The smallest bass in the world thanks to Kemp Strings?

Edit for New Year 2023: A version of these strings has been designed by Kemp Strings and released for 18 inch for Low E Tuning (for Miezo & X3M 18″ basses) at https://www.mauriziouberbasses.com/merchandise

Has Kemp Strings enabled the development of the shortest full range steel strung bass guitar instrument ever? Listen using headphones or a decent sound system to hear the full range. Let us know if you know of another 16 inch scale length bass that can play proper bass guitar low E pitch (and even drop D a whole tone below that in the video below). These pitches are normally seen on instruments well over twice as long (34 inch scale length)!

The MüB Miezo by Maurizio Über Basses is an awesome ultra compact 16 inch scale length instrument and normally has a bottom note of B a perfect fifth above normal bass guitar low E. The MüB philiosophy is “Custom Like No Other” and that’s a perfect match for our methods here at Kemp Strings! Enter bassist Zeke Kyoku, who wanted his custom order MüB Miezo to reach the low notes so emailed info@kempstrings.com to see how low we could go. We designed the strings according to specifications supplied by Maurizio Caduto at Maurizio Über Basses and sent them to him in Malaysia where they were fitted onto the instrument. The instrument is now with Zeke in the USA as you can see in the video at the top of this post!

The resulting instrument is a georgeous diminuitive beast that plays E1, A1, D2, G2, C3, F3 using gauges 0.210, 0.155, 0.117, 0.086, 0.065, 0.048. It can even manage D1 as seen in the video above. This works with a really solid sense of pitch thanks to careful selection of cores and windings and appropiate customised use of tapering and using design principles set out in Dr Jonathan Kemp’s published papers on lumped string design and pitch sensitivity.

For custom string enquiries email info@kempstrings.com.