by bestbassgear.com
Jim Huckle Guitars Short Six Fretless
The biggest conundrum was how to do the bridge – I knew it would have to
have the full 19mm string spacing, as I’ve never managed to get on with
the narrower bridges found on a lot of sixers, but I also wanted to
experiment with a piezo pickup, purely for the sake of trying it. If
money had been no object, I’d have bought a set of dedicated piezo
saddles, but that not being the case I decided on the next best thing –
taking the saddles from an existing bridge, and building a wooden base
with a piezo strip inside it. (More on this later…)
I’ve always liked the combo of walnut and padauk, so that with some
maple veneer pinstripes was the obvious choice for the neck, and the
body wings also being walnut dictated that there had to be a similarly
contrasting layer between them and the body. Finally, a bubinga
fretboard seemed an ideal choice in being a very hard wearing wood that
also visually contrasted the walnut well – and for the sake of
continuity, an offcut from the fretboard was used to make the bridge.
In the past I’ve gone for longer scale lengths, but having recently
played a couple of very nice short-scale basses, I decided to take
inspiration there and as a result this has an 800mm scale length, or
just shy of 31.5″. Inlays are made from 6mm aluminium rod for the front,
and white/blue Luminlay for the sides.
The rest of the hardware includes a set of Gotoh tuners, a Kent
Armstrong soapbar pickup in the scale equivalent of the “Stingray”
position, wired up to a series/parallel switch and an Artec 3-band
preamp (they’re cheap, but I find them surprisingly good and reliable),
Schaller strap locks and D’Addario NYXL strings. I’ve also carved a
thumb rest from an offcut from the neck.
The build took me just over a year, as although guitar building has
dominated my spare time for over 15 years, reality unfortunately
requires me to have a full-time job as well… The end result?
Definitely worth the wait! The shorter scale length definitely has me
converted; it’s so easy to play but the bass doesn’t lose anything from
it. The balance is ideal, it’s not too heavy and the soapbar pickup
works beautifully across the whole range of the bass. The piezo…works.
It’s not currently a particularly useful sound, but it’s proved what I
wanted to prove, and with a proper piezo buffer I should be able to make
it sound better!
