The Beginning
I think it's best to start at the beginning, but we'll have to go back a bit first. The guitar was passed along to me from my friend and bandmate (Torch Singer) Vel, who had already customized it. You can check out some fun customized First Act guitars here. He purchased it as a First Act Delia, which looked like this:
The electronics, I believe are: 3-way pickup switch, 2 volumes, 1 master tone. Vel added two coil tap switches and changed out the pickups.
Being baffled by instruments with more buttons or strings than I have fingers, I removed the top two strings, tuned it to perfect fifths and played it for a bit. It had been sitting for several months when I got the idea to try it as a 2-string slide bass—something I've thought about since I was 13 and first heard Morphine. I went super minimal, installed a P-Bass pickup and a volume knob, which looked like this:
I enjoyed playing it, but it lacked the bigger bass sound I wanted and got pretty dead sounding at about the 7th fret (playing with the slide).
The SS Bass Build
Two years ago I switched from long scale (34") to short scale (30 1/2") bass. I found it much easier to play and preferred the thumpier sound. As you shorten the scale of a bass (or any stringed instrument) while keeping the same tuning, you begin to lose string tension. Which, causes less definition in the sound and therefore a boomier or thumpier sound. With that in mind as well as these new U-Basses, I thought I could make this into a super short scale bass and maybe achieve an almost double bass tone.
At first, I wanted to keep this simple: one pickup, one knob.
Basically, there is a lot of weirdness. The bridge I tried was a little too beefy, so the action got pretty high towards the body. The E string refuses to stay in tune and there is so much odd—phaser—strangeness happening it tends to sound out of tune in general. I spent a couple minutes trying to talk myself into that being the sound, but it didn't take. I guess I proved to myself why basses need a certain scale in order to achieve a good bass sound.
In Conclusion
So, I've already switched out the bridge and replaced the strings with heavy gauge flatwound guitar strings. So what is it now? Well, I call it a piccolo bass. It's an absurd term I think, because you basically have the bottom strings of a guitar. However it's not totally without merit, because you are feeding the signal though bass pups to a bass amp. They make 34" piccolo strings… and this guy Jeff Schmidt will blow your mind with some fretless piccolo craziness.
My little trademark—Eric Dolphy under the neck:
I think it's best to start at the beginning, but we'll have to go back a bit first. The guitar was passed along to me from my friend and bandmate (Torch Singer) Vel, who had already customized it. You can check out some fun customized First Act guitars here. He purchased it as a First Act Delia, which looked like this:
The electronics, I believe are: 3-way pickup switch, 2 volumes, 1 master tone. Vel added two coil tap switches and changed out the pickups.
Being baffled by instruments with more buttons or strings than I have fingers, I removed the top two strings, tuned it to perfect fifths and played it for a bit. It had been sitting for several months when I got the idea to try it as a 2-string slide bass—something I've thought about since I was 13 and first heard Morphine. I went super minimal, installed a P-Bass pickup and a volume knob, which looked like this:
I enjoyed playing it, but it lacked the bigger bass sound I wanted and got pretty dead sounding at about the 7th fret (playing with the slide).
The SS Bass Build
Two years ago I switched from long scale (34") to short scale (30 1/2") bass. I found it much easier to play and preferred the thumpier sound. As you shorten the scale of a bass (or any stringed instrument) while keeping the same tuning, you begin to lose string tension. Which, causes less definition in the sound and therefore a boomier or thumpier sound. With that in mind as well as these new U-Basses, I thought I could make this into a super short scale bass and maybe achieve an almost double bass tone.
At first, I wanted to keep this simple: one pickup, one knob.
I ordered this Artec pickup from Hong Kong. Total with shipping: $20. It is built with the extra wires necessary to do coil taps, parallel/series… so I put it up on Facebook, asking what I should do and got a lot of great feedback. Sure I wanted to keep it simple, but the body already had six holes in it for knobs and switches. Everyone unanimously agreed on tone control. After that, there's really an almost endless amount of variations you could go with.
I let that sit and began defretting.
I had to plug the two middle tuning peg holes and make the others larger to accommodate bass tuners. I set out on a tri-tone stain application: ebony, cherry, and walnut. To account for the wider bass bridge I had to add some wood to the center of the body.
After a week or so I decided there needed to be a bridge pickup as well. The bridge pup ended up being a neck pickup from a Telecaster (something I had laying around). The wiring ended up as: 3-way pickup select switch; Neck Humbucker, parallel/coil tap/series switch, volume, tone; single coil bridge pickup, volume, tone. Which looks like this:
And to my amazement I made a wiring schematic that worked! I strung it up and that's the build.
Unfortunately, it doesn't sound so hot and that's kind of a bummer. Here is a sound sample to better explain things.
Basically, there is a lot of weirdness. The bridge I tried was a little too beefy, so the action got pretty high towards the body. The E string refuses to stay in tune and there is so much odd—phaser—strangeness happening it tends to sound out of tune in general. I spent a couple minutes trying to talk myself into that being the sound, but it didn't take. I guess I proved to myself why basses need a certain scale in order to achieve a good bass sound.
In Conclusion
So, I've already switched out the bridge and replaced the strings with heavy gauge flatwound guitar strings. So what is it now? Well, I call it a piccolo bass. It's an absurd term I think, because you basically have the bottom strings of a guitar. However it's not totally without merit, because you are feeding the signal though bass pups to a bass amp. They make 34" piccolo strings… and this guy Jeff Schmidt will blow your mind with some fretless piccolo craziness.
My little trademark—Eric Dolphy under the neck:
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