Rickenbacker's new 3030 ships with flatwounds: what a super-short scale does to your strings

Rickenbacker introduced a new bass this week called the 3030, and it is an unusual one. The company took the body of its 330 guitar and bolted on a bass neck with a 24.75-inch scale, the same length as that guitar. The result is a semi-acoustic bass that is far shorter than anything most players have held: about 9.25 inches shorter than a standard long-scale bass, and roughly 5 inches shorter than a typical short-scale bass (No Treble).

Here is the part that matters for a strings site. Rickenbacker did not ship it with the bright roundwounds the brand is famous for. It ships with flatwounds, on purpose. Designer Ben Hall teased the bass on Instagram, calling it "a fun side project we had been kicking around for a few years," and noting it would "come with flat wounds because they make this bass really sing" (No Treble). It is a limited boutique run, sold in small batches, and the Jetglo and Fireglo finishes had already sold out at launch.

Most of you will never buy one. That is fine, because the interesting thing about the 3030 is not the bass. It is what it teaches about scale length and strings, a lever that changes the tone of any bass you already own.

String tension is not a single number you pick. It is the product of three things: the gauge of the string, the pitch you tune it to, and the scale length it is stretched across (D'Addario). Change any one of them and the feel changes.

Scale length is the one players think about least. D'Addario gives a clean example on the guitar side: the same set of strings, tuned to the same pitch, sits at higher tension on a 25.5-inch Fender scale than on a 24.75-inch Gibson scale. That gap is only three quarters of an inch, and you can already feel it in how the two guitars bend.

Now scale that idea up to a bass. Going from a standard 34-inch bass to the 3030's 24.75-inch neck is a far bigger drop than the Fender-to-Gibson example. At the same tuning, the strings carry noticeably less tension. That is why short-scale basses feel slinky and almost rubbery under the fingers, and why they sound the way they do: lower tension lets the string swing more freely and pushes the fundamental forward, so you hear more round low-end and less bite and sustain. The shorter the scale, the warmer and thumpier the voice, before you have even chosen a string.

There is a practical catch that trips up first-time short-scale owners, and most gear coverage skips it. Strings are wound to fit a scale. A long-scale bass set is built for roughly a 34-inch instrument, which means the thick part of the winding ends at a spot meant for a long neck.

Put that long-scale set on a short-scale bass and the winding can run past the nut, leaving fat wrap sitting where the string should be thin and flexible. On the low strings that wrecks tuning stability and chokes the tone. The fix is simple once you know to look: buy strings labeled for your scale. D'Addario defines a short-scale set as fitting a bass with a string scale up to about 32 inches, measured ball-end to the start of the silk (D'Addario). The 3030, at 24.75 inches, sits comfortably inside that short-scale window. Match the string scale to the bass and the problem disappears.

For the warm, vintage thump that suits a hollow short-scale bass, the answer is short-scale flatwound strings. Flats are smoother and darker than roundwounds, and on a low-tension short neck they lean all the way into that round, woody character. D'Addario's ECB81S Chromes are a flatwound set cut specifically for short scale, and La Bella makes short-scale flats as well. We are building out dedicated short-scale string pages, so for now treat those as the models to look for by name rather than a set we have a full review on yet.

If your bass is a standard 34-inch long-scale instrument and you simply want that warmer, thumpier tone, you do not need a short-scale bass at all. Put long-scale flatwound strings on the bass you own. The set we point long-scale players to for vintage thump is the La Bella 760FL, the polished flat that carries the classic Motown and McCartney lineage.

The wrap type and the scale length are two separate levers, and they stack. If you want the full breakdown of how flats and rounds differ, we lay it out in our guide to flatwound versus roundwound bass strings. The short version: scale length sets the feel and the body, and the winding sets the brightness.

There is a nice twist in Rickenbacker building a flatwound bass. The brand's sound in most players' heads is the opposite of thump. It is bright, growling, roundwound grind, the tone Geddy Lee drove through Rush on a Rickenbacker before he moved to a Jazz Bass, the clank of Chris Squire and Lemmy. Rickenbacker basses earned their reputation on aggression and treble.

The 3030 walks the other way. A short scale and flat strings are a recipe for warmth and roundness, the territory of Paul McCartney's short-scale Beatle Bass rather than a snarling 4001. It is the same move, in a way, as the news out of Germany this month, where the maker of McCartney's Hofner was rescued from bankruptcy. We dug into that one and the tone behind it in a separate breakout: Hofner survives bankruptcy, and what it means for your tone. Two very different basses, one shared idea: short scale plus flats equals thump.

If you can find one and you love the look, the 3030 is a genuinely interesting instrument, and a semi-acoustic short-scale Rickenbacker is a rare thing. But be clear-eyed about it. It is a limited boutique model, it sold out fast in two finishes, and it will surface only in small batches.

If what you actually want is the sound, the badge is the expensive part. The scale length and the flatwound strings are doing the heavy lifting, and both are available to anyone. A more common short-scale bass strung with short-scale flats gets you most of the way to the 3030's voice for a fraction of the cost, and even a long-scale bass with flats will land in the same warm neighborhood. Chase the recipe, not the logo, and you can change your strings into that tone today.