Barraza BZBS101E bajo sexto
Barraza BZBS101E bajo sexto
Saturday, August 23, 2014
I taught myself to play guitar when I was 15, bass when I was 19, and I’ve spent a lifetime exploring other instruments as I come across them. Ukuleles, banjos, dulcimers, sitars, mandolins and other folk instruments all fascinate me. Sometimes the love of music, and the quest for that unique sound, can take you to some very interesting places.
The bajo sexto is an instrument that has its roots in southern Mexico, but is primarily used today in Norteño, Tejano, Mariachi and Tex-Mex music near the US-Mexican border. It has six sets of doubled nylon strings, and carries the rhythmic or melodic bass line of a piece, much as a bass guitar or upright bass would do. The four lower pairs of strings are tuned in octaves, eEaAdDgG, with the lowest E tuned to match a bass guitar. The upper two pairs are tuned in unisons, traditionally CCFF, although I usually tune mine to BBEE to respond more like a traditional guitar.
I like to joke that the bajo sexto is something you might expect after a catastrophic Star Trek transporter accident involving a classical guitar, a 12-string guitar and a bass. But in reality, the playing style is quite different from any of these instruments. Although the strings can be chorded like a classical or a 12-string, you really wouldn’t strum chords on a bajo: they’d sound cluttered and muddy. More likely, you’d shape a chord with your left hand and arpeggiate with your right -- playing single notes at a time, up and down the chord.
I usually pride myself on learning a bit about the manufacturers of the instruments on my blog, but unfortunately there is precious little to be found about Barraza. Although the name sounds Italian, and they specialize in Latin American instruments (bajo sexto, bajo quinto, guitarron, cuatro, etc.), they’re actually based and built in China. I’m able to find a few resellers online, including Walmart of all places, but very little about the company itself. I’m still waiting for a call back from their parent company M&M Merchandizers, who also import Kona guitars.
What I can tell you about this bajo sexto, model BZBS101E, is that it’s a very short-scale instrument, a mere 40.25 inches from headstock to tailpiece, and just an inch longer overall than my Kent classical guitar. The string scale length is just 25.5 inches, about the same as a classical guitar or a Fender Telecaster. But that’s far shorter than a full scale bass guitar at 34 inches, or even my shortest-scale bass, my Höfner Beatle Bass at 30 inches. Initially I was concerned that I’d have a hard time finding a case for such a unique instrument, but I was pleasantly surprised to find it fits perfectly in the same case I use for my Oscar Schmidt 12-string guitar.
The bajo’s neck meets the body at the 10th fret, rather than the 12th or 14th, and the bridge is set much closer to the tail of the instrument than on most guitars, both of which help to compensate for the elongated 12-string headstock. The body, almost 6 inches deep, projects the low notes quite nicely. The enlarged sound hole is decorated with a Latin-inspired rosette decal, a bit ornate for my tastes, but striking nonetheless.
With a string scale that short, not much tension is put on the strings to bring them up to pitch, so the low E string and its counterpart sometimes rattle against each other if played energetically. The next time I put strings on the bajo, I’ll look into some slightly thicker strings, which will require a little bit more tension and hopefully minimize this effect. When I received the bajo from an ebay seller, the action on the strings was so high that you’d pull the strings out of tune just fretting a note. My friend Jim Tupper at Ground Zero Music made a new, lower nut to bring the strings closer to the fretboard, and that helped a lot.
The Barraza BZBS101E has a spruce top, catalpa back and sides, and a rosewood fingerboard. It has a built-in active pickup so I can connect it to an amplifier, PA system or recording console, and it also has a 4-band equalizer to dial in a good tone before it goes to the board. A nice added touch: it has both 1/4” and XLR output jacks, so I can use either a microphone cable or a standard guitar cable when I need to plug in.
The BZBS101E carries a suggested retail price of $349 USD. I spent $195 (used) for the bajo itself, and another $40 for the modified nut, which was absolutely necessary to make it even remotely playable. According to Jim at Ground Zero, that’s how the traditional players like it, but I prefer my string action to be much lower. I’m sure I’ll find uses for it in both acoustic and electric recordings, but I likely won’t use it much for live shows. It’s very much a one-trick pony, and it’s a delicate, finicky pony at that.
Photo by Rose Wallace-Smith