I would be able to move the f down about an inch and have the string length be 42.25. A lot of players will feel pretty comfortable playing it at that mensure.
By the way, Nick Lloyd wrote about a way to get mensure from body stop and neck length. For a bass I have here, it works out if I use:
1) neck length = from nut to where the neck joins the body.
2) body stop = top of bass (where neck and rib meet) to f nick-line.
Are 1 and 2 correct? Anyone know? where's Nick?
Did you look at the next page
http://www.upnorthstrings.com/cornerlessbasspage7 where I started carving the plate.