Wow! Thanks Booli!!!
You were a little more complete than I was. I just used the middle 4 bridge saddles. I maintained uke steps in between the strings/tuning, but I had to tune kind of low to get it to work at all. Then, the wound strings proved to be highly problematic so I used a wound 3rd string, and unwound for the 4th, 2nd and 1st. Still needed more work there. Down low it was too low, it sounded OK with a capo higher up. Maybe Ill take a stab at it again armed with new info!
No problem. The middle 4 saddles will work, but I found that the string spacing of a guitar saddle for a strat to be too narrow (somewhere like 8-10mm betw strings) whereas on most of my ukes it was betw 13-15mm, and I wanted to test some short-scale bass strings (which failed terribly, despite making an using a nut for the width of bass strings).
Once I got the center marked on the aluminum angle piece, I then measured for four #6 holes @ 15mm apart, and then cut the aluminum to fit the top of the guitar (about 6 inches long) and screwed it in such that the back of the 'new' bridge was in the same place as the old bridge, and since it's strung through the body, the aluminum does not have to handle all of the stress of the string tension. I used another piece of 90 degree angle iron inside where the tremolo block used to be as a place to feed, and lock the strings down, and I drilled 4 holes there 15mm apart to match the saddle spacing.
I also have a rod piezo pickup that is currently installed and just squished between the bridge baseplate and the wood that is underneath, and it works ok as a passive pickup but with low output, but if I feed it into my Behringer Mic200 tube preamp I can get up to 80db boost in gain and it sounds very nice, AND buy adding a piezo, I can use classical guitar strings instead of electric strings.
Right now it's back in the closet, but maybe I can take a few pictures for you sometime before the weekend....
With classical style strings, there are lost of choices for gauges and tensions that did not seem to be available in electric strings.
Even before all these strings, after I got the piezo to work, and put bass tuning machines on, (removed the 6 strat tuners and filled the holes with woodfiller and sanded smooth and then drilled four 13/64' holes for the cheapo asian copycat hipshot style tuners.
Then I tried to get the Aquila Thundergut strings to work (and they kept falling apart at the tuning pegs - they end up like shredded swiss cheese), and the 'low E string' seemed to barely have enough tension to make the right pitch, I even tried also with the Aquila Thunder REDS strings and same thing.
So with the regular bass strings not working and Thundergut also not working, I was going to try some Cello strings, since a 4/4 cello has a scale length around 25", but cello strings are about $70 per set all over town...so I could not test them as I dont have that kind of budget for this project.
I was really hoping to make a 25" short scale bass, but the closest I could get was a sort of long-neck baritone uke, an octave below normal baritone 'Chicago' tuning of DGBE... So I could play it as an octave baritone or as a piccolo bass. depending on the strings an tuning.
I have a full scale 34" bass but after gaining agility on tenor, concert and soprano ukulele over the past year, I found the full sized bass near impossible for me to play...
If I had the money, and knowing what I know now, I would just buy either an Aquila Shortbass One, or a Gold Tone Microbass (both are around 22" scale and bigger than the Kala U-Bass) and from what I've seen easier to play....
I'm waiting on a strings delivery from Strings By Mail, with a few things to try further, but after that, the instrument will be on hold for a little while if it does not work out exactly.
I love to experiment with this kind of stuff and I was not playing the strat any more, and wanted to see if I could convert it to something else, that I could play that would give a deeper register for bass-like musical parts to the songs i've written that already have melody and chords, and this hack project I could use the instrument to round out the bass area...
It aint over just yet....
-Booli
