Piccolo bass

[dfung60]

I haven't seen the Ibanez 8-string.  Is that 2 lower strings?  A Universe 7 is already encroaching, you know!  :-)
 
Joe Veillette (previously of Veillette-Citron and partnered with Stuart Spector on and off) makes a lot of baritones at his current shop.  He has longer scaled ones (28) which are tuned a fourth below a regular guitar, sort of like a 6-string bass except for the 2nd string which is dropped a 1/2 step like a regular guitar.  There are shorter ones too which are tuned down a step and high tension (less than 27 scale, so you barely notice the difference until you're down low on the neck).
 
As for attack, to my ears, instruments have a stronger attack when there's more tension on the strings.  If you take a regular guitar and tune it in D instead of E with the same strings, then the tension drops and the sound is sort of floppier - less attack.  Tune that guitar to F# and there will be a lot more tension and snap to the sound (hopefully that E string won't poke you in the eye when it breaks).
 
If you put a normal set of bass strings on a 30 bass, they will be very floppy and loose sounding relative to how they sounded on a 34 or 35 scale.  If you crank it up an octave, those same string will snap, but if they didn't they'd be super tight.  So, how a piccolo bass sounds and feels will be very dependent on exactly what you string it with and how you tune it.  So, it could be either way, but I would guess in most cases people would be stringing a piccolo bass with strings that are heavier than the guitar strings that end up at the same tuning.
 
David Fung

[hieronymous]

The whole baritone guitar thing is very confusing. Fender released what they called the Jaguar Baritone Custom recently, but it's actually based on the classic Fender Bass VI, which is tuned like a bass but with 2 extra high stings and a 30 scale. The Baritone Custom is the same but with 28 1/2 scale. The upper neck on my Alembic doubleneck is 30 tuned A-A - the lowest string is between the low E on a bass and the low E on a guitar.
 
Personally, I would think that what makes a baritone a baritone the tuning; that is, it is tuned between a regular guitar and a bass, with scale length being secondary to the determination of whether an instrument is baritone or not. But I don't think there are any hard and fast rules.
 
And I forgot that this is a piccolo thread - here's a track with my Exploiter strung with super-skinny piccolo strings:
 
gnillor
 
I think I got the piccolo set that LaBella has and just tuned it to where it felt right. I'm pretty sure I had it tuned in fifths too, but can't quite remember...

[jsaylor]

Dave,
I see what your saying
 
 
David (Fung),
Yep 2 lower strings. As far as I know, guitars only get lower, not higher (that would be kind of weird if they did.) I see what your saying about tuning to scale length. One question for you since you seem to know alot about this, besides attack, how much is the sound changes inbetween scale lengths? I take it that it sounds lower?

[to_81_0190]

Hi Jordan,
 
How do you think about 8(4?~2)string bass's sound? In this thread, there is a link to my 8string bass sound clip. Both left and right are recorded with no effected 8string bass. You are welcome to a frank opinion.
 
Toshiaki

[hb3]

That's a great sound.

[dfung60]

Man, an Ibanez guitar with a low F# string?  Talk about encroaching on bass territory!  I guess new guitar players don't get to play solos, so they need something to keep themselves amused.  Between the guitars that cover most of the bass range and all those drummers who have learned how to do a continuous bass drum roll, there's no place left for us anymore!
 
As for the effect of scale changes, it's really hard to generalize because you're balancing off a number of factors.  If you held pitch and scale constant and varied the string gauge, the bigger string would have more tension than the smaller one and much more mass.  For me, more tension generally equates to a more dynamic attack, but I think we would probably all agree that that bigger string would seem have less attack because of the additional mass of the string - at least intellectually counter-intuitive.  Each different brand and model of string will strike a different balance point of mass vs. tension, then you mix scale lengths and tunings in on top of that.  I like Rotosound RS66 strings on 4-string basses, but often find that the G string sounds a little guitary compared to the other 3 strings, just slightly unbalanced.  Maybe a heavier core wire would have fixed it, or a slightly different gauge.  Too many variables to actually experiment with!
 
So it is with baritone and other alternate scale lengths.  It's very dependent on the string gauges that are available to you as to how it will sound.  I guess that there's not that much interest in having a 28 guitar that tries to sound like a 34 bass, so the strings sets you can get are smaller and higher tension.
 
David Fung