Pecanic Tailpiece

[bobwall]

I tune my afterlength, and it does do something, at least on my bass. I tune it to a 5th. There was one symphony rehersal that my bass felt "off," and I just idly plucked the afterlength and noticed it was not at a 5th. I changed it and there was an enormous difference - volume went drastically up, it was much easier to get a great tone, etc. I have a witness - my stand mate watched me do it and said that the entire nature of the tone became much "warmer" and the volume went way up. I didn't even tell him what I was doing - he just exclaimed after I was done. I am certain it has an effect. I did it by putting pressure up or down on my bridge just around each string.

Here's my take on it, though - you're not really "tuning" the afterlength alone - you're tuning the nut to bridge length, too, which is pretty important - scale length has a pretty measurable effect on sound. It seems to me that every bass has a scale length (or a "tuning") that it is most resonant at - mine seems to be really really happy when the afterlength sounds at 2 octaves and a 5th above the forelength. Other basses I'm sure are very different. I'm sure it's not a placebo - I can tell just with a couple bow strokes if the thing isn't "tuned."