Stagg Acoustic Bass

Right here, we have a Stagg acoustic bass with cutaway, active piezo electronics, and short scale length (30"). I bought her for more than I should have considering what I quickly came to feel about playing her. I was working three weeks on, one week off out of town for a while and needed a light weight and easily portable instrument for practice. I thought, I'll get an acoustic! Its self contained, doesn't get loud enough to bother the renters next door in those paper thin walled excuses for hotels, and will be a different experience musically for me as I had never really sat down with one before. Well, its hard to find any ABGs in music stores, much less two different ones to choose from. I needed my fix and made a hasty impulse buy on what I felt to be a comfortable, thumpy, pretty instrument.
A month later, it collected dust. The neck was chunky, the action was high, the tuning machines sucked, and the under saddle piezo caught more noise than notes. She sat unloved for nearly a year...

I thought I would sell her, but what was the point? Give her misery to another gullible fiend? Besides, she was so pretty and had some good thump and the short scale was a nice change...
So, I decided to take a chance and do my first bass mod. That is, jerk her frets out. Her scale is short, so the fingers have less travel between notes, therefor less stretching for notes and more precision (theoretically). I had only in passing played fretless, but it intrigued me. Enough! I got to work.

I was too rough on her and probably should have heated the fret wire before I yanked them out, but whatever. Filled the slots with wood filler, finished and slapped some flatwounds on her. I'll be damned if it wasn't a new life for her! By removing the tall frets, the truss rod was able to straighten out the neck to a very comfortable action all the way up the board. I removed the piezo from the bridge to help drop the action and sanded a little off the saddle and nut.


Played so sweet, though quietly for the longest time without a pickup until I did some more research. Apparently, the piezoelectric element found in smoke alarms and other similar devices that buzz really fuckin' loud and the piezoelectric element found in acoustic instruments is the same damned thing. I went to Radio Shack and bought a $2 piezo buzzer, 108 db I think, and removed the element. Look! A pickup! I was going to experiment with placing it in different areas to affect tone, but all that ended up happening in the installation was attatching a 1/4" piece of foam to the back and gluing that under the bridge in the body. I don't even remember what side of the bridge was favored. One of the few moments in my life I was pleased with something immediately! I knew I'd better not touch it again or my curse would surely catch up to me.

Fretless is a different animal. It requires really listening to yourself to properly intonate the notes. I feel the short scale really helps with this, though I think a long scale wouldn't be much more difficult to play with practice. Your fingers also mute the strings much more than frets do, so this girl is practice only unless amplified for sure. I don't care; she's fun to play and sounds nice with some D'Addario Chromes on her.

I'm still not crazy about the tuning machines, though. They slip which makes tuning more of a chore than it should be and they are stiff to boot. That's cool, though. I haven't replaced tuners before so that will be a nice project to look forward to. For now, I'm pleased with her.