The Gibson "V"s have all kinds of ailments, but the short scale is just one factor that only becomes malign with other circumstances. It's a short scale maple neck, weak pups, alder body, wood in the wrong places due to the constraints of the Flying V shape (the bass doesn't have real fundamentals, yet at the same time it is unfocused - I think vibration of those extended wings has something to do with it). If the same bass would habe been made out of maho with Bicentennial pups or G 3 pups, I think results would have been much better.
My 35" scale "Manowar" Dean Razorback Flying V is now the best sounding of my V basses - it approaches TBird quality (with better upper fret access), albeit active. I think the outsize Über-long scale neck and the fact that it is made of maho and neck-thru has a lot to do with that. There is a theory that once you have a neck thru construction the body wings don't have much of an effect anymore on tone generation. So I think the Dean's neck compensates whatever drawbacks the V shape inherently brings. Someone should have thought of that earlier though I'm sure Dean had more downtuning metal kids in mind with the extended scale Razorback than compensating the body shape.
Uwe
