My daughter Jenny has been playing my bass guitar for some time. Before we put our family band back together she gigged with some local rockers with the Squier Precision bass I had bought her as a Christmas gift.  But she found her Squire didn’t compare to my 1982 Vantage VP820B bass. I bought my Vantage nearly new, and never seriously looked at another. Heavy walnut body, high output humbuckers, long-scale set maple neck, flat wound strings, Gotoh tuners. That old bad boy is one boomin’ bass.

As much as Jenny loves the sound and feel of my Vantage bass, it was becoming a problem for her.  She complained about the weight and balance.  Her hands are just too small for a 34″ neck, and she was having issues with cramping at gigs.  She also was “forgetting” to put some of my favorite songs in our set lists that required her to do a lot of octaves and bars, because the reach was just too difficult for her.

We set out to find a decent quality short-scale (30″) bass guitar for her that was not crazy expensive.  It was a challenge.  Guitar manufacturers now offer similar looking basses in a variety of components and qualities, generally based on the nation of manufacture.  Typically an Asian guitar these days is going to be somewhat cheaply made compared to an American or German model.

Epiphone makes several short-scale basses.  The big-box dealers will usually steer short-scale customers to the Gibson or Epiphone SG bass.  The made-in-Asia Epiphone surprisingly has better output and tone than the pricey American Gibson, but the lesser workmanship and quality are reflected in the much lower price.  So neither was a great choice.  The Asian Hofner viola bass looks like the expensive German one (McCartney’s choice) but doesn’t sound great.  The Epiphone viola copy had better output and tone, but still had that “made in Indonesia” flimsiness.

Eastwood Guitars from Canada offers a bunch of short-scale basses in a variety of styles and with all kinds of features and options.  Most of their models are copies of popular vintage basses. It seems like a great company and their selection is very tempting.  But they are copies.  Made in China.  And they don’t offer much history.

Then we discovered Fender’s new version of their short-scale bass, the Mustang, and Jenny took a shine to it right away.  She loved the shallow, lighter well-balanced body (seems to fit the female form) and the Fender C-shaped 30″ neck fit her girly hands nicely.  It seems to be sturdily made (in Mexico) and appears to satisfy her fashion sense better than the odd-looking viola models.

The short-scale surf-green Mustang is definitely cute, but I know it won’t have the take-no-prisoners bottom end that my old long-scale Vantage has.  We will tweak our SWG amp with GK 4×10 cab to compensate for the PJ single coil pickups.

If Jenny puts “Two Tickets to Paradise” back in our set list and doesn’t have to massage her hands between sets, we will know buying the Mustang was a good move.

Tom Balek
Caution! Blind Driver