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Scott’s Shortbasses!
I’ve been all about short scale since my first bass build in 1998, founding and building Birdsong basses in Texas since 2004. Along the way, I applied all I’d learned to design an even SHORTER “pocket bass” that worked, and it did!
These super-short scale builds followed me far north into my own Adirondack NY workshop as a signature line.
(And I do still own and manage Birdsong, too.)
These are hand built, pro performing 25.5 scale REAL basses - very short, no reach, perfect balance, and they tune standard and travel well. There’s nothing equivalent.
“In a world full of basses hard to pick up, may these be the ones you can’t put down.” ~S.
SPORT
Big sound, amazing comfort
STYLE B
Fancier, scrolled design
AMIGO
Two pickup model
Latest client, Daniel, on his new Sport bass:
“Dear Scott, The bass arrived in perfect condition, and I am blown away by the craftsmanship and quality of the instrument. I can't put it down. Slight learning curve downsizing from my 30" Mustang, but I can tell this is my new go-to bass. It's been an amazing process!”
Dave, on his Sport, copied from Facebook:
“Early morning here in Sac, with the sun just rising over the horizon. I'm sitting on the couch with the new bass, very quietly accompanying some beautiful Celtic folk songs, trying to explore the sonic options at my disposal now that I'm not restricted to the polymer strings on the ME-bass, I'm looking for the lightest possible touch that rings true and clear, and it's such a pleasure to find the instrument responding. I don't think I'll ever tire of this. Every day something new to explore, every day, another door opens.”
A quick word on scale length…
Stringed instruments’ “scale” is the vibrating length of the string, from the nut to the bridge.
On basses:
Standard industry (Fender) spec is 34”
SHORT is usually around 30”
Birdsongs are short at a proprietary 31”
My “Shortbasses” on THIS site are 25.5”
Shorter scale results in less reach, and frets closer together.
My bass guitar journey.
Six strings have buoyed my soul; four strings have carried my ass.
I started playing guitar in 1983, bass to do some recording a couple of years later, and by ‘88 was on the road with rockabilly legend Sleepy LaBeef. At 19, that set the course for the rest of my life in making music and rolling down the highway. While the guitar was magic to me - I still feel it every time - the bass was a TOOL, more working tool than whimsy. Something that should work and sound right in any studio, hang and handle comfortably on stage even in the third set, and sit in a mix nicely, being heard without getting you fired. That rumble and clank just sucks - you need a note.
So, as my playing path morphed into designing and building the tools in the late ‘90s, the guitar world was vast - but there was something BIG missing in the bass world, a great smaller bass. That great tool that worked, one size down, as well or better. I threw all of the concepts and thoughts I’d gathered from playing A LOT, buying & selling, teaching, and doing repairs and modifications, into what would become the Cortobass and Birdsong Guitars in 2004. Short scales weren’t taken all that seriously then. Ours were.
These days I’m still managing Birdsong, but am in a mojo-full old workshop on an 1876 farmstead, building these super short “Pocket basses” on a (ahem)… smaller scale.
I can’t really go on about my favorite basses, because for much of my life, I’ve made them. I mean I designed them from that perspective to begin with! Everything else I’ve owned relates to that in my world; the beat old ‘69 Gibson is “the neck shape.” That incredible vintage P bass was “The bass I tone-patterned the Birdsong Cbass from.” My last full-scale as a player before going exclusively short was a great parts J-bass in 1999, and its memory inspired the Corto2. So it all relates to Birdsong.
Heck, my whole LIFE relates to Birdsong. The bass, this instrument I’ve never been awash in the mystique of or deep in its culture, became my life’s work to refine in my own way. Maybe that made it easier to be critical about its function. And that gave me the career no other part of music did. That brought me the adventure of the past 25 years and floated it, and all of that added up to all of this, here and now.
If you’re young and a road band asks you “Hey - do you know any bass players?” Say yes, and get in the van. That road goes somewhere.
Scott B.
“North country” Adirondacks
2025