Shorty
The latest addition to my line-up, and currently probably my favourite. For most of my (musical) life I’ve played standard or longer scale basses (so 34” and the Dingwall Z2 featuring 37-34” multiscale). Never thought much about it. My standard scale length for my basses is pretty much 35” which gives that little bit of extra definition for the low end. So why go short?
One of my main “concerns” when building is to make the final instrument as light, compact and ergonomically comfortable as possible. While that works for the standard 35” scale basses it can be taken a lot further by going to 30” scale. So I took the Sirius body and “squeezed” it a little, and everything else just fell into place. But of course there are so many ways you can play around with the format - let’s have a look at what’s been happening with the “Shorty”.
And just like every other model it all started with the prototype.
Shorty prototype
This one is even more “off-cuts and spare parts” than the Sirius prototype.
A 4-piece accoya body and an old spalted maple top (tear-outs and cracks filled with glowing epoxy) stained with Japan Brown. 3-piece neck with wenge and maple offcuts. 24 frets.
Second hand Hipshot tuners, a Hipshot A style bridge (brass - I had to buy that one new). Couple of second hand EMG 40 Hz pickups (like in the Sirius prototype) with a 2-band (new) Glockenklang preamp.
And it turned out so nice that I decided to build a batch of 5 “semi-production” Shorties playing around with string number and pickups.
By the way, the pic shows the 30” Shorty next to the 35” Sirius.
Shorty, Shorty, Shorty
Here are a couple of examples of the first batch of Shorties. Feel free to contact me if you’d like some higher resolution shots or more detail.
All builds have the Noll TCM 3 preamp, various Delano pickups, and 24 frets plus zero fret. All are around 3 kgs (between 2.9 and 3.2). All except one have Hipshot A-Style bridges and UltraLite Y short key tuners.
Sapele body with wenge layer and northern ash top. Reverse P in the scale-adjusted P position.
Sapele body with mango top. Xtender pickup in scale-corrected MM humbucker position.
Walnut body. Two-piece fretboard of quilted maple on wenge. MC 5 HE/S pickup in the scale-corrected MM humbucker position.
This one has ETS Tuning Fork single bridges and Schaller Da Vinci tuners.
But wait, there’s more - let’s go multi scale
A customer was very happily playing his Dingwall (and boy, they are outstanding basses) but was looking for something a little more compact. He suggested to build a multiscale bass but shorter. After some back and forth taking into account body size and ergonomics we settled on a 32” to 29” approach tuned B to G. And neck-through.
It was a challenge but very much worth it since I’ve built a number of 32” to 29” basses since then.
This particular bass has walnut wings, a maple layer and a claro walnut top. The neck is 5 piece laminate with maple and purple heart. The board is quilted maple on koa with 24 (plus zero fret) EvoGold mando frets, and the 8th fret as the perpendicular fret. The headstock is compound angle and laminated with matching claro walnut. Since this was a rather special build I decided to inlay the Polaris logo in the body using Luminlay SB30 - it glows in the dark. The timber is finished with Osmo Polyx 3032.
As you would expect there are Hipshot UltraLite Y short key tuners and ETS Tuning Fork single bridges, and flush mount Dunlop straplocks.
The two matching pickups are Delano SBC 5 HE/S Driver with their centre line in the scale-corrected MM humbucker position and can be switched series/single/parallel. Another 3-way switch provides neck/both/bridge switching. The onboard preamp is a Noll TCM 3.
It’s of course not realistic to expect piano-like clarity on a 32” B string but there’s more to multiscale than just tone. If you’ve ever played one you probably found that there is an amazing ergonomic advantage: your left wrist moves pretty much exactly like the angle of the frets changes. That is of course fully conserved no matter what the scale length.
And you know what? It still growls - a lot!
More short multiscale adventures
A few examples of multiscale Shorties. Just as mentioned above feel free to contact me if you’d like some higher resolution shots or more detail.
All builds have the Noll TCM 3 preamp, matched pairs of Delano SBC pickups with the centre line at the scale-corrected MM humbucker position, and 24 EvoGold mando frets plus zero fret. Perpendicular fret is the 8th one, and since this was the first batch I inlayed the Polaris logo at the 12th fret using Luminlay SB30. All are around 3 kgs. All have Hipshot UltraLite Y short key tuners and ETS Tuning Fork single bridges.
Sapele body with swamp ash layer and magnolia top. 5-piece maple and silky oak neck with matching fretboard. 31.25” to 29”.
Sapele body with padauk layer and myrtlewood top. 5-piece maple and purpleheart neck with pau ferro board.
Sapele body with walnut payer and stained quilted maple top. 5-piece maple and purpleheart neck with pau ferro board.