Yes @Jazzbass19, like you I have small hands and I tried a Fender Mustang bass a couple of times. I love the overall look and they sound great (plus I love Tina Weymouth from Talking Heads who is known to play short-scale from time to time) but I just didn’t take to the Mustang enough to make the purchase. I’m at an intermediate level in terms of playing ability so I still struggle with fretting songs that require a lot of shifting. However, I brought a used Squire Jazz bass almost three weeks ago and stretching my left hand isn’t a huge challenge anymore. My fretting hand is more comfortable now after practicing at least six times a week. @JoshFossgreen offers excellent advice on short-shifting which is a great help.
So, me and my small hands decided to pick up one of these Ibanez Micros over the weekend at the local guitar center. There quite inexpensive, I am not expecting the world out of this instrument, but so far seems to be pretty well constructed and the tone over all seems decent, but that is my untrained ear speaking as well.
I do feel like I have a lot more control now, with a better grasp of the neck, and easier access to the frets. It also weighs less, and since I added a new and padded strap I feel like I can stand and practice on this for longer periods of time.
Since I am still very new to bass, I have to look down the neck most of the time to make sure my hands are fretting in the correct positions, as that muscle memory is not there yet. But this does seem to give some relief to the strain of the pinky finger with a little less distance to travel and stretch. I am hoping this will make my day to day practice easier and eventually once i master it, move back up to a full scale at some point.
Those look like great guitars to me despite being inexpensive. I posted a vid in another thread where one of those compared tone-wise really well to an ESP shorty. ESP makes pretty high end guitars.
When you’re just starting out on this journey it’s easy to be intimidated or discouraged by some aspects that seem like big problems, no matter who the experienced player is that tells you you can overcome it. Small hands, or more accurately and encompassingly, minimal finger stretch/span is one of the more intimidating obstacles so anything you can do that makes you feel better early on is a good thing. Eventually you will find you can do more than you thought, but having a way through the early stages is great. I don’t think you’d consider my hands small or my fingers short, but I had trouble to begin with because my fingers simply weren’t flexible enough. Having a teacher with such long flexible fingers as Josh only makes you feel you’re disadvantaged, but I’m sure you’ve seen the videos shared of people with hands that are child-sized and yet they absolutely own their bass.
Glad you’ve found an instrument that gives you the control and confidence to progress.
Thanks for sharing this video. I’ve been finding myself with some wrist pain lately, I think because I’m trying to maintain what I’ve been told is good technique (fingers always parallel with frets, thumb between the index and middle, etc), but that consistently gives my wrist a crazy angle, no matter how my bass is positioned. It was nice to hear this guy say that isn’t completely necessary, and can lead to issues in low and high positions.
Given a little test playing some scales this feels immediately better. It does seem to drastically reduce the distance I can stretch my fingers though, so I guess I’ll have to start getting serious about practicing my micro-shifting (feels a little more macro on the low end).
Unfortunately it’s also looking like I’m going to need to totally rethink how I’ve been playing. Even with simple fretting exercises I’m finding that I really need to think about how I’m using my fingers and shifting my hand position in order to avoid going back to a bad wrist angle. Almost feels like I’m starting over again. But I’d rather be able to continue playing bass and have to re-learn some things than get an injury that prevents me from playing entirely.
