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Hi, All,

I'm planning on building a short-scale hollow-body bass along the general lines of the Hofner "Beatle" violin bass, but without the violin cutouts. It's t be used exclusively plug-in, so the actual size of the body doesn't have to be large. What I'm looking for is something like the "woody" sound that's common with acoustic basses. Do you know of any sources for plans like this one?

I expect to be using off-the-shelf short-scale flatwounds.

And any recommendations on sources for parts and electronic setups would be greatly appreciated as well.

I think you are on your own John I don't know of any plans for these or sources of experience building them. Sorry man, wish I could help.

John, I suggest you check over on TalkBass forum.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I have done so. Also on MIMF. Crickets so far.

I may end up just ordering a short-scale bass kit and discarding the body and making my own.

UPDATE: TalkBass people have responded, and I have a few clues to follow now.

Well, good luck.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Well, TalkBass finally came through. No plans, but they had a few leads on available kits. I ended up buying this one:

https://www.bargainmusician.com/inc/sde ... it/94/1939

It's absurdly simple to make... the neck is preformed, with truss rod, fretboard, and frets installed. And the body is pre-made. Kind of like those Grizzly guitar kits. The instruction sheet was a general one for all the guitar kits they sell, so there was no parts list or illustrations. The parts came in a plastic bag, unsorted and unlabeled, so this may end up being the most difficult part of the assembly. The sheet does say that they'll email you a specific wiring diagram for your model upon request.

If all else fails, I'll have at least some parts on hand when I design and build one from scratch.

I finally unpacked the kit, and have to say that I was not thrilled with the electronics or the tailpiece provided. There was no provision for intonation except to slide the bridge/saddle up and down, like you would with a mandolin. And no way to adjust the height of the strings individually. I'm acquainted with all this, since I've built a few mandolins, but I'm wondering how it would work with this bass.

I'm going to go ahead and build it the way it comes, but if anybody could steer me to better setups, I'd be grateful.

For that kind of money I wouldn't have expected top notch stuff. You'll have to upgrade your hardware, etc. Essentially, you bought rough parts for your project - a place to start. Good luck, and let us know how it's going.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Will do. The finishing process will be completed by the weekend, and a week or so after that, the finish will cure. I'll put it all together and see what I've got. The nice thing about this kit is that it looks like I can replace the components with Hofner versions, and I can remake the switch/pot panel from scratch using a schematic I found on the Internet.

I build short (30" scale) basses from scratch, so finding schematics/templates hasn't been an issue for me, but agree that finding compatible hardware is tougher than for 34" scale. The hardest part is getting a bridge with narrow spacing that doesn't cost a fortune. Hipshot makes a good bridge with adjustable spacing, but I've also had good luck with the Guyker 3 point (old Gibson style) bridge. Not top of the line, but definitely serviceable, and has the old style Gibson vibe. Everything else is fairly easily sourced. Interested to see how your project turns out.

The assembly instructions were pretty bad, since they applied to all the kits they sold. They did send me, via email, a picture showing how the pickups were to be wired into the soundboard.

The kit was basically what you'd expect from Grizzly... a neck with fretboard and frets installed, a pre-made body, and a bag of parts. The body seemed well made, although I eased the edges of the binding to make it a little more comfortable. I also had to trim parts of the binding that were sticking out. I finished the neck with Tru-Oil and the body with ten coats of rattle-can lacquer from Behlen/Mohawk.

I''ve played the completed bass and it doesn't sound bad. I may replace the control panel with one made using the actual schematic of a Hofner bass if I become dissatisfied with what I have. I was happy to note that it had much of the "woody" sound that my previous bass had, being a hollow-body guitar in the area where the pickups were.

The best thing about this kit is that everything is easily upgradable, and it seems to be a good investment for the price I paid. The only upgrade I'm considering now is putting flat-wound strings on it, like Sir Paul is said to have used on his Hofner.

Flat wound strings were all they had back then. Post pix of the complete bass, if you like.

_________________
"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince