Frankly, until this thread I never really thought about short scale vs. long scale BASS, because if you fix guitars that discussion is invariably confined to guitars (Strat vs. Les Paul, mainly) and I dropped out of that conversation long, long ago. (Jeff Beck's Blow By Blow as I recall. Strats won, I think.)
This dumbfounds me, because I've played many, many basses in repairing or setting up trade-ins and store stock, and I don't think I ever gave it a second's thought. Either I'm totally brainless (lots of evidence for that conclusion) or the issue got sidelined somehow over the decades.
I firmly believe that you can only evaluate a guitar with a band. Twiddle with all the knobs you want, but you won't REALLY know what that sucker sounds like until you're chugging along as part of a unit.
With bass, it's even easier. All you need is a drummer, because you won't have a clue about what your bass actually sounds like until you're smackin' the CRAP out of the 1 with drums, because they just suck up all the 250 - 400 MHz around.
Ive been thinking about it (uh oh), and I think Paul McCartney and Tina Weymouth made indelible basslines in the ears of a whole generation with Hofner hollowbodies. Ask anybody, even if they've never held a bass in their life, and they can probably hear the bass parts of A Day In The Life or Yellow Submarine in their head, or Burning Down The House and Once In A Lifetime (which is only TWO NOTES).
Paul wasn't even the bassist in the Beatles until just before they became the biggest band in the world. The Beatles' bassist, Stu Sutcliffe, left the group in 1961:
...six months before the Beatles' first recordings with George Martin. (Decca rejected the Beatles, with the comment; guitar groups are on the way out, Mr. Epstein.)
Stu loaned the Hofner bass (pictured) to Paul, on the stipulation that he wouldn't change the strings around, so Paul figured out the bass parts - upside down and backwards - until he bought his famous Hofner 500/1 (left handed, short scale) bass, just before the recording sessions.
Tina Weymouth was the drummer's girlfriend, who had never touched a bass in her life until the band pressed her into service; until we can find a REAL bass player. Originally she played a Hofner 500/2 because it was cheap and small...
...but throughout Talking Heads and Tom Tom Club she's used whatever bass (and scale) suited the song. My kinda bass player.
She uses a pick or her fingers (later she incorporated fingerpicking with her thumb and two fingers) and has a horrendous baseball bat grip, but she's one of my very favorite bassists. Whatever she's doing - and whatever she's doing it ON - it works.
Here she is with the Hofner 500/2 (and Adrian Belew of King Crimson and Zappa on guitar) in 1980:
http://youtu.be/B-_PC6TlIhs
