortscale bass but how many would sell (after the initial rush)? Half a dozen per year?

Same thing for the 35" scale. I have a 35" scale 4-string Traben that I just love, but if you want a 35" scale, why not just go for a Gecko 5-string? The number of people who fancy a 4-string one may be relativey large, but who would actually buy one?

Sorry if I appear dumb asking this: but what do those numbers mean?

Does it indicate the numbers of each type of body sold this year or what? :icon_scratch:

I can appreciate that the market for short scale basses is low, but I guess the markets for some solid body guitars like the WGD or Z bodies is low too. Or a bolt on Firebird body. But they are still offered.

They're the highest numbered item numbers of bodies of each type that I found in the showcase at that moment. Since W just keep on numbering (no yearly reset) this tells you they've made 3644 unpainted strat bodies for the showcase, 1608 unpainted teles but just 1555 unpainted four-string basses of all models.

That's just bodies. Setting up tooling for a new body shape should not bee too complicated. It's just a matter of adding the program for the circumference to the CNC, which knows all about the neck pocket rout, the pup routs and the electronics cavity already. But for a 35" or a short scale they also need to set up tooling for the neck and that's a totally different ballgame. A lot of their tools are build specifically for one scale and one radius. This explains why you can't have iron cross inlays on a bass, a baritone or a seven string: they wouldn't sell enough of them to justify the investment.

Of course if we were to prove that W introducing bodies and necks for a short scale bass would cause an upswing in their popularity and they would actually sell far more of them than they anticipate now, it could be a different thing. Maybe we should organize a poll to see how many of us would buy  a 30" scale body and neck if they were available. I'd buy at least one of each.
 
rockskate4x said:
who said anything about new bodies?
Make a conversion scale length neck

I don't know if that can be achieved. We are talking about going from 34" to maybe 32.5 or even 30.5". That's a lot of adjustment to convert instead of just going from 25.5" to 24.75" as in the guitar conversion necks. With most bridges for bass bodies being set way back on the body, that would mean bringing the neck a long way forward?  :dontknow:
 
The baritone necks work on the same conversion idea - that's all the way out to 28.5,  = 3.75 inches between baritone and gibson scales. My guess is you'd lose maybe two frets if they did a 30" conversion scale bass, I don't think that's a huge deal for most purchasers of a short scale bass though.

and, ah - since W doesn't do this, I can say that you can get a 30" scale bass from USACG.
 
rockskate4x said:
Don't forget long scale basses. A 35" scale would be a favorite for a lotta guys I think cause of the snappier tone you get.

If Warmoth has been developed 36" or 37" scale i will be the first customer  :hello2:
 
I made the bass on the right with a 30.5" scale, made with standard Warmoth G5 parts:

S6300105-1.jpg


I had Warmoth make the neck without side dots (it's fretless) and put on my own dots, based on a scale/fret program I found on the internet*. I moved the bridge 3.5" up the body, and had them move their pickup location up a bit ($45 upcharge). In theory, it's got 28 frets.... so Warmoth could make a conversion neck easily** - if you move the bridge up, you just put the frets in different places.


*(Maybe this one): http://www.windworld.com/tools/fretcalc.htm

**(It's easy, in my head... as are so very many things) :icon_thumright:
 
Short scale bass products (how that for generic?!) are under development.  Hopefully we'll have more details to share in the near future.

Stay tuned!
 
Wyliee said:
Short scale bass products (how that for generic?!) are under development.  Hopefully we'll have more details to share in the near future.

Stay tuned!

Any plans to ever do multiscale basses???
 
line6man said:
Wyliee said:
Short scale bass products (how that for generic?!) are under development.  Hopefully we'll have more details to share in the near future.

Stay tuned!

Any plans to ever do multiscale basses???

That is highly doubtful, particularly in a production environment.  A friend of mine make multiscale basses.  If I wanted something, I'd just have him make it instead.  www.beebasses.com
 
Wyliee said:
That is highly doubtful, particularly in a production environment. 

That's what i was afraid of.  :sad:

I can't afford it either way, but if i bought a multiscale, this would be the one i would want: http://www.dingwallguitars.com/html/products_superj.html
 
line6man said:
Wyliee said:
That is highly doubtful, particularly in a production environment. 

That's what i was afraid of.  :sad:

I can't afford it either way, but if i bought a multiscale, this would be the one i would want: http://www.dingwallguitars.com/html/products_superj.html

The store I work for is the biggest retailer of Dingwalls in Canada, we've been selling them for a long time and we get one-off custom Super-J models to stock on our salesfloors with walnut necks. Sheldon Dingwall is a great guy and I would highly recommend any of his basses.

 
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