New bass uke day.

[KohanMike]

Friday I picked up the bass uke Eric's Guitar worked on and Pat Wilkins painted. As always, it came out great. Eric made the cream pickguard and truss rod cover, added cream Strat knobs, changed the wonky floating bridge/piezo pickup with a fully adjustable all metal bridge with a piezo in each saddle, a battery on/off switch, added HipShot Lollipop Ultralite license tuners, Hofner style tailpiece and Kala/Galli flatwound nylon core strings.

 

[Spicysteve]

Mike,
Fabulous looking and nicely chosen appointments. I so enjoy following your Bass journey.

 

[willywhite]

Hi Mike,

Always enjoy your content. I'm interested to know more about having a piezo in each saddle. How is that accomplished?

 

[KohanMike]

Hi Mike, Always enjoy your content. I'm interested to know more about having a piezo in each saddle. How is that accomplished?

Thanks. From what I see in each saddle, there's a sensor that the string runs across and underneath is a wire that Eric solders together to a tail I cut off the old saddle to plug into the existing preamp. The only problem is the quality control of these bridges made in Korea is limited, one of the saddles here and there has been bad out of the box, so I bought an extra bridge that Eric has used to do a simple swap of the individual saddle.

 

[willywhite]

I've been asking you a lot of questions about the solid body uBass lately. I've recently become interested, or rather interested again, in the uBass. I was watching this Kala Sub 4 in an eBay cart about 5 years ago. My daughter, who was 4 at the time, completed the purchase when she was toying with my phone. Woops! So the story has become a bit of a legend for this guitar and she beams with pride when she tells it. So I'm never selling this instrument. I stopped playing it because I could not stand the tuning issues inherent in these basses. After asking you multiple questions, I think I've decided on swapping the bridge to the style you are using. Fingers crossed for a workable product once it shows up. I've already purchased Galli Flatwound strings with nylon core for the 20“ - 21" scale uBass from Kala.

I read your posts in the Ubass Freaks group on Facebook. Seems you have toggled between two Korean made piezo bridges. I've attached pictures and labled them #1 and #2. Which one would you recommend based on your experience? Have you changed your mind on these and switched to the Ghost bridge for the extra cost?

For bridge #2, did Eric solder all 4 wires to the single tail that was already attached to the existing preamp?

This is a link I found so you can view the specs of my instrument. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...t_u_bass_sub4fs_chbrst_solid_body_u_bass.html

 

[KohanMike]

That style Hadean solid body was the first on which I had the bridge changed, ultimately six of them. Then I switched to the violin/Hofner style hollow body, which required Eric to make a riser so that the bridge aligns with the top of the fretboard.

I've been buying bridge #1 on eBay from Guitar Madness, the other place stopped carrying them. That one is a little more compact than #2, but I did use #2 on a Hadean bass to give it a bit of a Fender look. Eric found that the much higher cost of the GraphTech was not worth it, especially since the one I bought from them also had a bad saddle, which they replaced immediately. I did recently buy a gold GraphTech because they're the only ones who have that color.

Yes, the bridge with four tails, Eric solders to a single tail that I cut off the existing pickup that uses, which plugs into the preamp. The GraphTech model has small adapter cables to bring together the four saddle tails, which then gets soldered to the plug.

 

[willywhite]

That's great information. I'll post an update in a few weeks once my products arrive and I have completed the work.

 

[Nickie]

Congrats on the new bass, Mike! Love it.

 

[kissing]

Picked one of these up recently and I'm quite pleased!