The Short Scale Bass Appreciation Society!

[Clarky]

18 hours ago, bassist_lewis said:

I've got it in my head I need rounds on my Serek. I was gonna get some Labella rounds, but I think I'll wait til these are available. Did they say if they'd be doing a 5 string set?

FWIW, Jake Serek uses DR Hi-Beams as the rounds option on his short-scale basses (and you can see on some videos). When I owned a "The Grand" it came as stock with these. I'm generally not a fan of stainless steel (as opposed to nickel) but they did suit the bass

[bassist_lewis]

1 hour ago, Clarky said:

FWIW, Jake Serek uses DR Hi-Beams as the rounds option on his short-scale basses (and you can see on some videos). When I owned a "The Grand" it came as stock with these. I'm generally not a fan of stainless steel (as opposed to nickel) but they did suit the bass

Mine also came stock with DRs. I could never quite get on with them personally. I found a set of what I think are D'Addario nickels with the B string cut down (I got quite good at it back when S/S 5 string sets were near impossible to find) and they sound great! B sustains for days now!

[The fasting showman]

The Fallouts that I've gone on about ad nauseum.

Complete with replacement Schallers and OK from a distance DIY competition stripes.

I very gingerly swapped the La Bella DTFs from the white bass to the red. The combination seems to work even better this way round; weirdly the flats on the red bass sound very much like my old fender 72 messed up tele bass modded into a P bass that wore TI flats ( now owned by Ash)....somehow the bass sounds 50 years old with flats a year older than they did on the white bass!

The white bass is much more polite in a good way...it left the factory with a nicer setup. The rounds really suit it.

 

The red is more of a bass of extremes; glassy with rounds and more boxy / tubby in a good way with flats. It's useful to have them sound more different from each other.  Thanks to Shepster for stoning the frets on the red bass ( initial setup as stock was a 'Friday afternoon special ') and to Beedster Chris for the Schaller BMs.

Edited Thursday at 17:50 by The fasting showman
Explanation

[dmckee]

On 17/02/2026 at 22:06, The fasting showman said:

I owned a USA G&L Fallout a few years back with a tribute model as a backup. From a fetish the object point of view, I wish I still had the USA one with it's quarter sawn neck and fancy tuners BUT....sonically it was no better at all than the Tribute. 

 

My only basses now are 2 tribute Fallouts, one with flats one with rounds. It's a strange feeling, having played bass for 40 years; you feel there should be a justification for having a vintage fender ( those days are gone now for me) or some other bass with kudos. The brute truth is that in the band I'm in, the basses I currently own work better than anything else I've tried. At around £300 s/h each. OK I've upgraded the tuners, but for no good reason really. 

 

I think, like Danelectro guitars ( I read an interview with Lindy Fralin where he said the stock pickups in his Korean Dano where perfectly good enough), by their essence 30 inch scale basses are ' good enough ' at a lower price point than 34 inch scale. You can try and make them more ornate but perhaps the inherent lack of dead spots and the bloom of notes up the dusty end makes them great value and utility. 

 

Just my experience anyway. 

I love my USA Fallout, and the surf green Tribute I had before that. My only minor gripe is the bridge position. If they’d slid that back an inch or 2….  
 

If G&L could have made a short scale more like the L1000/2000 body shape, I  think that would have been perfect. 
 

And I love the pickups. I’d actually ordered a pair from G&L just before they shut down. Took a while to get the money back!  Anyone know anything similar?? 

Edited 1 hour ago by dmckee
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[Adee]

It was all about the bridge position for me, it’s too far forward making it feel almost like a long scale!

[Stub Mandrel]

13 minutes ago, dmckee said:

they’d slid that back an inch or 2….  

 

 

If they did that four tmes it would be off the end of the body...

[Woodinblack]

1 hour ago, Stub Mandrel said:

If they did that four tmes it would be off the end of the body...

 

See, anyone coming to this thread now means that comment doesn't make sense