AFQB Short-Scale Bass - Low-end Love with a Cigar Box Guitar!

 
I found several Arturo Fuente "Queen B" boxes, and wanted one of them to be a short-scale bass. I had this old pull-off neck (30" scale length) and it just so happened to fit the need nicely, so long as I opted for the "neck joint free of the body" type construction I use on most of my guitar builds. I might could've inset the neck mid-mounting plate, but I wanted to make sure the bridge was solidly mounted, so I went with the end-of-the-body mount.

A "P/J" pickup combination with independent volume controls and master tone control seemed appropriate, and I DID (due to the extra real estate on/in the box compared to my other bass builds) also mount a piezo disc under the lid. 

The original tuners on the neck had gear issues, so I went ahead and upgraded it to some standard "elephant ear" style tuners. 

I thought originally about making this a "piccolo" bass, but opted against it when I had to reverse-shim the neck a little and it seemed to need the extra tension from actual bass strings to bring the neck more "true". Maybe next short-scale we'll make it a piccolo and see how it goes. Or maybe I'll get froggy and change my mind to try to make this one work for that purpose if someone doesn't take it off my hands first. But as-is, it sounds great, and even the piezo has a good lo-fi "bark" in it. This one is FUN!

Location: W4WVK Studios

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