Baloney Balderdash

Man is that guy annoying, and I am not exactly a big fan of pop either, hell I am not even interested in playing bass synth on my bass, yet for some reason I found the video interesting enough to watch the whole way though.

Very basically and in general, yes, that seems to pretty much sum up what to expect from a short scale bass. Though instead of using negations, as you did, to describe the general tone characteristics of a short scale bass it could be formulated as deeper, thumpier, with heavier emphasis on the fundamentals. When that is said depending on the specific bass model, pickups, strings and other gear that might influence on the tone some short scale basses will have a brighter and more harmonically rich tone than some 34" scale basses. And depending on the specific bass model, mainly neck dimensions, the players physics, mainly hand size, as well as personal preferences, some 34" scale basses will be easier to play for some people than some short scale basses.

Use what I used, an old credit card. I used a full neck pocket non angled one, but it ought to work just fine as a partial shim as well. It won't compress or decay with age and will be easy to cut to size, even if being thicker than a playing card.

To me it looks like it got just the right amount of vertical relief.

They left out gutsy, growl, snappy, bite and zing and I am sure many more, not least words like griddy, grindy and raunchy that is more commonly used for different overdrive and distortion characteristics, where the word crunch(y) from the above graphic really also belongs. And boomy and punchy are definitely not the same. I have a feeling that the above graphic is very much homemade and home-thought, like as just one more example what about definition, as far as I am concerned something sounding defined is not frequency dependent, or well it can be I guess, but I mean then it will be more of a question about EQ'ing the individual instrument just right than a strictly defined limited frequency spectrum common for neither all types of or individual musical instruments.

So it seems like there are not a lot of short scale fretless basses around, but if I can find a decent one within my budget limit I sort of ponder on buying one in the near future. I'll like it to be max 30" scale length, preferably be a 4 string, and my budget limit would be about 400£, but I'd prefer cheaper, as long as it is still decent (I would suspect a pickup upgrade down the line being necessary anyway in this kind of price class). Does such a bass exist? All suggestions are welcome.

Sisters of Mercy (by Leonard Cohen)

Heaven Can Wait (by Iron Maiden)

I love my cheap budget Ibanez GSRM20 Mikro Bass. In fact one of my all time favorite basses out of all the basses I've ever owned, despite having owned a couple of 1000$+ basses. Amazingly comfortable to play and after swapping the stock pickups for some quality ones (first a P/J set of EMG Geezer Butler pickups and then currently a DiMarzio Model P, with the Geezer J pickup disconnected and lowered considerably), it also sounds wonderful (even the stock pickups were actually quite decent, just not to my personal liking). Has the most stable neck I ever had on any of the guitars and basses I've owned, holds tuning extremely well, and the fretwork was as good as perfect from factory (it did however have a horrendously bad setup when I received it, in fact the absolute worst I've ever seen, but that was easily fixed, and I'd always expect to do my own setup on a new bass anyway. But seriously, the one who did the factory setup must have been seriously intoxicated, the string action could be measured in centimetres, and whoever did it had adjusted the pickups accordingly insanely high up). Quite amazing quality for such a cheap bass, especially considering this one is from before they moved production from China to Indonesia. Guess I was lucky getting one of the great ones.

So the same as if you had doubled up the amount of watt of the amp into a similar cab of half the load? I have a hard time believing that can actually be the truth. Where do those +3dB come from? Logically it would have to depend on the specific cabs and the specific speakers in those cabs, or else you would get +3dB no matter if you used 2 cabs each equipped with 1 x 5" with a sesitivity of 70dB@1W1M or 2 cabs each equipped with 4 X 15" with a sensitivity of 110dB@1W1M. Consequently meaning I could compete with an 8 X 10" cab hooked up to a 200W amp in loudness if I just added 4 16 Ohm 1 x 5" cabs in parallel to my 50W 4 Ohm amp. And that can't possibly be how it actually works. Also please read the post you quote from again, I edited it to explain my point a bit more thoroughly.

That would be assuming adding 2 identical 8 Ohm cabs in parallel would have been as good as if the same amp had produced 1200W into a similar 4 Ohm cab, and somehow I doubt those numbers. However theory says that adding up 2 sound sources of the same amount of dB gives +3dB, which mean that in theory the above equation should add up with exactly the 600W that the amp is rated at, since ((X Watt into an Y Ohm cab)= Z dB) + ((X Watt into an identical Y Ohm cab)= Z dB) = Z dB +3dB, as 600W distributed over 2 identical 8 Ohm cabs, as in 2 times 300W, theoretically will be the same as 2 sound sources producing the same amount of dB, added to each other equaling an increase of +3dB, and ((X Watt + X Watt) = 2X Watt) = +3dB, as in the increase from 300W to 600W, doubling the power, into an identical 4 Ohm cab also equals an increase of +3dB. I am aware that this in practice is not actually the case, as you should expect an increased output adding additional speakers, as they will push more air, but as said I very much doubt that doubling the amount of speakers will actually add up to as much as if you had doubled up the amount of watts of the given amp fed into 1 single cab, beside the fact that the increase in output would depend very much on the specific cabs in question and not least what kind of speakers they were actually equipped with. Where are you getting those numbers from?

I am 6'4" and I use a 28,6" Ibanez Mikro Bass as my main instrument. I don't think it looks silly, and even if it did I wouldn't care, cause I prefer playing that over anything else. Playing music tends to get a lot easier when you use your ears instead of eyes. I honestly don't get the "I better stop doing what I enjoy cause someone might think I'll look silly doing it" mentality.

The thing about lack of piano like qualities in the tone of the medium scale basses would actually be an observation that would be in line with the theory of a shorter scale length, what I talked about with the mention of lesser amount of harmonic content and more fundamentals, the rich harmonic content being what contributes to a piano like tone. The lack of low end that you described in your previous post, quoted in my last reply, is not in line with what you'd typically experience from a bass with a shorter scale though, quite the opposite. When that is said I once had a 28 5/8" scale bass made out of Warmoth baritone parts with a Seymour Duncan Rickenbacker Neck pickup in the neck position and a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails Strat guitar pickup in the bridge, and it had an incredible clear tone with a quite piano like quality, so there are exceptions to the general rule of a shorter scale resulting in more fundamentals and less harmonics, which I guess was mainly contributed to the specific pickup combination as well as the fact that I used strings of a very light gauge (I forgot which exactly, but I am quite sure the low E was a gauge .090 string), the latter something that contributes to a brighter more harmonically rich tone as well (unfortunately I was stupid enough to sell that bass at some point, which I still regret).

David Bowie :

The Man Who Sold The World (by David Bowie)

Likely more a case of being the inherent tonal characteristic of those specific basses rather than it having anything to do with the fact that they happened to have a shorter scale length. If anything the shorter scale length ought to give you more fundamental low end and less harmonic content. I guess that would be a cautionary tale of making generalizing judgements based on just a few single cases.

I realize that my initial reply could have been formulated much clearer and in fact got quite messy, with a lot of bracketed sentences and such, so don't blame you if you found it hard to wrap you head around (try read it again though, I think it really does explain why tension does not equal with sense of stiffness), as I said a shorter scale will result in lower tension of the strings, yes, but that lower tension will still feel stiffer on the shorter scale length than a similar string gauge and tension would on a longer scale length. As I said think of it, guitar strings on a guitar don't actually feel like complete spaghetti (believe me same gauge and tension of the strings of an instrument with a regular bass scale length would), even if they usually are of much lower tension than strings on a bass, longer scaled baritone guitars will usually have a much higher string tension than a guitar, but still lower tension than strings typically will have on a bass, for this exact reason. It's physics really, as the strings got less length to be flexible in they will feel less flexible, aka stiffer, like if you lay out a wooden stick between two points on a short distance it will still be relatively rigid, but if you lie out the same piece of wood between two points further away from each other the wooden stick will get more flexible, and thereby easier to bend when you expose it to a force, and at a certain distance between the two points it will even start to bend just by the force of it's own weight (though the thicker the stick the more rigid it will be relatively to the distance between the two mentioned points). That's why necks on short scale instruments are usually also more stable than those of longer scaled instruments. Not many seems to take this into account, but as said it is basic physics, and I can confirm from own first hand experience with string instruments of all kind of different scales that this in fact also is effectively true in practice. Tension does not equal stiffness, tension influences on stiffness, yes, but so does scale length, hence, as I said in my initial post, it's a question of finding the right balance between those factors, respectively being the relation between scale length/string gauge and stiffness/tension.

One thing to consider is that while thicker gauge strings will have more tension they will also feel relatively stiffer on the short scale (especially as you move up the fretboard and the active string length gets shorter) than they would on a long scale bass, so it's a question of finding the right balance, as in lower tension strings will still feel stiffer on a short scale bass than strings with the same tension on a long scale bass (which is also the reason why typically gauged guitar strings won't feel like spaghetti on a guitar, even if the tension is much lower then on a bass, and why baritone guitars usually will have higher tension strings than a guitar, but still lower than bass strings typically would have). Personally I prefer gauge .095 to .040 on a 30" scale bass, but I would say that gauge .100 to .045 probably is a good compromise, for me a gauge .105 low E string will feel way to stiff on such a short scale (this stiffness will also result in a thudier tone compared to lower gauge strings). Also as long as we are talking roundwound strings I never experienced any issues with cutting long scale strings to size, as long as you remember to make an abrupt bend above the cutting point and make sure to make a clean cut. Don't try this on flatwound strings though.

Buy a poweramp (or use the Effects Return of one of your other amps) and hook it up to the Line/Headphones Out of the Hotone Thunder Bass amp, problem solved.

And yet 5 string basses was the new hot trend once among bass players.

Perhaps they are still commonly viewed as as novelty, just for fun, or beginner instruments, but the fact that several big guitar/bass manufactures are now offering production short scale bass models that cost 1000$+ is definitely a sign that they have become much more widely accepted as serious instruments than they used to, very few people would spend several thousand dollars on a toy, at least not enough people to make such a production viable, and certainly not beginner players. And I mean the whole notion, commonly believed or not, that they are toys/beginner instruments just by default of them being short scale is just totally absurd when you got someone like Stanley Clarke, generally acknowledged as an absolute virtuous legend on bass, having a short scale bass that cost several thousand dollars as his main instrument.

I think it is safe to say that while it is very doubtful that short scale basses remains as hip and popular as they are now forever people and guitar/bass manufactures have finally opened their eyes to short scale basses not necessarily being cheap beginner second class basses of poor quality that aren't really real basses or viable for serious/professional gigging and recording (even if bass players like Mike Watt, Jack Bruce, Paul McCartney and Stanley Clarke proved so long ago), that they are as much real instruments as their bigger brothers, and that they offer some unique tonal possibilities and got some advantages in playing comfort/playabillity over regular 34" scale basses. So I think it is safe to say that short scale basses are definitely here to stay, and while not very likely remaining the current hot new hip thing forever I am quite sure that they will continue to be considerably more common forward on than they historically used to be, keeping the status they have achieved now as instruments serious/professional bass players will have no issues using for gigs and recordings, or even as their main bass, and at least would want to have at least one of in their arsenal, and therefor will continue to be something the big guitar/bass manufactures will find necessary to have offers in their product line in order to accommodate, just as is the case with for example 5 string basses, they too had their turn as the latest fashion among bass players, but they still pretty much has kept their status as being a standard inventory item among serious bass players (even in these times where old fashioned 4 string basses seems to be where the trend is at). I even think the current hype has been necessary in order to remove the stigma short scale basses historically has been labeled and associated with in order for them to become more widely and commonly accepted as viable serious and real professional instruments.

People suddenly discovered that Jack Bruce, Paul McCartney and Stanley Clarke despite their huge success and skill level wasn't actual second class bass players who had been wrong all along.

Yes, but as I see it having such a system is assuming in before hand that people will use these words with the intention of being vulgar, and as such judging them in beforehand, I for one really don't understand why "stinky poo" should be any better, if anything it is even worse, "sh*t" is after all a quite common curse word, whereas "stinky poo" means exactly what it says "stinky fecal matters", just put in a more infantile way, judging certain expressions as especially bad over other expressions that semantically is even worse shows a lack of ability to understand individual people's use of language and how it might for example be a product of their social background and circle of friends, where it might not have the same bad connotations as you insist it to have, a lack of ability to understand that language and words connotations are merely social constructs, sucking up to this sort old fashioned pseudo moralist code of conduct that really has absolutely nothing to do with real ethics, finally they are after all just words, they can mean whatever you want them to mean, and if you insist in seeing something dirty in them then it is you who think dirty not the people using them with no dirty intentions in mind. This sort of censorship would never be implemented on any Danish forum, and I am not going to change my mind about it being completely and utterly brain dead, that it protects absolutely no one, but on the contrary display intelligent people as salivating imbecile morons, contributes to maintaining and feed an old fashioned rigid pseudo-moral socially conservative code of conduct and view on reality, and that the people deciding to implement this system have an infinitely more dirty mind than all the bull-crap and cow-dung in the whole wide world together could ever possibly have.