Alternatives to the Squier Bass VI

[BigRedX]

On 08/06/2018 at 17:55, Cato said:

What's his average build time?

Having seen that clip about Prince's bass I'm guessing it's a fairly lengthy process even without factoring in that he's probably never built a bass vi before.

 

On 08/06/2018 at 17:57, EssentialTension said:

That sounds like an excellent plan ... but how long and how much ... and what colour?

At the moment I don't really know about timings. When I had my G1 Guitar made back in 1999 it took less than 3 months. The Black G3 Bass a few years later took just over a year, although a lot of that was due to the fact that Simon was looking for a new supplier of black chrome, and when that didn't turn out to be feasible, looking for suitable alternatives (we ended up going for black anodising).

The actual build shouldn't be too difficult as it's essentially a slightly modified version of the G3 Baritone which has a 30" scale length and a standard nut width of 45mm. The nut and neck width can be changed if I decide I'm going to need it to be wider, although 45mm is the same as my 5-string Gus G3s so that might be a good starting point. I'll probably go for 3 single coils in typical Bass VI configuration. Don't know about the switching options. And I probably won't bother with a vibrato system.

Colour-wise, I have to say I really like the white of the Squier although I'd be tempted to go slightly less "yellow" any maybe have a bit of a metallic flake in there? Maybe have some red somewhere to echo the tort on the Squier?

Cost... The list price for a standard G3 Baritone is currently £4500.

Edited June 11, 2018 by BigRedX

[EssentialTension]

3 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

At the moment I don't really know about timings. When I had by G1 Guitar made back in 1999 it took less than 3 months. The Black G3 Bass a few years later took just over a year, although a lot of that was due to the fact that Simon was looking for a new supplier of black chrome, and when that didn't turn out to be feasible, looking for suitable alternatives (we ended up going for black anodising).

The actual build should be too difficult as it's essentially a slightly modified version of the G3 Baritone which has a 30" scale length and a standard nut width of 45mm. The nut and neck width can be changed if I decide I'm going to need it to be wider, although 45mm is the same as my 5-string Gus G3s so that might be a good starting point. I'll probably go for 3 single coils in typical Bass VI configuration. Don't know about the switching options. And I probably won't bother with a vibrato system.

Colour-wise, I have to say I really like the white of the Squier although I'd be tempted to go slightly less "yellow" any maybe have a bit of a metallic flake in there? Maybe have some red somewhere to echo the tort on the Squier?

Cost... The list price for a standard G3 Baritone is currently £4500.

Sounds very nice but somewhat more expensive than the Squier. I can understand that the Squier isn't really perfect for proper gigging even though people have done it and are doing it. I sold mine as it wasn't getting any real use.

[Cato]

26 minutes ago, BigRedX said:

 

At the moment I don't really know about timings. When I had my G1 Guitar made back in 1999 it took less than 3 months. The Black G3 Bass a few years later took just over a year, although a lot of that was due to the fact that Simon was looking for a new supplier of black chrome, and when that didn't turn out to be feasible, looking for suitable alternatives (we ended up going for black anodising).

The actual build should be too difficult as it's essentially a slightly modified version of the G3 Baritone which has a 30" scale length and a standard nut width of 45mm. The nut and neck width can be changed if I decide I'm going to need it to be wider, although 45mm is the same as my 5-string Gus G3s so that might be a good starting point. I'll probably go for 3 single coils in typical Bass VI configuration. Don't know about the switching options. And I probably won't bother with a vibrato system.

Colour-wise, I have to say I really like the white of the Squier although I'd be tempted to go slightly less "yellow" any maybe have a bit of a metallic flake in there? Maybe have some red somewhere to echo the tort on the Squier?

Cost... The list price for a standard G3 Baritone is currently £4500.

I feel it's my duty to strongly encourage you to take this path.

[floFC]

On 07/06/2018 at 21:31, BigRedX said:

The Revelation 6-string bass looks interesting and according to the Hotrox website they have them in stock, so I may go and check one out next week and see if the 43mm nut width is sufficiently wide for me.

If you decide not to go the custom route and try one of the Revelations, can you report here? I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

[BigRedX]

6 hours ago, floFC said:

If you decide not to go the custom route and try one of the Revelations, can you report here? I’d be interested in hearing what you think.

Well I was able to try the Revelation Bass VI at Hotrox today. The neck is definitely more comfortable for me than the Squier but still not really wide enough for me. What was interesting were the tonal options. Three pickups that look like P90s with what looks like Strat-type switching. The really interesting bit was the 5-position “Varitone” switch, giving a total of 25 different sounds nearly all of which could be useful. The only minus mark is that the Varitone switch isn’t easily manipulated mid-song. 

Aparently Hotrox also have a Burns Barracuda in their off-site stock, so I’ve arranged for them to get it in the shop for me to try next week...

[floFC]

Thanks @BigRedX. Yes the ATN system, with the selector and the Varitone was what interested me (and the jazz master body shape) - I am a bit of a tinkerer I think, I like switches and knobs - I ended up getting a Jaguar bass in the end.

Half of me still wants a Bass VI (or similar), but it would be to learn to play basic guitar stuff, like chords and things without going to the skinny strings side, so my requirements may actually be different from yours. Are you planning to play chords?

[BigRedX]

16 hours ago, floFC said:

Half of me still wants a Bass VI (or similar), but it would be to learn to play basic guitar stuff, like chords and things without going to the skinny strings side, so my requirements may actually be different from yours. Are you planning to play chords?

Chords on a Bass Vi are very variable and depend entirely on the chord and where you play it.

IME in the lower register they don't work very well at all, everything is muddy and indistinct and not at all guitar-like. In the upper register things are much better, but full barre chords are hard work with Bass VI strings (even the lighter gauges), and also then you might as well be using a normal guitar. I'm using the extra upper register along with the fact that the band has a synth player to fill in at the bottom end, and everything else that I'm doing in terms of two-note chords and alternating melody drone picking could be done on a conventional 4-string bass.

Have a listen to the latter part of the Ed Friedland vide posted earlier on in this thread to see how well (or not) different chords work. If you are really interested in full chords in a lower register than the standard guitar. then you should be looking at a Baritone guitar. For me a 28" scale Baritone tunes B-B is perfectly usable for full chords including all the 1st position open string ones, and maintains that richness of guitar tone. However you don't get the full 4-string bass guitar range, so it's all a bit of a trade off.

Edited June 11, 2018 by BigRedX

[BigRedX]

On 08/06/2018 at 18:59, EssentialTension said:

Sounds very nice but somewhat more expensive than the Squier. I can understand that the Squier isn't really perfect for proper gigging even though people have done it and are doing it. I sold mine as it wasn't getting any real use.

I would find the Squier perfectly fine for gigging with a couple more modifications, provided that it had a wider (and possibly shallower) neck.

The more I practice with it the easier it does get, but I'm still finding that I'm tripping over the strings on some parts. Since I can play everything in the lower ranges fine on any of my 5-string basses, it is for me very much a problem with the neck (which is actually far narrower and deeper back to front then any of my guitars) so finding a Bass VI with a more comfortable neck is my priority. And of course I'm not going to be hard pressed to find anything more comfortable than a neck sized to my specifications.

Having tried the Revelation Bass VI with it's 43mm wide nut (and more modern profile shallower neck) and found it slightly better, I'm hoping that when I get my hands on the Burns Barracuda later in the week it should give me a better indication on whether an on-the-peg model will be OK or whether I'm going to need to for a custom build to get something suitable for my playing style.

Edited June 11, 2018 by BigRedX

[uncle psychosis]

For what you need it for, Red, wouldn't a five or six string bass with skinny strings work? 

[dannybuoy]

Rather than going the full custom route, a cheaper alternative would be to get somebody such as John Shuker to make you a custom neck for your Squier?

[BigRedX]

1 hour ago, uncle psychosis said:

For what you need it for, Red, wouldn't a five or six string bass with skinny strings work? 

I could probably get by with two five string basses - one strung as normal and the other ADGCE, but some of the chord shapes would be a bit of a stretch for me on 34" scale length.

I've looked at 6 string basses but most are 34" and the necks are considerably wider, and last time I tried one, much too wide for me.

Hopefully I'll be getting to try out the Burns Barracuda some time very soon, and then I'll know if a 45mm nut width is going to do it for me.

Edited June 20, 2018 by BigRedX

[BigRedX]

9 minutes ago, dannybuoy said:

Rather than going the full custom route, a cheaper alternative would be to get somebody such as John Shuker to make you a custom neck for your Squier?

I had thought about that, a but wider neck would require wider pickups, bridge and tail piece/vibrato unit. By the time you've done all of that you might might as well have made a new bass. And if I did John Shuker would be very much my last choice - I love the way his original design basses look, but I have yet to play one that I like the feel of.

Edited June 20, 2018 by BigRedX

[pete.young]

A couple more random thoughts: Schechter Hellcat VI, has a nut width of 42mm (so maybe too similar to the revelation?)

Also OLP used to make a 30" scale instrument the OLP MM5, which looks more like a proper bass than a baritone guitar. Not sure on the neck width though, and these were discontinued some time ago when OLP was shut down so you might have to look for one on the second-hand market.

 

[BigRedX]

41 minutes ago, pete.young said:

A couple more random thoughts: Schechter Hellcat VI, has a nut width of 42mm (so maybe too similar to the revelation?)

Also OLP used to make a 30" scale instrument the OLP MM5, which looks more like a proper bass than a baritone guitar. Not sure on the neck width though, and these were discontinued some time ago when OLP was shut down so you might have to look for one on the second-hand market.

The Schecter Hellcat VI has been discontinued and I've already discovered from trying the Revelation Bass VI that that a 43mm nut is still too narrow for me.

TBH if I was going to spend time tracking down discontinued instruments second hand, I'd probably be looking for Shergold Marathon 6 String bass.

[pete.young]

I like the idea - get in touch with your inner Hooky, so to speak.

Here's an OLP. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232809502171?ViewItem=&item=232809502171

Mm. I quite like that colour, might buy it myself if I wasn't so busy trying to get my head around my new Weissenborn.

[BigRedX]

5 minutes ago, pete.young said:

I like the idea - get in touch with your inner Hooky, so to speak.

Here's an OLP. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/232809502171?ViewItem=&item=232809502171

Mm. I quite like that colour, might buy it myself if I wasn't so busy trying to get my head around my new Weissenborn.

Thanks for posting that. There aren't any string spacing measurements so I've asked the seller if they can supply them. However, two humbuckers puts it more in Baritone Guitar territory rather than Bass VI IMO. I'm not particularly keen on either the shape or the colour TBH.

[pete.young]

Ha ha, so apart from the colour, the string spacing, the shape and the humbuckers, what have the Romans ever done for us 🙂 At least we can rule that one out then.

[BigRedX]

5 hours ago, pete.young said:

Ha ha, so apart from the colour, the string spacing, the shape and the humbuckers, what have the Romans ever done for us 🙂 At least we can rule that one out then.

Just heard back from the seller. Nut width is 42mm but the distance between the two E strings at the nut is still the same as my Squier. I thought it looked as though the strings were set relatively far from the edge of the neck.

So that's another one ruled out...

[BigRedX]

Well I'm now the owner of a Burns Barracuda.

Full report after I've had a couple more days to play it.

[Cato]

On 23/06/2018 at 08:14, BigRedX said:

Well I'm now the owner of a Burns Barracuda.

Full report after I've had a couple more days to play it.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Edited June 24, 2018 by Cato

[BigRedX]

Well it has taken a while, but I've finally had time to give my Burns Barracuda Bass a proper work out including a rehearsal with the band.

First the obligatory photos:

While it shares a lot in common with the Squier being a Bass VI, in many ways it is a very different instrument, especially when it comes to the pickups and electrics.

The wider neck is much more comfortable for me than the narrow Squier. However it is not as wide as the specifications would lead you to believe. Nut width is 45mm, but the actual string spacing between the two E strings is only 38mm, a mere 3mm more than the Squier, and the strings are very obviously set in from the fingerboard edges. The difference is enough to make the neck feel more comfortable overall, but if the string spacing made full use of the available nut width, it would be even more useful to me. The fingerboard is bound in fake MoP which looks great, but doesn't make the dots particularly easy to see in subdued lighting conditions - as I discovered the first time I took this bass into the rehearsal room.

At the other end things are less good. The overall string spacing at the bridge is only 52mm compared with 55mm on the Squier, so while it is easier to form chord shapes on the neck without inadvertently muting strings with my fingers, picking the correct string cleanly is a lot harder. For the first week I was constantly missing strings or playing the wrong one. This is one of the problems when the hardware for a Bass VI has been appropriated from a guitar design. The Squier Bass VI might look like it's been cobbled together from bits left over from the Fender Jaguar, but all the important parts have been suitably altered to suit the nature of the instrument. The bridge on the Barracuda appears to be exactly the same as that on the Marvin Guitar and consequently the spacing here is really a bit too narrow for a Bass VI. The relatively narrow bridge also means that the outer string get further way from the edge of the fingerboard as you move up the neck. 

On the other hand the vibrato mechanism is a lot more useful than the one on the Squier. It's smoother feeling has a noticeable effect on all the strings and has less of a tendency to put the instrument out of tune.

Overall the Barracuda is (for me) easier to play than the Squier, but it really needs to have a correspondingly wider string spacing at the bridge to match that of the nut for optimum comfort.

The other interesting thing is that despite looking bigger and chunkier than the Squier Bass VI, both basses weigh the same (4.3kg on my scales) the Barracuda feels lighter on the strap and is definitely more comfortable to wear for a 2-3 hour rehearsal.

When it come to the pickups and electronics there's a lot more variation between the Barracuda and the Squier Bass VI. The Barracuda has a standard Strat-type pickup selector with the conventional 5 options. However pulling up the tone control nearest the jack socket automatically activates the neck pick up irrespective of the position of the 5-way switch. I was a bit worried that the "in-between" pickup positions might sound a bit weedy, put while there is some thinning of tone, it's all very usable and all the positions work well in a band mix. At the moment I'm favouring either the bridge or middle pickup solo'd or the bridge and neck pickups together depending on the band mix. What is much better than the Squier is that the instrument has a lot of clarity without it being at the expense of the bottom end. To that end if you want to be playing surf-style bass this could well be the bass for you. There's plenty of twang and oomph available, and at the same time should it be required.

As you can probably tell, while the Burns Barracuda still isn't ideal for me it's a lot more suitable than the Squier Bass VI. It is usable straight out of the case (it comes with a rather nice Burns branded hard case) without needing to shim the neck or replace the strings, and the bridge/vibrato unit while not being as wide as would be ideal is overall a lot more suitable for a bass instrument than the Squier. I think this bass will be fine for me at the moment, until I can afford to have something mode more specifically for my needs.

Edited July 11, 2018 by BigRedX

[Cato]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I have to say that's a lovely looking instrument, your pictures show it off better than the ones I've been looking at on the Thomann website.

I normally buy myself something new around January and next year, at the moment, I think it's going to be a Barracuda.

Edited July 11, 2018 by Cato

[BigRedX]

2 hours ago, Cato said:

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, I have to say that's a lovely looking instrument, your pictures show it off better than the ones I've been looking at on the Thomann website.

I normally buy myself something new around January and next year, at the moment, I think it's going to be a Barracuda.

You might want to re-think that time frame. I have it on good authority that the Barracudas currently in the shops are the only ones available until Burns get a new batch made next year at which point the price is likely to go up by £100...

Edited July 11, 2018 by BigRedX

[BigRedX]

I did my first gig with the Barracuda last night. On the whole it went very well. However a couple of the songs exposed the problems I'm still having with the narrow string spacing at the bridge end of the bass, and actually being able to play the correct string which mostly happens when I change picking style from all down strokes to alternating up and down.

The bass (and for some reason my playing) came in for quite a bit of praise, which was very gratifying.

Having had this bass for a couple of months now, I'm now a lot closer to knowing what I want from my ideal Bass VI:

The nut width on the Barracuda would be fine if the strings utilised the whole width better. The current width is more comfortable for me than the Squier, but a few more millimetres between the high and low E strings wouldn't go amiss and there would actually be room for this on the Barracuda with a new nut.

The string spacing at the bridge is definitely too tight. I'd be looking for Squier width as a minimum but again a little more space would be more comfortable. Not a lot I can do here. While it might be possible to get a new bridge plate made with wider spacing, that would put the high and low E strings well outside the range  of their pickups pole pieces. 

For the music I'm currently playing with this bass I'm definitely going to need more flexible pickup routing. At the moment I'm considering dual outputs and a ability to route each pickup to either output (or turn it off). However my favourite selections are bridge or bridge and middle for "guitar" sounds and middle or bridge and neck for "bass" sounds which means I might need two pickups at the bridge...

Anyway the specifications for a custom build are slowly coming together.

[BigRedX]

And a photo of the burns Barracuda in action...