Piccolo Basses

[scrumpymike]

ET, thanks for brilliant early Cream / Who pics. Love the poster behind Moonie promoting a "RAVING R & B NIGHT" with The Birds - those were the days!!

[ricksterphil]

I have an ex Scott Whitley Richwood 3/4 scale piccolo strung bass/tenor/whatever

Love just noodling on it....I also play guitar (badly) so it's a half-way house job if you see what I mean

Can't imagine gigging it, although we are looking at adding 'Oh well' to the set so it would be ideal for that

[ambient]

This is a brief, and quiet improvised piece on my piccolo tuned 6 string fretless :

[url="https://soundcloud.com/an-ending-ascend/100920161723a"]https://soundcloud.c...d/100920161723a[/url]

And another :

[url="https://soundcloud.com/an-ending-ascend/100920161605a"]https://soundcloud.com/an-ending-ascend/100920161605a[/url]

Edited September 11, 2016 by ambient

[alyctes]

[quote name='ixlramp' timestamp='1473070015' post='3126491']
Piccolo bass works certainly. I often string up my fretted and fretless basses with thin strings. My basses are 34" or 35" a short scale is not at all necessary.
It's simply a case of finding thin strings long enough, and choosing the right gauges to keep the tension low.
Tension must be low for very thin roundwounds or thin plains to not break them. But the lower strings need more tension, so the optimum is tension falling steadily from low to high.
This also turns out to be optimum for chording, tapping, bending and other alternative techniques, and best for general playability.
Kalium Strings of USA have a huge range of piccolo sets in any string count, and bass length singles down to .008. But postage is expensive.
Much cheaper is to buy D'Addario 'loop end' plain steel strings, which are extremely long, and improvise ball ends for them (or even squeeze old bass ball ends into the loop). I buy mine from Strings Direct.
Then use those beside standard bass wound singles down to .025 or so.
For the tuner post nearest the nut some guitar strings are long enough, just thread an old bass ball end onto one.
To design a set the Kalium tension chart is very useful as it covers all scales, all gauges and a complete pitch range, the data roughly approximates any brand of roundwound.
[url="http://store.kaliumstrings.com/TensionCalculator/index.html"]http://store.kaliums...ator/index.html[/url]
Soon i will be stringing up a 5 string fretless with a mix of D'Addario Chromes bass flats, a Chromes guitar flat and a plain steel string.
[/quote]

Very useful, thank you