SamIAm

BEADG. Likely to go for Rotosound Tru Bass 88 (Which run .060 to .135), I used them on Twiggy my 760mm self build bass and found them spot on. I could perhaps go a bit lighter as the Ibanez TMB35 has a 30 inch scale, is reviewed as being OK with a Low B and comes with 0.045 - 0.130 strings S'manth x

So ... 5 string short scale ... not many around (Well not in a price bracket I can consider) so naturally a question popped into my head ... "I wonder if I could perform some alchemy on a Harley Benton PB Shorty" So I set out to doing some figuring and came up with the following Measurements (thanks @Paul S) Nut: 42mm 19th Fret: 62.5mm (This is the last fret on the neck) Calculation On a 760mm (30 inch) scale, the 19th fret is at 506.4mm. This gives outer dimensions of the fretboard as below I used Rotosound Tru Bass Tapewound on the 760mm scale 5 string I built and found the B string tension was good, this gives string diameters of: B String (0.135) 3.4mm G String (0.060) 1.5mm Allowing for a gap between the edge of the fretboard and the outer string edge as follows: B String: 2mm G String: 1mm This would give an "outer edge to outer edge" string distance (based on the fret width minus 3mm) of Nut: 39mm 19th Fret: 59.5mm Bridge: 69.76mm And (assuming the strings are evenly spaced based on their centres) a string spacing at the bridge based on 72.76mm (Bridge width) -3mm (outer edge gap) -1.5mm (half the thckness of the B+G string combined, to get to their centres) / 4 (5 strings means 4 gaps) 17mm I've a Hohner 5 string headless (As per my profile pic), the string spacings on it are comfortable (Sadly I'm likely to be putting it up for sale as it is a long scale which is just too big for me!) When I measure its "outer edge to outer edge" string distance I find: Nut: 38mm 506mm: 55mm (This is where the 19th fret would be if it were a 760mm scale length) 760mm: 63mm (This is where the bridge fret would be if it were a 760mm scale length) which gives me hope that my numbers would be playable. I would greatly appreciate feedback on these, have I goofed, missed or overlooked something, etc ... or do they seem sound? S'manth x I recognise that there will be a number of other issues to address such as tuners, pups, bridge but it is the spacing/sizings of the fretboard I am trying to check.

Numbers, wonderful ... thank you Paul! 2.8kg would be a fab weight for me. 41.5mm at the nut, that could work. I've a 5er Hohner that has a distance (from the outside edges of the strings) of 38mm at the nut and is very playable. The constraining factor is likely to be the fret width where the neck joins the body, which I gather is the 19th. Once I know that I can run the numbers in the fretfind app to find what the bridge spacing would be (or draw up some lifesize sketches using my long unused o-level trig lol) S'manth x

I've scoured the web for this info, but to no avail ... I'm hoping that a BCer with one of these will be able to help. How much does it weigh? How wide is the bottom (19th?) fret? What is the string spacing at the Bridge? My end game is to obtain a short scale 5 string, that is light (Scratch the TMB-35), available (scratch the GRSM-25) and not the price of a small flat (Scratch almost everything else!) and so I am looking to see if there are any shorty 4 stringers that might take a conversion to 5. S'manth x

That is stunning! S'manth x

Lovely, easy purchase of a Hondo Alien from Paul. As described (The bass), very happy with it. And we shared a few pleasant minutes chatting away in the sub zero conditions of the services car park. Thank Paul! S'manth x

Scott D has a video that I found interesting, I try for his self described hybrid technique ... but find it hard! S'manth x

I did wonder about the D string! lol I had to copper tape shield my Corsair too. Chunky neck is my preference, but it being heavy-ish is a downside, thanks for sharing your experience! S'manth x

How has this topic slipped by me till now! D'oh! Many (many!) years ago I started to learn to play the guitar ... I was persistent, but never any good beyond strumming a few chords along to John Denver lol. About 10 year ago I discovered the ukulele and fell in love, suffered from UAS (Similar to GAS), had a stable of uke's, but favoured tenor versions. Played a lot, did some open mics, went to uke jams and joined a uke band. And then about 4 years ago I bought ... a bass ukulele and OMG ... loved it. I'm not sure I could even pick out more than a few simple uke chords now as I became the bass played in the band ... and then the dark times of covid hit and little playing happened. A year or so ago, as we started to crank things up again and I started to become ... frustrated ... by the intonation challenges of the UBASS (With the thick rubberlike strings that go out of tune almost every other song and no adjustment for speaking length). After some hunting around I bought my first real bass - a Samick MCR1 BK Greg Bennett Corsair, 4 string 24.6 inch scale length. It was great fun and addressed (with some careful setting up) the intonation challenges I'd had on the UBASS. with a scale length of only about 4 inches more than the UBASS, it felt familiar under my left hand. And then after some playing of it and trying out longer instruments I came to the conclusion that I wanted a 5er short scale ... so I built one, she was made out of a 2x4 I had lying around so I called her Twiggy. She ended up as a 29 inch scale (or so) headless fretless with home grown tuners and much to my surprise (and delight) sounded pretty darn good with some Rotosound TruBass tapewounds and an EMG pup. I was gigging with her and so enjoyed the scale length, the fretlessness and her feather weightedness that I thought I'd have another go and bought a lovely chunk of Maple to build my next one, aiming a bit higher in terms of asthetic! lol As someone said, 'If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.' ... the day after the photo above a fire broke out in my flat and ... woosh, everything went up in smoke. The lovely luthier gave me a replacement chunk of wood and one of these days I will get started on the new build, but at present my back is really bad so standing and doing woodwork is not an option. A few weeks ago a very kind person gifted me a 5er fretless ubass, which is a 23.5 inch scale and I am playing that mostly as it is comfortable and light. I do however want to try to get hold of a 5 string fretted short scale, certainly no more than 30 inches. The two that seem to be about are the Ibanez GSRM25 or TMB35-MGR, tho leaning more towards the first as it is that wee bit shorter and I really do not love the colour of the TMB35-MGR ... however, I'd love to hear the experience of any here who have one or the other (or both) about how they are to play? Also are there any other short scale 5ers worth considering? (In the same sort of price range ... I've seen some stunning instruments such as those by AGC but ... well out of my financial reach) S'manth x And perhaps a little cheeky, but please have a look at my sig

How cool! I've played with music editing with DAW stuff, but it's really very basic stuff! When I was looking around I saw the Bela, but as you say it seems to target a different set of usage ... but really interesting! BOME is going to be a labour of love and likely take quite an age to mature, but it'll keep me out of trouble ... and as I'm stalled on my bass build (due to back trouble) it will be a good creative outlet. S'manth x

Spot on, nice system. In my early days of playing with pi based multi f/x that was one I had a look at and play with it. Its MODEP interface is a modified version of the open source Mod Devices ModUI. Rather nice (and also used in the PiStomp Core and Zynthian systems). I ended up crafting my own configuration of a real time linux (Like patchbox OS) but using a more recent version of linux and using the actual Mod UI code, which brought some extra features (I think CV at the time) as MODEP was a few version behind ... this was the EffektLada unit and I actually gigged with it, but the lack of onboard controls (requiring me to always have a tablet with me) was clunky and made me dig a little deeper into incorporating them. More recently I decided I wanted to build a system that could support VST as well as LV2 plugins (The Mod software only supports LV2) and was looking at a system called Carla ... but further research led me to the Elk OS. Elk dove deep into the core of linux using a technology called Xenomai which allows for a dual kernel (heart) for linux and is able to achieve insanely low latency when handling audio, Elk claim as low as 2ms!! (Compared with RT Linux used in all the other systems I looked at which are pushed to achieve 15 ms latency) which means more processing is available with less lag/jitter ... it does require special drivers for the audio card, but Elk have produced these for the Hifiberry card. There are a few other technical features Elk OS has (A redundant file partition to protect against corruption or power loss during updating, buffer sizes going down to 16 samples, ability to be run on other boards than the Pi) that are attractive to me. Additionally, their software that hosts the plugins runs in a totally headless manner, forcing one (or from my perspective freeing one) to provide a complete UI ... I like the uniformity of UI that this will allow me. And Elk have insanely detailed documentation! In the end it will take me a significantly greater effort to achieve what I could using the Mod based approach ... but in the end I think it will be more flexible, be exaclty what I want ... and I enjoy the tinkering S'manth x

Such fowl language!

Welcome to BC Brian S'manth x

So, this is as much to document my progress for myself as to share news of what is going on. To setup a Pi to run ElkOS one needs to flash an Elk Audio OS Image to an SD card and then start the Pi with it inserted. Elk produce an image, however it is missing a few elements that I need (such as a graphics library to allow me to drive the BOME onboard TouchPanel) and also lags a bit behind some of their own development of some of the software components (For example their Sushi DAW). As for many organisations that produce a linux build for devices like the Pi, Elk use a build environment called Yocto. It is an amazing open source initiative that allows one to "Stand on the shoulders of giants" when producing customised linux configurations. Elk publish the Yocto configuration they use (as well as the source code for their USP elements of ElkOS). Yocto is mind twistingly powerful and presents a rather steep learning curve! BUT I have been able (tho it took quite a few false starts, loads of reading/head-scratching, installation and re-installation of stuff on my build server) to generate my own image to flash to an SD card ... and it actually works! The initial build took hours and hours as it basically had to build an entire linux operating system from scratch; I can now start to tweak it to include the bits and bobs that I need for BOME and thankfully, the build time for these additions should be much shorter. And during the wait for builds to complete I've been practicing my scales and arpegios 🤣 S'manth x

Thanks @tauzero, it's nice to have something (hopefully) interesting to share. Previously I had thought that Elk was dead, but whilst their forum is quiet, they had a large investment (apx 2.6 Million USD) back in May and seem to be dropping new code; a bit like Mod audio they have a mixed commercial/OSS licence model and seem to produce one hardware device, for jamming over the internet. I'm in the process of trying to build their Pi image (It's yocto based and new to me) at which point I can try incorporating Qt into the image for the onboard UI. Cool that you have the various bits of the hardware stack ... If you might be interested in trying out some of the stuff or even some joint development drop me a PM? S'manth x

Rather a long time since I've done any work on this (or indeed done much at all; serious bout of depression following the impact of the fire and some other life affecting stuff, but it's clearing). I stumbled across another audio unit called Proteus so will be referring to this as BOME until a better moniker comes along. I've done some playing over the past couple of weeks and I think I have closed out on the tech stack for the BOME prototype. Hardware Raspberry Pi 4b - I have one that I salvaged from the fire and whilst they are in short supply at present, this should hopefully change in the next few months. It is a cheap unit and well documented; it also supports the software stack I have selected. HiFiBerry DAC+ADC Pro - This is a good quality, reasonably priced, Pi add on board to allow stereo (or two mono) audio input and outputs (Again something I was able to salvage from the fire). It is supported by the software stack I intend to use. Touch Sensitive Display - This will allow for configuring BOME without needing a computer to do so (Tho BOME will also be configurable using a web browser) Rotary Encoder/Switches - Used to supplement the touch display when configuring BOME as well as tweaking pedal settings on the go. Footswitches - To allow handsfree control of BOME whilst playing; select defined pedalboard layouts, activate/bypass 'pedals', load setting snapshots, activate tuner, etc Expression Pedal In - Allow connection of a 1/4 Jack TRS expression pedal to control pedal effects. Pi Pico - A low cost microcontroller that will be used to interface between the Pi and the various input controls; It will offload some of the load from the Pi as well as providing some capabilites the Pi does not have (such as ADC for the expression pedal) USB Host Port - Allow the connection of a USB MIDI Device to control any plugins. USB Device Port - Allow connection to a computer to allow BOME to act as an audio capture/playback device. Software Elk audio OS - This lies at the heart of BOME. It is based on linux (so allowing the use of linux capabilities and development tools) with some added goodness: ElkOS has a realtime element that interfaces with the HiFiBerry Audio card that has an extremely low latency, this means that the likelihood of experiencing audio artifacts like jitter or dropout is significantly reduced Elk Sushi is basically a DAW and allows for the use of both LV2 and VST3 (linux based) plugins. Sushi hands over all responsibility for the user interface to BOME, allowing for both touch panel and remote web control. BOME-APP - Bespoke code running on the Pi that ties everything together and provides the logic and user interface for BOME. BOME-IO - Bespoke micro-controller code running on the Pico to make the various switches and controls available to BOME-APP. With my 3D printer still being out of service (The fire melted most of the plastic elements and I've yet to replace them) I resorted to a heath robinson approach using cardboard and duct tape to construct a prototype enclosure. Currently 250mm wide (constrained by the spacing required for the footswitches) 140mm deep (Driven by the 5 inch touch sensitive display) and 60mm high, not counting the knobs. I may lose one of the footswitches to allow me to reduce the width to 195mm, but I'm going to run with this setup for the time being. Thus far I have been able to assemble the Pi, HifiBerry and some audio in/out; install the Elk software; configure a pedalboard with both a MIDI synth VST3 plugin and a guitar f/x chain using LV2 plugins for a compressor, chorus and room reverb; with a bass guitar plugged in and a midi usb keyboard attached I've been able to play both synth and the bass, driving a bass combo cab ... and it sounds pretty good! I've been able to use an app called Open Stage Controller running on my laptop to send OSC commands (A bit like MIDI but much richer) to change pedal plugins settings over a WiFi to the BOME unit. Next to start on the BOME-APP, to allow web based management of pedalboards (A set of effect plugins connected together), pedals (An individual plugin that provides a single pedal type of effect such as compression/overdrive/chorus/reverb/etc), connections between them (Virtual equivalent of patch cables). In parallel to this I need to start looking at how to achieve as many of the same capabilities using the onboard display and controls, Elk does not provide any display libraries so I need to figure out how to incorporate them to drive the touch screen as well as accepting input from the rotary and foot controls. S'manth x