Turns out that Leprechauns do play bass!
Tombo made Crystal Bass-GY 19" scale Bass, late '60s

WILD.

1) how do you find strings for that scale length?

2) even if you could, they would have to be wildly thick to hit a 41Hz low E

3) Seems like a tenor guitar is in order

- Yeah good point. These seem to be light gauge flatwound bass strings that have been shortened at the ball end. The flat wind has been soldered down then the string cut leaving enough for the ball to be re-attached, twisted and, again, soldered. Pretty clever... or maybe these are the original strings and you could buy them from Tombo in the day.
It has definitely always been a bass.
I did put up a short demo of sorts here:



Live from the grott!

...and then there is this!
'Tallchris' said a while back: " Always love the guitars that look like someone closed their eyes and tried to draw a Mosrite from memory and then just said fuck it, that's the guitar."
Well this is definitely the one that said fuck it!
Deffo 'Burns' influence in this case.

Created in Japan, tweaked a tad in NZ. As is, it actually plays rather nicely - it didn't when I got it. There was/is a provision to have the bridge ahead of the 'bridge' pickup for some freaky juju sounds but it throws all the frets on the neck way out. Mind you at that point frets probably become a tad redundant.

2 x Vol, Master tone, rotary 3-way and an automotive on/off kill switch.

I love it!

Good GOD man.

look i'm a guitar

Garth wrote: Sat Oct 21, 2023 12:13 pm
look i'm a guitar

Ha Ha I know! What I love is that having cut out the body, (apparently with a hand held fret saw), he/she went..." Yup, that's about what I wanted" and carried on!
GENIUS!..... of a sort.

That thing looks incredible.

This is what it looked like when I got it. Maybe I should have left it alone but it was unplayable even with a bridge put on it between the pickups. Of course...... 'unplayable' is a somewhat relative term IMO.
That's just a tail block behind the back pickup, not a bridge. The bridge was where the two anchor plugs are between the pickups which in turn meant that the thing could not be tuned in any conventional way. I do love the pick-guard but!

Holy hell that looks rad! Any hard case for that would have to be absurdly huge!