The 0th octave club! (For those of us who tune below C1)

[Hollowway]

FYI, Skip and the gang are resurrecting the Quake bass for NAMM. Finally! I need to get one and shoot for way lower than F#0. I know, I know, if I play that low I should just get a 128 foot pipe organ. But, nevertheless, I am going to buy one and piss people off with my desire to tune below F#0. I'm not sure how much lower, but my F#0 sounds awesome at 37", so who knows!

 

[bostjan]

128 foot scale length?! But does it djent? [audience groans at tired joke]

If there was an affordable import version of the Quake, I think we'd have a minor revolution in subcontra playing.

The funny things about 37", to me, are that a) it doesn't feel like any more of a stretch than 35", and b) I don't really feel like I can tune that much lower and still get good results. I was already doing F0 at 35". F0 at 37" with better pickups and electronics sounds better, but E0 still sounds like muck to my ears. Maybe I haven't reached a good optimum for string gauge yet... but that's what leads me to think that maybe the Quake would just be another small incremental improvement in tone. Double basses are tuned E1 and have a ~43" scale length. Why can't there be an electric bass with a >43" scale length?!

 

[ixlramp]

The Quake with a Kalium .266 allows the G#00 2 strings below F#0.

As far as i know Skip is working on electric upright basses with scales up to 60", no idea if one will be ready for NAMM, i'm hoping. That scale will allow the sub-10Hz D#00 below G#00. However his main stated intent with extreme scales is how they improve non-extreme low notes such as standard low B, by allowing a much lower gauge.

An idea i like is to use extreme scale lengths for tapping instruments where you don't need to reach near the bridge at all. The scale length also compensates for the usually unusable open string and first fret due to a string damper. It also allows for a longer section of string to be damped, without loosing too much usable scale length.

 

[bostjan]

The Quake with a Kalium .266 allows the G#00 2 strings below F#0.

As far as i know Skip is working on electric upright basses with scales up to 60", no idea if one will be ready for NAMM, i'm hoping. That scale will allow the sub-10Hz D#00 below G#00. However his main stated intent with extreme scales is how they improve non-extreme low notes such as standard low B, by allowing a much lower gauge.

An idea i like is to use extreme scale lengths for tapping instruments where you don't need to reach near the bridge at all. The scale length also compensates for the usually unusable open string and first fret due to a string damper. It also allows for a longer section of string to be damped, without loosing too much usable scale length.

D#00 at 39.5" with a 0.266:

Tension - 19.7 N (this is really low tension for a bass, compare with E1 with a 0.100" on a 34" scale standard bass at 36.9 N)
Inharmonicity in the first harmonic - 509% (!) (compare with E1 @ 0.100" diameter on 34" scale at 7%)

I'd have to try it, but that does not look promising to me.

 

[ixlramp]

Just to clarify, D#00 is intended for the 60" scale instrument.

 

[LordCashew]

If there was an affordable import version of the Quake, I think we'd have a minor revolution in subcontra playing.

That's an intriguing idea. I imagine that if Skip wanted to take the time to work on an import Quake with WMI, something pretty cool could happen. I don't know if there's enough demand to make that process worthwhile, though...

 

[GunpointMetal]

Rondo makes a FF 5-string bass with a 37" bottom end. Looks pretty cool except for the guitar-like rail pickups. Kinda wanna get wanna and go for A00.

 

[idunno]

just wanna say I read the whole thread and everyone had something awesome to contribute and ill be grabbing a few of your albums soon.
The lowest ive gone was G0 with my MTD kingston bass. working on getting guitars ultra low now.

quick question, I was thinking of grabbing some sort of garbage cheap 5 string bass, adding a tuner or two and new nut and new bridge then sticking thinner strings on it and shooting for super low. basically a 34" scale baritone 6-7 string guitar of sorts lol. I feel like ive seen this done once before somewhere. Any thoughts?


Also, ive built several guitars and I could technically just man up make the proper instrument but I can get a used rogue/pawnshop bass for like 100$ and I have all the other parts lying around besides super long strings. kinda just a fun experiment thing

 

[Hollowway]

Yeah, you could do that, but the longer the scale length the higher the tension needed to combat the inherent floppiness of the longer length. In other words, stringing a bass as a guitar won't necessarily let you go lower than a bass, pitch-wise.

And speaking of Quakes, you guys should all know that the new Quakes are coming out at NAMM. And they start at $2000. Which is expensive, but cheaper than the last iteration.

 

[ixlramp]

> quick question, I was thinking of grabbing some sort of garbage cheap 5 string bass, adding a tuner or two and new nut and new bridge then sticking thinner strings on it and shooting for super low. basically a 34" scale baritone 6-7 string guitar of sorts lol. I feel like ive seen this done once before somewhere. Any thoughts?

It works well, but best to first experiment by restringing a bass to see if you like it, before converting string count.
Most of my basses are restrung to baritone pitch with low tension (15-25 pounds) thin strings.

> the longer the scale length the higher the tension needed to combat the inherent floppiness of the longer length.

Yes, but not much more tension is needed. I realised that perceived tension and effort needed to fret a note falls with scale length, which compensates for the higher absolute tension needed, the result is a similar feel at a higher absolute tension.
Essentially, it is still worth using a longer scale length to go lower and become clearer.

Kalium's new Quakes at $2000 seems a good price for something so special. Apparently Skip had the basic rough instruments made by someone else and will be finishing them off himself.

 

[Hollowway]

Yes, but not much more tension is needed. I realised that perceived tension and effort needed to fret a note falls with scale length, which compensates for the higher absolute tension needed, the result is a similar feel at a higher absolute tension.
Essentially, it is still worth using a longer scale length to go lower and become clearer.

Yeah, that's a much better way of stating it. It's not the real tension, but I don't know if there's a technical term. But for me I find that 27-28" is the sweet spot for F#1. For C#1, interestingly, I want to go longer than 30".

For bass lengths, I've only experimented with F#0 at 37". It will be interesting to see what the Quake feels like at 39.5". For both the F#0 and the C#0.

 

[Da Butt Bandit]

I've been trawling through this thread for a while, and I don't know if you guys have seen this but it's gotten me pretty inspired: https://youtu.be/ua-f0ypVbPA?t=52 and https://youtu.be/ua-f0ypVbPA?t=150
Ever since I heard Meshuggah's Spasm I've been tuning down to Bb0 on a 25.5" 7, call me crazy for the scale/number of strings.

EDIT: Tuning in the video is down to A0, which is why I put it here.