Doug, I'm playing in open G. I use a full size martin guitar temp for my necks.

Doug,

just saw your pics, so you know as much about weedwacker as it do.... Can you use regular tuners on PU?.... yes, if they are bass tuners.... to get low "E", you're working with some big diameters, even bass tuners often have to be drilled out. Regular guitar tuners don't have enough meat to handle the job.... PU is ver abrasion resistant, so if you do have 1/2 decent job of smoothing the edges you won't be cutting the string, like say if it was nylon....

the best,

Sam

Hi Doug,

ah, I went as short a 25" inches with steel, but the strings were getting awfully sloppy. For me the attractive thing about the poly strings is they are easy on the fingers and that have a real old timey thump-thump upright bass sound. I don't know if you ever messed around with an Ashbory Bass (short scale strung with surgical tubing, ca 1980's), but they were great, except that you had to use talc powder to make the strings playable. Don't have that problem with the PU. I have one that I've played weekly with a group and used for about 1/3 of my solo set for over 5 months and it's going strong, no problems...

I would say that PU is happiest played fretless. it lends itself to bends and even some "slap" stuff like an old upright.

Another way to go would be weedwacker line. It's hard to get low "E" shorter than 30" because it gets stiff in the diameters needed to reach that low... but, if you can stand low "A" you could have a real playable bass with weedwacker line as short as 22" scale....

hope that helps,

Sam