That looks sweet.

You could get yourself a set of Bass VI strings, they have the regular guitar-size ball ends.

benjaminbunny wrote:It now has 6 strings and temporary cardbooard pickguard

I put a "temporary" cardboard scratchplate on one of my guitars about 7 years ago, still going strong. Funnily enough that guitar is also a makeshift baritone. I'm going to get some improvements made in the not too distant future but I can't decide whether or not to replace the guard. Something sturdier would be nice but I've grown fond of how it looks/feels...

here is a crappy camera phone picture of my homegrown baritone. Crap epiphone strat copy body, neck routed out to accept the danelectro baritone neck.

MRoyce wrote:That looks sweet.

You could get yourself a set of Bass VI strings, they have the regular guitar-size ball ends.

They're also so heavy that you'd have to recut the nut, remember.

Also, you may find that if you want to go to too big of a gauge, you can't fit the lowest string through the hole in a guitar tuner; you need a bass tuner. One set of baritone strings I bought, with an 80 for the lowest string, has this problem. The 70's I've used before have been fine. I like the 80 though, especially because we have one song where I use a "drop-D" style tuning, dropping the lowest string down to a G from the A it's normally tuned to.

I'm leaning really heavily towards having a new instrument built, with somewhere between a 27" and 28" scale. I'm trying to get a sense of what neck width I want, too. I'm thinking something about the same as my Electrical baritone. So, right around the same as a classical acoustic. This one will be a 10-string though, with the two lowest strings having octave strings, and the two highest being doubles like my Electrical. This one will be tuned C-to-C, although I might mess around with alternate tuning schemes in that general range.

The great irony of this whole plan is that I'm making a concerted effort right now to learn how to play without looking at my fret hand. This would be yet another totally different scale length to get used to.

i measured today my univox hi-flyer bass. the width at the nut is about 41 mm. do you guys think that it's worth to turn it into a baritone?
- adding two tuners
- new nut
- guitar bridge
- guitar pickups ( the pickups are the exact same size as guitar humbuckers, so it would be easy as pie ).

something that i'm missing

ps: my idea is to make basically a bass vi. for some insane reason, they sell strings for fender bass vi here. will a standard guitar bridge work?

interesting.
in the fender bass vi specs, it says the width at nut is 38mm.
http://www.fender.com/customshop/instru ... ass+VI+NOS

Benny, did you finish the restoration on it?

yes, the body is restored, bought another pickup, etc. but i think that having a bass vi, compared to just a short-scale bass is a better idea.

Benny wrote:yes, the body is restored, bought another pickup, etc. but i think that having a bass vi, compared to just a short-scale bass is a better idea.

I agree. :)