Home
Page | Contact 010815 Xtra Short Scale Bass 
Body
Style |
Body
Wood |
Neck
Wood |
Fbd.
Wood |
Scale |
Tuners |
Frets |
Pickups |
Switching |
Neck
Joint |
Strings |
Weight |
Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
ZT B4 -XSS |
Soft Maple Thinline, |
Maple |
Pau Ferro |
26" |
Klusson Vintage |
24 Jumbo |
Reproduction of the First Addition Precision Bass (Telecaster Bass) |
Volume & Tone |
Spiked |
ZOG B4-XSS |
6.2 lb |
$ Prototype |
Bridge plate - custom made with 52mm string spread (compared to the 60mm of conventional Fender Precession basses)
Depending on how much you know about guitars and basses, will determine to what extent you recognize the profound innovation exemplified by this instrument.
Here is the innovation and why. This is a fully functioning bass guitar and it changes everything. It changes how you view basses, What you believed basses look like. What you thought basses were. How you thought basses should be played. Everything you have ever known or believed a bass guitar is and should be is debunked and refuted by this instrument and others like it, which will follow. The unknowledgeable, the untechincal, the ignorant will not comprehend it. How could they?
What makes this a landmark and a monumental bass, is the mere fact that it actually works on a guitar scale. There is literally no longer any reason for a bass to have such a longer scale than a guitar to make it work.
Are you confused? You don't get it? You are saying, why not just put a bass string on a guitar? What's the big deal dude?
Well if that is what you think, then you are an bonafied idiot.
Let me spoon feed you and educate you. Normal bass strings are totally useless on such a short scale for a bass (a guitar scale). Its not that the tension is too low, I can certainly design higher tension bass string selectively to arrive at a perfectly Optimized bass set, as I did for my regular Zachary Optimum Gauges bass sets. However, on a 26" guitar scale, compared to the standard 34" bass scale, traditionally designed bass strings do not work AT ALL, even if the tension is made to be correct and optimized. Traditionally designed bass strings simply do not function on a shorter scale. This is the only reason you now basses to be what they are with their long necks. Basses are long, as you know them, purely because of the limitations of the strings. Leo Fender did not know anything about strings, so he made a long instrument to function with the strings; instead of making strings to function with the instrument. You get it?
Its not even that the intonation is off, Nothing to do with intonation. Intonation would be fine if you could actually decipher the fundamental note, but you can't as you play up the neck the fundamental note progressively disappears when using conventional bass strings. The construction of traditional bass strings the core and the wrap design, simply will not produce a true tone. The actual note is literally is obscured as the string is played up the neck, confounded by a serious of simultaneous overtones that makes the instrument sound totally gross in the two lower strings; the E and A strings. Physically these strings simply do not function.
The open string may be marginally acceptable but incrementally as you play the E and A strings up the neck it gets to the point at the 12th fret that the fundamental tone of the note is almost obscured by the ugliest overtones you ever heard and the strings sound very unattractive and nebulous in the note they are producing at any fret location. This instrument at 26" scale is gross sounding instrument with conventional bass strings, even the standard ZOG bass string sets, which of course changed the nature of conventional bass guitars forever.
So I had to design totally very unique, different and innovative bass strings not only to function on a guitar scale but to function perfectly on a guitar scale. The two crucial strings are the low E and A strings. These must be a unique construction and design. The D and G strings are fine, made with conventional construction. The D and G strings are simply Optimized ZOG guitar strings, Optimized to the lower specially designed ZOG XSS bass strings. So what you get is a perfectly optimized ZOG XSS bass set.
So, here you have it. What does all this mean and why am I so excited about this instrument?
I think you can already guess.
A fully functioning bass, which no longer has to be the awkward and unplayable conventional and traditional bass scale. This is a major departure from the world as you knew it. This not only changes the look of the instrument. It totally changes the feel of the bass and most importantly it changes the whole playing technique of the bass.
Think about it.
As much as bass virtuosos have mastered their bass, as much as they have become accustomed to what, up to now, they thought a bass must look like, should feel like and should play like, as much as they accepted the limitations and the intrinsic nature of a bass, this extra short scale (XSS) bass design will upset their whole world. Did you bass players even comprehend how limited your instrument is? You never even thought of it because you are not perceptive and take whatever society feeds you. You are fundamentally conformists, traditionalists and non-individualists. Your tattoos and piercings are only a desperate attempt at faking uniqueness and individuality but do not make you so.
Its another matter if this instrument will be accepted or not. I am sure at first it will or not or only in a minor way. I suppose it does not have the "right" look for what they conceive a bass player should look like.
But think about it.
Why would bass players, virtuosos, amateurs or anyone in between want to limit themselves.
You can keep playing those long, largely unplayable necks, which limit your technical palate or you can open up a whole new world to yourself. A world which is available to all guitar players, but was never available to bass players.
If you are a guitar player, who has periodically picked up a bass, you know how limiting the bass is compared to the guitar. You cannot really play chords on a bass, you cannot really use a pick, your reach and thus your playability is restricted by the long neck, Just think of how a whole new world of possibilities and options will be available to you as a bass player. Now any bass player will be able to use the same technique and do anything that he or she had done on a guitar.
Wouldn't you be totally curious what a virtuoso bass player or a virtuosos guitar player can do on an Xtra Short Scale bass?
Be prepared to be blown away.
This is why you are looking at an absolute landmark instrument on this page.
So now you know.
I know what you are thinking, even if you have only marginal intelligence. Why would 't every guitar player own a Zachary XSS bass? Its ludicrous not to. Also, why would 't every bass player own and play a Zachary ZSS bass and unlock the door to a whole new world of playing experience and creative and technical possibilities.
I know exactly what will happen. Bass players at first will shun this XSS bass but when guitar players pick it up and blow the bass players away with what they can do on this XSS, bass players will be nothing short of demoralized. As far as I can predict, bass playing as you know it is finished, null and void.
I was one of these guitar players who never felt comfortable on a traditional bass, I felt restricted and thus bored with what I could do with it. I wanted to be able to do all the things I can do on guitar. My whole technical pallet was severely restricted. I quickly got bored playing a bass and only picked it up when I absolutely had to. The XSS bass changes all that and every time I pick it up, I become addicted to it. I cannot put it down. Its like my guitar playing experience has just been doubled in magnitude.
You stupid fuckers did not take notice of my previous lead-up to this XSS bass; the Zachary guitar with its low E string substituted with this specially designed XSS bass string and played an octave lower. That was a precursor to this full blows XSS bass and the "double bass guitar tuning setup" on a guitar is also a milestone and something you should have reacted to with excitement. I suppose if you are not force-fed products by corporate commercialism, you are not perceptive and intelligent enough to notice on your own.
I still have hope for you and I will still bring you the most amazing innovations, with absolutely no corporate promotion, hype or support. I am hoping some of you do have the intelligence to recognize my work; the few guitar and bass players who are not fighting cancer and are left in this nasty world of smart phones and sub-humans.
Amazing stuff people! This changes everything. I am floored myself.
5
Zachary Precision bass, Telecaster bass, Fender bass, 1951 Fender Precision bass short scale bass guitar
