Hi! I’ve been reading your discussion, and I was wondering would it be possible to reshape bass guitar’s body from strat shape to telecaster shape? That means i would cut/reshape the longer left side of the bass (strap system). Would it affect sound drastically? The bass I have is a Stagg bass, with 1 humbucker pickup. Thank you all and greetings from Croatia 
So, you want to fill in the bass side cutaway? Supposing you could, as long as you didn’t do something to compromise the integrity of the neck/body union, I can’t see how it’d effect the sound of your bass.
I think he’s talking about lopping off the part where the strap attaches and rounding what’s left to look sorta like a telecaster instead of filling in the notch. I don’t think it’s going to look quite right, but as long as you don’t cut too deep into the body I don’t see how it would affect the sound too much.
It’s when you really cut more deeply into the body and remove a lot of wood that you completely ruin the sound of the instrument.
yeah, that is what i’ve meant. so it is possible to do that, without affecting the sound. thank you very much guys
I’d like to recommend to your attention a couple of albums. One is Breakin’ It Up & Breakin’ It Down, where Johnny Winter plays a Gibson Explorer, which has a massive solid body and a pretty big headstock. Compare his sound there to one of the many albums where he played a minimalist guitar (Steinberger?) with no headstock and just enough body to hold tuning pegs and a couple of knobs. To my poor old ears, he sounds the same.
There a lot of Strats and Strat-like guitars out there with humbucker pickups, and I think you’ll find little difference between them and the humbucking LPs.
Now the disclaimer: I am not an engineer, nor am I an accomplished player. Since the decades in the factory ruined my hands, I don’t play at all anymore.
Ah. I always think of those as “horns”. I can’t imagine how cutting away the bass side horn would effect the tone of a solid body guitar. I think the main potential risk comes from a different direction, i.e., the replaced strap button pulling out of where you reinstalled it or the strap slipping off that strap button. Hold the drill bit you’re going to use to drill the pilot hole in front of the shaft of the screw that holds on the strap button. The bit should cover the shaft of the screw but you want to see the threads on either side of the bit. And the screw should go into the body of the guitar at least parallel to the neck. It’s even better if the button goes a little downward from the body. That way the weight of the guitar helps to hold the strap onto the button. Lots of Les Pauls have needed broken necks replaced after falling off the strap. That’s probably the main reason why straplocks and their ilk were invented.
ok thanks
Guitarists sometimes get a little obsessed with their equipment as an influence on tone. Some of us have a saying: Tone is in the musician’s hands. I read an interview with one of Eric Clapton’s guitar techs and he said that Eric can plug any guitar into any amp and it still sounds like Eric Clapton.