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#1
04-07-2015, 07:54 AM
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Bass VI Project
I have a John Mayer Strat that I bought new with a bowed neck with the intention of converting to a Bass VI. I found a DC Kunkle 30 in scale neck last fall from CL and refinished it this winter. This is the scale that Fender used on their Bass VI. Being a bass player I had wanted to experiment some gigging with one of these. It turned out very well and some really sweet sounds come out of this thing. The string gauge is .026 to .095. I used Fender locking tuners and had to drill out the low E tuner just a bit. The intonation and everything is exactly as it should be. Just like a NGD.
This photo shows the relative size to a G&L Legacy on the left and a G&L M-2500 5 string bass on the right.  This is showing the string alignment to body. I finished the neck using a dye tint and Birchwood Casey Tru Oil. -- Darwin  -- Darwin
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Stay Tuned Last edited by Darwin; 04-07-2015 at 07:57 AM. Reason: Typo 
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#2
04-07-2015, 08:21 AM
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Very cool indeed!
Bob
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"It is said, 'Go not to the elves for counsel for they will say both no and yes.' " Frodo Baggins to Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring THE MUSICIAN'S ROOM (my website)
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#3
04-07-2015, 09:07 AM
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Nice. Can you strum chords like a normal guitar or is it a bit too deep for that? I tried out a baritone guitar recently (Squier baritone Jazzmaster) and loved the deep, soulful sounds coming out of it. The Squier was more of a guitar than a bass but I guess if you keep going deeper at some point you cross a line where you have to radically rethink how you play the instrument and what you use it for.
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#4
04-07-2015, 09:31 AM
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Thanks Bob and Moon.
Moon, as for strumming is takes a careful touch to get a clear strum. It is easy to get a rumble if you strum hard. This guitar would pass as a bass guitar for most who were listening. Back in 1963 I saw Roy Orbison at a live show and his bass player was using one of these. Roy had many songs that these worked well on and the bass would use a single strum instead of a single note. They work very well for some music. It is easy to play a lead part as the extra length of this neck due to the 30 inch scale. A baritone is 27. What this neck builder has done is add three additional frets neck above to the standard nut so from the third fret to the bottom of the neck it is the same as a standard Fender neck. It is 24 fret and the 12 th fret is way above the body. This makes it usable for some cool lead parts. One of the concerns about building this conversion was intonation. It turn out that the saddles required almost no adjustment to intonate perfectly from the original John Mayer neck setup. The harmonic intonation is perfect at the 24 th fret. This was one of my biggest concerns. Other than fitting the neck for proper neck angle for string height ( I did not want to use shims) this whole installation was a breeze. I did have to drill the hole in the locking tuner a bit for the low E string (.095). This one of the most fun projects that I have done and the results are better than I had expected. -- Darwin
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Stay Tuned
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#5
04-07-2015, 01:02 PM
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Great project Darwin. Very cool!
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#7
04-07-2015, 10:21 PM
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Darwin & Pitner - what amps are you using with these? Curious.
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#8
04-08-2015, 07:09 AM
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Growler, I am curious to see what Pitner uses. I have only tested it through a guitar amp with a JBL 15 speaker. I intend to try it through my bass rig in a few days and intend to use that when gigging. -- Darwin
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Stay Tuned
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#9
04-08-2015, 07:12 AM
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I use a bass amp at church where I play. As a guitar player it is a perfect fit and I don't have to rethink it too much. The only real issue is right hand pick technique which has to be modified to watch out for flubby low notes. Just back off on the attack a bit. Some modify and put heavier gauge strings to compensate for that.
Won't play through my guitar amp as I don't want to blow a speaker which I did years ago not knowing what the low freq's can do.
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#10
04-08-2015, 12:53 PM
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Quote:
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#11
04-08-2015, 12:54 PM
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Quote:
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#12
04-08-2015, 05:20 PM
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Growler, I was testing with a low power tube amp through the JBL. I did plug into the complete bass rig today and it works great! As Pitner has already said you have to have a light touch which works fine for me as I am a light picker. If you dig in it will roar! This guitar is very resonant and harmonics from other strings will come through when the guitar is picked hard. My bass rig is a 1000 watt head with 3 cabinets, a 2-10, 1-15 and 2-12s. I do not use nearly all of the power but to get nice sweet bass tones, headroom is important. I quit using a 4-10 cabinet because of the weight. I will be 72 next week and am trying to reduce the weight of my gear. This rig sounds great at low volumes but it is crystal clear and cuts through the mix in general. That's my story and I sticken' -- Darwin
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Stay Tuned
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#13
04-08-2015, 05:42 PM
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I like the idea of a two-octave neck on a Bass VI - lets you get well into lead guitar territory; with the underlying support of the bass-register notes and a well-developed cross-picking technique, you can fill a lot of sonic space in an ensemble arrangement. BTW, don't know what you're using for strings but flats are traditional for this type of instrument - lets you get the action lower, evens out the tone, and sounds like nothing else when you palm-mute - and if you haven't tried it yet through a tweed 4x10" Bassman, brown/blonde Concert, or blackface Super Reverb (the way they played them back in the day), you don't know what you're missing...
Use it well and often... 
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#14
04-08-2015, 10:10 PM
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Quote:
Steve - good points. Thanks guys!
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#15
04-09-2015, 08:42 AM
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What a great project, Darwin. That low E string looks really close to the edge of the fretboard. Does it affect playing?
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