Originally Posted by
Elmeaux
Thought about that after I posted. Did some measuring on my 34 and 35" scale basses, as well as my 43" scale upright.. On the 34" Tobias, it is about 48mm from the nut to the middle of the first fret. On the 35" MTD it appears to be just over 49mm. When I measured the first fret distance on my 34" Fender P, with 21 frets, it was also just about 48mm. My NXT upright has a 43" scale with 24 fretting locations and the first position distance is a whopping 60mm.
Scale is determined by measuring the distance from the nut to the 12th fret and doubling that distance. The total free length of the strings (nut to bridge) is usually just slightly more than the scale length.
On a 34" scale bass that measurement would be 17", so 12 fret spaces fit into 17". On a 35" scale bass, it would be 17.5", so 12 frets fit into a 17.5" length (so, longer fret intervals). Basses with the same scale length will have 12 frets in the same nut to 12th fret distance, so the same fret interval distance. Going from 20 or 21 frets to 24 frets on the same scale bass has no impact on the fret interval. It simply means that the neck extends further down towards the bridge to accommodate the additional frets.
When I measured my 34" scale basses, the fingerboard on the 24 fret Tobias was 25.5" long, while the fingerboard on the 20 fret Fender was only 23 5/8" long. The fret intervals for the first 20 frets was identical. The fingerboard on my 35" scale, 24 fret position MTD bass was 26.2" long but the fretting location intervals were larger.
A short scale bass (eg. 30" scale) would have the same 12 frets over a 15" distance, considerably closer intervals than a 34" scale bass.
So, to answer my own issue, the number of frets on a bass does not affect fret interval distance, but scale length does.
What was the scale length on the original bass you were using? It must have been more than the 34" scale on the Bongo if the fret spacing on the Bongo is shorter.
Sometimes a thick neck will make it feel like the fret distances are larger, simply because you have to reach around a larger hunk of wood to reach the frets.
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Steinberger NXT5 EUB, MTD 535 Fretless, Tobias Killer B6, 72 Fender Precision
Eden WT500, WTX1000N & WP100, QSC PL230
Eden D410XLT, D410XST, 215, Fender Bassman 10
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