Pulled the trigger on an Aquila short bass.

Whenever I see a bass in the 21-24" scale range I go for it. I surf the internet often but never came across a 23.6" that Aquila makes, but found out about it on the Talk Bass forum. The ShortBass One 60 is built very much like an Ovation with an ABS round back, cedar top and comes with Aquila Thunder Red poly strings, but I'm not crazy about them so I'm going to test the La Bella 25" flatwound metal strings they make exclusively for the Gold Tone M-bass and I'll use a tailpiece so they fit properly.

Aquila sells it on their site for €450 ($526 plus $35 shipping), US distributors sell it for $699 shipped, and because Aquila gives a 20% discount, I bought it for $460.73. I've been hungry for an Ovation ukulele, which I quelled when I bought a Godin Multiuke, but this Aquila is going to be the full satisfaction.

ampeep said:

Interesting bass. Am curious about the narrow tailpiece you show in the bottom graphic. Would that tend to have the E & G strings pop out of the bridge slots?

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It's possible the saddle doesn't have slots, so I'll most likely have to add them. That will be part of the experiment using the flatwound steel strings. I just thought of something, I was planning on using a four slot bass tailpiece, but I wonder if a 6 slot guitar is wider, or even a twelve string. How much tension needed is another test.

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8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 7 mini electric bass guitars

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• Member The CC Strummers www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos

Maybe you've wrote on this previously, but what don't you like about the Thunder Reds compared to, say, Pahoehoe? From the couple of playing samples I've seen, the Reds seemed to have a bit better tone to me, but who knows, coulda been something else in the signal chain other than the strings making me think that.

Jim Hanks said:

...what don't you like about the Thunder Reds compared to, say, Pahoehoe?

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I found the Thunder Reds to be stickier than I like, not as much as the Thunderguts, but enough to dissuade me. I did find yesterday during a gig we did outside with higher than normal humidity, that even the very smooth Pahoehoe where sticky, so from now on for any outside gigs, I'm going to use one of my flatwound basses.

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8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 7 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos