UBass Question

Hi Barry,
the bridge and the neck+heel are more substantial. I have the fretless so not sure about the frets.

Does the UBass have any structural beefing up to accommadate the bass strings and does it have different frets. Why couldn't you just take a Baritone of you choice throw some of those tuners strings file the nut and open the bridge a little?
 
Started with our local uke group last summer and as a bass player coming out of retirement as a semi-professinal. Someone gave me a small electric guitar retrofitted with bass tuners and bass strings. A small bass to play with the uke group, or so I thought. Problem being the tuning was terrible beyond the first fret. Sure the open strings would be in tune, and the first fret was bareable, but moving up the neck the problem gets worse and worse.

Thinking about it I realized the acoustical physics would explain why you can't replace a thin (guitar) gauge string with a thicker (bass) gauge string and expect the pitch to be identical at with identical lengths of string (spacing of the fret bars). Later I bought a fretless uBass.

Haven't compared them but I'm pretty sure the frets on the uBass are spaced a little farther apart than a baritone ukulele. It would be the same problem as my little electric guitar with bass strings. Also the tuning pegs are bigger / sturdier on the uBass compared to a baritone uke.
 
Does the UBass have any structural beefing up to accommadate the bass strings and does it have different frets. Why couldn't you just take a Baritone of you choice throw some of those tuners strings file the nut and open the bridge a little?

Thats how they probably started. Probably have string spacing issues, among other things.
 
My ubass is a baritone w different hardware. The string spacing at the bridge is wider. If you put the bridge in the same place as the baritone bridge was, the frets are in the right place. The strings are fed through big holes in the bridge and soundboard and knotted inside the body. Newer ubasses have some kind of bolt attaching the neck, not sure if it's a truss rod or just a bolt. I read in the talkbass forum that people who were using tha Aquila thunder guts strings (higher tension than the stock strings) thought the aquillas were too much for the "regular" baritone neck to handle.

I'm pretty sure you could come up with some kind of sleeve to put around the bari tuners to increase their circumference; the ubass tuners are about 3/8" in diameter. The strings are so stretchy that the ubass doesn't stay in tune for very long. The tuners aren't that big of a deal, they just need a wide enough slot and enough circumference to handle the string diameter.

Looking forward to seeing pictures of your build!
 
Does the UBass have any structural beefing up to accommadate the bass strings

Most likely not, but nor is it necessary.
The tension of the UBASS strings are very low. I wouldn't be surprised if regular baritone ukes with regular baritone strings are actually under more tension.
 
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