Baby Bird

[wellREDman]

This is my current project, in fact the thing that led me to find this place.Since I started this its been put on hold twice, Ive  rescued the broken necked 3/4 Asian bass and built the twin tele in between so now I feel confident enough to post pictures of a work in progress


 This is my short scale ET-280, my first bass, given to me as payment for a couple of days helping someone move when I was 15, I learnt to play on it, and loved it right up until my brother got given a p bass copy, and I realised that "Talulah" (we all gave our instruments names back then like BB king) was a pice of shit, she was too heavy, sounded like crap and was hard to play, I didnt know anything about set ups etc then, and thought that was just what short scales sounded like so as soon as my bro got bored of his bass I aquired that. I never got rid of Talulah  though and dragged it around as a spare when I was gigging, and lent it to a friend when I taught him to play bass(where it aquired a new name"the plank")

When I got succesful doing video and gave up on music it went into my loft along with my main bass (by now a skinny necked Bass collection that I'd part exed my brothers Pbass for   ) It came out of the loft again for a bit 5 years later when I spent a weekend teaching my godson the basics, and then 5 years later it came back out for good when I started doing music again with the kids at the special school where I got a job when I'd got tired of touring.

I was setting it up for a leftie for school when I had the brainwave to take a tape measure to my 3/4 samick and check the scale length and voila, the bridge was 2 inches downstream of where it should be, I remounted the bridge and set it up, and it was like a new instrument. when the leftie student got a real left bass, I restrung it right handed and fell in love again. there were a few issues though, the baseball bat neck for one, figuring that it had nearly ended up in a skip a couple of times already and that I had nothing to lose I took a former and a rasp and sandpaper to the neck until it felt comfortable to play
another issue was the electronics, which were noisy, one pickup was missing and the selector switch was completely loose in its housing resulting in random cutouts, oh and the one remaining pickup was really quiet on the D string, opening it up resulted in disaster, the electrics completely crumbled to dust in my hands, literally, all the insulation on the wiring was totally perished.. so complete new innards then.

bouyed up by the success with the neck reprofile. I then decided to get really radical: I cycle to and from work, and I use a hofner shortie for work, and had been using my 3/4 scalebass  to travel with because I could fit them both in an acoustic gigbag and still cycle, so what would be a better solution to the weight issue of the 280 than to turn her into a travel bass   as it was only the weight not the size that was the issue, and I'd always fancied an ergonomic bass, I took a saw to her and cut off all the bits that didnt touch me, or have hardware on



 having an instrument that  that fits completely you is the most amazing feeling, I actually used to wear it around the house , making coffee etc, just for the kick I got out of how good  it felt to wear her, I can hear all the howls of outrage about what she looked like though but at that point I was in "I don't care, its functional" mode.
I sold the last of my video kit to buy new hardware and electronics and then decided, what the hell, Ill never be in the position to do this again, and Ive always wanted a fancied a five string, so bought extra bridge&machine head and gave it a go, not knowing whether it even was possible to have a short scale fiver.
it is, although the action on the B has to be kinda high, but its playable



This is about the time you guys come in, while searching online for a picture of what it used  to look like I came across this thread http://bassoutpost.com/index.php?topic=4573.0 and was hooked. I conceived the Idea for my twin and with all the good advice from here nursed it to fruition. it was during this time that you guys rekindled my T-Bird love, and having the twin at school meant I could keep my BC at home and so no longer needed to cycle with bass AND guitar to school. so when I came back to it, the 280 project had changed direction, now its a T-bird inspired short scale 5 string travel bass: A TravelBird if you will. Still in prototype stage so looking a bit rough, but she plays great, feels great and sounds great



Thing is though I'm now thinking of another change in direction.... I had a go on a friends fender bass VI the other day, and now I'm jonesing for a baritone guitar, I don't need one, but I really cant stop thinking about it.
when I coach music at school, the last session of the day is an open blues Jam for any of the students who can keep up, I obviously fill in on whichever instrument there is a gap, the format is verse sung, then solo, then verse sung etc, so everyone gets a solo. all well and good if I am playing the drums, keys or bass, but If I am having to play the guitar(which is usually the case) I'm really rubbish at soloing so you can imagine the ribbing I get from my wunderkind guitarist, (and the rest of the kids) my thinking is that if I had  a baritone I could play the Rhythm guitar parts on it, then solo on it like a bass , and retrieve my street cred somewhat.
  Ive been looking for a beater shortscale that I can turn into a Bass VI (its a flying V in my head) but it's been months now and nothing has come up in my budget, so Ive started looking at the baby bird and thinking about six strings....

[Pilgrim]

Couldn't resist! 

If it plays great and sounds great for its intended use, what more do you need?  Enjoy.

[chromium]

I like the TravelBird.

Reminded me a little bit of the Chiquita guitar!   

[wellREDman]

I think what got lost in the elegy to my first bass was that I was asking advice on direction to take with it,
should I see it through as a 5 string bass , or veer sideways into a baritone guitar/bass VI thing ?

[dadagoboi]

This is my favorite so far.  What more could you want?  Has a Buzzard look to it as interpreted by Fred Flintstone.  An inspiration, keep it up!

[wellREDman]

so the travelbird has been through a lot over the past few years, test bed for both my 3 string special needs setup and a bass VI, Ive also used it to learn to shoot a burst with a rattlecan, (this is the third attempt, the next one will be a keeper I'm sure) but I think it's now found it's final configuration
The neck has grown by a couple of inches, I got a short scale P for the bass VI project but that turned out to be 32' not 30' so i swapped the necks. the P headstock  didnt have the right bird feel  though so I glued some mahogany offcuts to it then carved it back to a slanted bird shape.
  I did a royal blood esque project at college with two basses and drums and  the other guy was playing the traditional bass parts , and as i never seemed to use the low B string i restrung it EADGB and was off, really great fun to play "lead" bass on and I've fallen in love with it all over again.
at some point i will strip it down and  finish the paintwork, but at the moment its my perfect workhorse  for school prep and college homework, the room where I do this is a small box room and there isn't room to play a full size bass without endangering the pc screen with the headstock, its amazing what a difference a few inches make

[Highlander]

It Lives...!

[clankenstein]

Whoo! How does it sound?

[wellREDman]

Whoo! How does it sound?

its got a tonemonster active circuit so i can get everything from a snarl to a growl from it. after various tries i settled on 80 60 45 30 22 as the string guages as the middle ground between still sounding like a bass and being able to play chords on it  so the E is not super deep, but it works and as its role is for sitting in my office working out parts its great. I guess the correct defenition of it now  is a piccolo bass?

[exiledarchangel]

No, a piccolo is tuned one octave up, like a guitar. I doubt you can tune a 80 string so high!

[Dave W]

Piccolo bass, now there's a contradiction in terms. If it's not tuned to the bass range, it's not a bass, even if it looks like one.

[amptech]

Didn't Alembic call their stanley clarke bass 'piccolo'? With bass A D G C strings?

[wellREDman]

oh ok,
I thought piccolo was defined  by string guage, I came accross the term here in reference to the Manowar guy shredding on a shortscale Ric with superlight strings
  I'm definitively still E1 on my tuner, same as my regular bass, so the travelbird is just  a medium scale 5er with odd tuning and light gauge strings, doesn't trip off the tongue as easily does it?

[Dave W]

The Baby Bird is a bass.

A so-called piccolo bass is tuned an octave up, like the lower four strings of a guitar. It's not a bass. It's a long scale guitar.