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Short Scale Bass from Guitar (Les Paul)?


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I know Strat basses have been a bit of a “thing“, wondering if anyone's done a Les Paul (copy obviously!) as a bass? 

I'm thinking keeping the same scale as the guitar with bridge in the same pos. thereby keeping the frets in the correct place, with perhaps a trapeze tailpiece.. Some of the mega cheapo 70s basses as I recall were simply the stock guitar husk fitted out as a bass.  Obviously if you shifted the bridge back to make say a 30" scale the frets would have to go entirely, or be refretted with a revised lay out. 

Interested to hear if any of you guys have perpetrated anything similar... 

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A 24.75" scale bass?  Heresy, I say! ;)

 

I've never done such a thing, nor ever felt a desire to do so.  Am in the opposite camp of ridiculousness, my Epiphone Les Paul Standard bass is a full 34" scale neck grafted onto a regular, Les Paul body.  Small body, daft long neck vibes.  First fret is about an inch further away relative to where a P bass et al would be as a result.  Feels very "rock" when playing at the first fret with that little bit extra reach required.

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The Gibson guitar scale is a tad shorter than the Fender strat scale I believe..

.. it's a very long time ago but the very first bass I ever had was one of those Jap cheapos and  it was certainly a very short necked thing, I'd think one of those "shall we make it a guitar or bass" designs. 

I've had a look on 'tinternet and seems a few on talk bass in the US have done "make a bass from a les paul guitar" Conversions which have worked. I'll do a bit more research and take a view. 

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I like very short scale stuff but the difficulty I find is in finding suitable strings. If you can keep it around 30” string choice is better. That’ll be why one of pictures shows a Les Paul with the strings anchored at the rear of the bass but the bridge in the normal position, I guess. 

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The odd things I saw on TB they seem to be debating strings a fair bit, if I did one of these I'd use a tailpiece, which would use up a bit of extra length of string as supplied.

I'd keep the existing git. scale length tho and bridge at the same point it is now, as I'd want to use the existing fret layout, I don't want a fret less and I'm not going to be creating a new fretboard from scratch!  

I found pics of this semi acoustic that someone switched from Guitar to bass which uses a tapiece and floating hofner type bridge, which aparrently works well. plus another epiphone  LP done likewise 

IMG_20230403_203408.jpg

IMG_20230403_203330.jpg

IMG_20230403_203303.jpg

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