Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Yellowbelly Flatt on July 2, 2013 at 8:38pm

As a bass player of many years, I've never thought of using or building an 8 string bass - or more accurately a 4 course bass.

The extra width of the neck/finger board would make playing tricky in my opinion and the added stress on any neck/body joint would be something to be addressed.

Will you be tuning the strings like a mandolin i.e.the two adjacent strings will match each other or will you be using octave tuning?  What scale length might you use?

Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on July 2, 2013 at 10:27pm

Yeah theyve been made plenty.  John Paul Jones is a guy who comes to mind, plays em a lot.  Most pro bassists probably have one or two. the extra string is pretty much always an octave like a 12 string guitar tho, not a unison like a mando etc..

pretty useful in trios etc i guess when the bass wants to wear a rhythm guitar hat as well

Permalink Reply by CrocBite on July 3, 2013 at 2:40am

Thanks for the quick response, guys.
I had been curious about this kinda thing, but now someone else is asking if I can build something like this. They are thinking a full 34" scale.
I'm tempted to build it, especially knowing now that there is precedent.
Think any stress on the neck/body joint could be remedied with a through-style neck?

As a mando fan, I was initially thinking matched pairs. But the octave pairing makes a lot more sense to me now. At least the WHY of if. I've never tuned anything with octave pairs. I did build a pretty sweet mandocello for a guy, and the paired .074 strings were quite playable... Just prone to rattling if you rocked it too hard. That was the source of my trepidation using .100s paired.

Permalink Reply by The Phrygian Kid on July 3, 2013 at 3:20pm

All the ones I've seen, every other tuner is a guitar tuner if you catch my drift, so you're kinda stuck with the octaving..
I've made a lot of eight string guitars, essentially a 12 string with the high unisons clipped, and I'm just recently thinking about a 12 string one, but going lower into bass territory rather than up to where octaving isn't possible

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-string_bass_guitar

Permalink Reply by CrocBite on July 3, 2013 at 4:13pm

holy geez, what a freak! i love it, now i'm DEFINITELY building one.

Permalink Reply by eK on July 9, 2013 at 1:38am

Hamer Guitars did something called the "Hamer Quad" which had 12 strings. One standard bass string and two guitar strings an octave up per note.

Lots more on this weird dog can be found here.

I've played a few 8-strings in my time although I never owned one. Octave and suboctave pedals are sooooo much easier and less expensive. But that said, the "eights" are amazingly easy to play. Pick works better than fingers IMHO but Vic Wooten (are we surprised?) does slapping and popping on them and gets it to work, so your mileage may vary.

Check out JustNick's demo of an Earthquaker Organizer pedal if you want to see how far some of these octave type pedals have come. Video here.