Noob Needs Advice - Fretless Piccolo 6 String Bass

[flood]

Hi all,

I've never built a guitar before, so I thought that I should gather up as much advice as I can before I start working on this.

My objective is to build a cheap 6 string fretless piccolo bass, using the body i have left over from an unkown shortscale 4 string that i took apart. I plan to give it a "disco ball" top, and have bought a crapload of 1 cm² mirrors for the purpose. that isn't all too important for the moment - what worries me a bit more is designing the neck and getting my numbers right. so, here are my questions:

1. would a 30" scale be all right for 6 string bass as well as standard tuning? I'm not too sure what tunings i want to use on this, and I'd like to be flexible between the two. of course, this would mean using different string gauges for each tuning. if not, what scale should i use? AFAIK, 30" is standard piccolo scale. also, the shortscale i had used a 30" scale, so i won't have too many problems placing the bridge (keeping in mind that this would be my first PG)

2. what strings gauges would be advisable in either case? i lean towards BEADGB (or F#C, as per needs...)

3. how can i calculate the neck width?

4. how high should the nut be?

go ahead and yell at me if i've missed something and any of the questions are totally unnecessary - i really don't know where to start, and these are the questions that come to mind.

other thoughts:

i plan to build a sustainer in there (not a priority at the moment - will have to experiment with output and magnets), would dropping the neck pickup make me lose tone/mwah?

all + any suggestions are more than welcome; thanks for any information/hints you can provide!

[flood]

....anyone? :D

[Primal]

1. Not sure what the standard for piccolo basses are. Do a simple google search for your favorite piccolo bass model and see what its specs are.

2. Again, a google search for your favorite piccolo bass should yield some good results. At the very least, it should be able to give you some idea of the range of appropriate string gauges.

3. In order to calculate neck width, you need to know the string spacing. Again, because I don't know piccolo bass standard specs (if there is such a thing as standard specs for pic basses), a google search should yield some results. One thing you should be aware of is whether or not you will be able to use your current neck pocket, or whether you will need to route a bigger one. Your string spacing will be directly dependent on your neck pocket.

4. What do you plan on using for the nut material? If you are using wood (which I prefer -- elegant, and likely to give a more even tone, especially if it is the same wood as the fretboard). If so, just put an oversized blank in the nut slot. Once you get your bass built, set it up, and file the slots down to where they should be (can be lower than a normal bass, since there are no frets), then you can level off the top of the nut.

I'm not sure how much mwah you will be able to get with a piccolo bass. I mean... you are essentially playing a guitar (one of the reasons I never understood the concept of a piccolo bass to begin with). I'm not sure if the higher tuned/thinner gauged strings will yield much mwah, since the mwah effect is the result of the string itself, not the neck pickup. Besides, Jaco used his bridge pickup almost exclusively, and if that isn't enough mwah for ya, well, there's something wrong!

Hope that helped. Maybe some piccolo bass builders will chime in on the issue.

[Prostheta]

Sorry! Don't think people are ignoring you man :-D Not everyone has something to contribute to the threads they read.

The nut should be pretty high, so you can cut it back during the final setup! I'd hazard thickness of fingerboard (if mounted at the end instead of in a slot Fender style) plus the height of the fretwire plus half the thickness of your heaviest string gauge plus a couple of mm to spare. Then cut it back. Since you're going fretless, you need the nut slots to be just marginally higher than the fretboard - enough so open notes don't buzz and you can comfortably slide notes back down past first and into the nut without the note deadening itself too much. Again, this should be in your final setup.

Calculate your neck width when you can provide the specs of your nut string spacing (depending on what you want of course) and spacing at the nut. When it comes down to it - if you can specify those values then you can quite easily figure out the rest! It's a common sense train of thought and design.

A 30" scale will work as you don't have to intonate I guess. You'd get better results with a 32" scale as you will have more string mass to sustain notes.

Read more into other people's builds and the tutorials on the site and you'll find yourself forming a better idea of what you think you want and more specific questions to ask. Don't put router to wood yet till you've done the design!!!

Hell, I brainstorm ideas myself so don't think you're the only one man. I find the best thing to do is to write down what I want from an instrument and then go back through it, editing it. You'll be surprised how much just vocalising ideas can do for your thought processes! Errm, anyway.

I'd recommend deciding on one tuning too, else you'll end up setting the instrument back up every time the instrument readjusts to the new tension forces when you switch.

Best of luck - you have a great resource of information on here!

[flood]

wow, thanks a lot! that's quite a bit of info right there, enough for me to rethink my concept at least.

one of the things i love about this forum is the level of maturity and ease of getting good information to even stupid questions... !

Prostheta, if i plan to use the sustainer, I think the 30" would work fine. i want to keep it somewhere in between a bass and a guitar - something on the lines of a baritone guitar, with bass string spacing.

Primal, I will almost definitely have to increase the neck pocket. the nut material should be the same as the fingerboard - i hope to get my hands on a piece of good ebony - not muich ebony pops up on ebay.de (writing from germany), in the worst case i would go for a wenge fretboard. i think i'll be looking to construct a 5-7 piece laminate neck, maple with wenge or walnut. also, the bridge pickup will now definitely be a six string humbucker.

i think i'll put pen to paper over the next week or two, i need to finish exams soon so i can start building! i have a few more guitars that i really want to build in the pipeline, so i thought that this partial rebuild and my other project (fretless squier stratocaster with sustainer, piezo bridge etc.) would be a great starting point. after that, i want to start building guitars from scratch.