Doing Things Wrong

Uke-Scale Bass

Basses built with a uke scale length of 21 inches.


This bass is a 21" scale, with a piezo saddle mounted in an adjustable bridge. The soundhole is just for looks. The strings are metal-wound Kalas. The fretboard is cut out of the ugliest piece of wood I ever received. For such a small neck, I managed to cut around most of the ugly, and the result isn't half bad.


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It's time to glue up some necks. First I radius-sanded the fretboards to 12 inches with my DIY sanding block. The StewMac board started with a 16" radius, which was easy to do. The other board started flat and was a lot of work to do entirely by sanding, not to mention a mess of nasty rosewood dust. For a flat board, better to rough it out with a router, and then finish by sanding. I'm not much of a cook, but the little kitchen timer has a thousand uses.