Teesee

One of the other cheap basses I owned was a Yamaha BBNiii (well mine was a fretless so there's an 'F' in that number somewhere). I cant believe how well that played in terms of quality. Mine was made in Indonesia but it may as well have been made in Japan, it was a rock solid bass in terms of build quality, I'd happily add budget Yamaha's to the list. The only reason I sold it was I found I wasn't really that good at playing a fretless.

Yeah, I tried to edit this when I posted but couldn't work out how to do it! 😁, I of course meant 'E' idiot me, as in shifting the bridge to the left a bit, but BTops idea of the more vintage type threaded saddles seems like more of a goer and a lot less hassle. 👍 The curiosity remain though that I'm getting no difference in "presence" on G as opposed to the other 3 strings. 🤔 Either way, I can't now un-see the misalignment over the pickup so it had to be fixed. 👍

Hiya BTops, I was definitely very wary at first as the Artec pickup only has 55mm gubbins inside the cover, and originally I was going for a 30 deg slant on it but realised there's no way the pickup would cater for E & G at that angle. I was sweating a little at 15 deg but after putting the neck and strings back on once PG arrived, after firing it up (still not yet set up correctly as I have to take neck off again to paint headstock) I can say ATM there is no discernible drop in volume at G. For my defence, I'll blame it on the camera angles, which is partly true but G is a little further away from E and I've picked up on that too, I will need to move bridge ~1.5 to 2mm toward G in the near future. But either that Artec has a bit more sphere of influence than I thought, just blind luck or something else but G sounds as loud as E, A and D, maybe I'm lucky - usually I'm not on my builds. 😁 Blind luck mate. Here a pic from a different angle and bridge will need re-positioning at some stage - not a biggy have plenty of matchsticks and Araldite 👍

I always copper shield my guitars, to some it's a ball ache but I just zone out, I find it cathartic at times especially when the other half wants to watch The One Show (is it just me or does anyone else hate that intro music?) on the telly in the other room. I also find it incredible that even high end makes (slightly looking at you Rickenbacker but TBF not just them) neglect to shield their wares, I know it's labour intensive but with the prices they and others charge you'd want the moon on a stick. The only guitar I've ever bought with shielding was a Retrovibe, and I was a bit taken aback when I stripped it down to have a look inside (as we all do 😁) only to find out that David Konig the owner of RV had already done an excellent copper job on it before I got my grubby mitts on it. Copper tape is still cheap and IMHO one of the best and cheapest DIY jobs you can do to your guitar - shame other manufacturer's don't see it that way, but if you buy an £85 guitar you don't expect that level of detail. But for £85 that guitar is a stunner mate, it looks lovely particularly with the single knob, I reckon you got more than a bargain, and glad that they fulfilled it. Nice one. 👍

In terms of "Budget" I'm thinking prices up to £200. There is the criminally cheap HB PB-50 for just over £100 that in terms of fit and finish is remarkable, neck quality superb, and sounds great. I've also got the HB JB-75, but at just over 6 kilos, it's really heavy, but again fit and finish very good and the roswells are enlightening and sound much more expensive. I had the HB RB-414 body was great but was let down by cheap hardware and the bridge pickup was half the volume of the great little Artec neck mini-humbucker, plus I didn't like the wat it was wired in a gibson sort of fashion. I've recently scored a G4M Hartwood Satellite 32" which is another little stunner in terms of quality albeit styling is "left field" I love it. Many moons ago I bought my son a Squier Bronco which I've since inherited, and that little guitar never ceases to amaze me still to this day in terms of quality. All of these mentioned less than £200. Then since I'm such a cheapa$$ I'm going into what I call mid price (others may still call it budget) so up £400. This opens up a whole new set of possibilities. Squier and Epiphone lead the way for me ATM but that's only because of style, I have the Rascal and the Newport both shorties but similarly tricked out with 2 humbuckers each. Each is unique, tho the epi is a bit of a monster to tame when you're setting it up, due to it's bridge, but with flats one the 60's British tones you get out of it is as true as the original. Other notable mentions are the G4M 972 5 string fanned fret (orange guitar), the Retrovibe "Telenbacker" just nudging £400, and last but not least the Sire Z3, which in itself in terms of quality out does everything else with exception of the Retrovibe. I'm not going to say which one is best because all of them have been modded at least in part, but the 3 least modded are the PB-50 - headstock cut to Tele style, Newport - new strings only, and the Z3 - new strings only. I've no favourite make, as quality these days of all new guitars are a lot better than 30 or even 20 years ago.

Well to my untrained eye the button-heads act as the bridge action (saddle height), but the 2 grub screws on each block must be for setting intonation. I've had some strange bridges in the past that have a saddle locking screw, but these generally are angled and lock into the saddle slide. The grub screws on this saddle appear to be straight down and in my book that would notdo a great deal of good keeping saddle locked into position. Curious indeed mate. @OP the best thing you can do is get yourself a set of imperial keys and just have a play with those recessed screws and see what that turns out?

AF simply means "across flats" It's a terminology used extensively (but not solely) on imperial tools, quite often for spanners too. So you 1/2" AF spanner is exactly that. Half an inch across the opposite sides of the hex bolt, and your 13mm spanner is just..well a 13mil spanner 😉. Don't ask me why, just seems to be more often used on imperial tools. Technically a 13mm AF spanner is correct too, but you don't often hear then called that. In terms of allen keys it's just the measurement from one side of the flat to the other opposite side flat. Also please don't use a metric allen key even if it looks like it'll fit as you'll bugger up your socket then have to spend a day trying to find SAE screws from a company who are prepared to sell you less than 10 for an exorbitant price are we're pretty well metric here now and SAE stuff is more specialised. 👍 You can get a set of imperial keys for about a fiver or so on Amazon, well worth having a set of both if you spend time messing with your basses.

Here is the finished article complete with a varitone switch I snagged at bloodstone guitar works, www.bloodstoneguitarworks.com Dave the seller did an excellent job guiding me through how to install it and for £20 well happy with his switch. The Artec is a lovely little pickup too, sounds proper nice 👍

I've ordered the Artec now, ETA 12th Aug, will let you know how I get on. 👍

Thanks neepheid, that has been amazingly helpful.👍😍. Thinking on it I had an Artec mini humbucker in my Harley Benton RB-414 that I sold just recently and I was always impressed with the quality of that. I also take on board what you're saying about rounded ends as I'm a finger only player, but I reckon I'll take a punt on the Artec first and just cut the PG to accomodate the lipstick (probs about the centreline if the existing split of the p's) and give that a try - It'll look ugly until I get a new PG but at least it'll give me an idea of whether I can get on with the rouded edges. Failing that, then I'll go for the Armstrongs if I cant get on with the Artecs. Cheers mate, this has been really helpful. 👍

I'm now the proud owner of a Hartwood Satellite that came in the post on Thursday. I love vintage and retro looking guitars and for the price I could not resist. I'm not completely down with the split p's in terms of looks - though I will admit they do sound quite good in that neck position. Originally I was thinking about putting a big old Thunderbird style just to compliment the looks and to give it a bit more of a surf punk sound, but I also have a Rascal and a Newport which also caters for that kind of look. Someone on that 'other site' across the pond suggested lipsticks, which I'll admit is totally growing on me, but most folks over there are very good at spending other people's money and I'm trying to source a lipstick that would not break the bank say up to £35 max, so no SD's for me. I'm also very confused with the outputs of lipsticks and the fact that some have "folds" and some do not. This is totally alien to me who is just used to putting in SC's or Humbuckers, 😕if anyone can explain to me what folds are I'd be dead grateful. I also understand that lipsticks are primarily used in guitars, but my Bronco has a 6 pole strat in it and it sounded great before I swapped it for a McNelly, so I'm not too fussed about using a guitar pickup as long as it isn't reedy or wheezy. I'm wondering if anyone could recommend a lipstick that's readily available over here - I have been looking at Roswells but ordering them direct to UK appears a very convoluted business, and Amazon carry a few no names but the majority have no reviews so I don't know whether what I bought from them would be any good. I know I'll have to have a new PG made up, but that's the plan anyway, eventually I want it red like a paupers Backlund, 😁, maybe reshape the headstock and nitro it to colour code with the body, I've also a Guyker GB 1020 bridge arriving on the twelfth of never which'll I reckon look great on the retro styling. If anyone on here has put reasonably priced lipsticks on their guitars, I'd love to hear their recommendation. Thanks all.👍

Hi All. When I was modding the bronco the first time around, there was something I didn't mention as I was too embarrassed to say it. I wrecked the brand new McNelly broncomaster pickup before I ever had a chance to hear it! 🤦‍♂️. I did this as I'd just finished shielding with copper and I had just mounted the pickup and saw what I thought was a thin sliver of copper underneath the pickup. Without thinking I used my little finger to just brush it away before I realised I'd actually broken the hair thin piece of copper wire from the coil to the hot output! Obviously I was horrified, I'd bought it from James' Home Of Tone which was an hours drive away, so I went round the next day and bought a second pickup. While I was there I showed James the original damaged pickup and he said "leave it with me, I'll see if it is repairable". He got back to me last week bless him and said he'd repaired it, FOC. And posted it to my home as well. Above and beyond James 👍. So to cut a very long story short, I now have a spare broncomaster. I've removed the old (new) one that hasn't been damaged. The ex damaged one is on my guitar now and sounds ace. This pickup has been fitted once, so the ground lead has been cut to expose the wire to ground on both pots, and the jack. All pre-tinned now. The hot lead was cut from it's original length to fit the volume pot, but can still reach the tone pot if you array that pot 180 degrees to the volume pot. Don't know if that is a dealbreaker or not. The pickup was bought at the end of August and has had little to no use as I've been trying to sort out an intonation problem. The supplied cover is black, but you can get a white one, or just run it without a cover if you prefer. It is supposed to be a 'drop in' replacement but on my Bronco pickguard I had to open the mounting screws out about 1.5mm towards the outer edges of the PG to get a good fit, I mean they wasn't parallel, so the screws were going in at about a 15 deg angle. Pickup fits perfectly through the pickguard hole though so there's no need to open up the PG pup hole, or have it mounted with a gap around it. I'm not going to supply mounting screws, as I used the original screws and springs that came with the bronco. I think they are much better than the supplied piece of plastic pipe which I've lost anyway. The pickup cost me £135 but I'll be happy to take £55 inc postage and packing (£50 for the pup £6.90 ish for 24 hour signed for) I'll chuck in the £1.90 to know it's going to go to a good home. The McNelly just seems to sound more well defined than the standard 6 pole strat, but as with everything it's a personal thing. Couple of YT links below as well as other info on the pickup, 2nd YT link shows the guitar with standard pup and McNelly pup. If you read the comments on that link a couple like the standard pup more, but most agree the McNelly sounds better. I thought I’d chuck it on here first in the Bronco thread PM me if interested, before I move it onto the classified section. 1st pic (not very good) shows the 2 pickups, I've just desoldered the "good one", you can just make out the repaired one in top right corner with a little bit of blue on it. 2nd pic shows 'hot' lead length 3rd pic shows the cover 4th pic is the date I bought the pickup highlighted in yellow top right. https://mcnellypickups.com/products/musicmaster-bronco-single-coil-bass-pickup https://www.homeoftone.co.uk/collections/mcnelly-pickups https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtRb_m6Kmgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-OU6IQpST4

PIckguard came, and I'd also ordered a blackSung Il BB404 bridge. Fitting the bridge was a bit squeaky bum time as I was still not sure where the 19mm spacing would throw the strings off the neck much. Working something out in theory is one thing, but practical application is often quite the other. I think it's turned out quite nice. Added an ADE string tree and used the same hole as the old disc tree so there's no un-needed holes in the headstock. One thing I completely missed and/or forgot, I didn't order black pg screws and black strap buttons. I actually like the silver pg screws, and still in 2 minds about the buttons. No biggy if I want to change tho.

Speaking of machine heads - after I posted the first message, a basschatter - sifi2112 - got in touch with me said he had some Gotohs but they was black, at first I was thinking chrome but I got to thinking, well black will go nice with the black pg and so I ordered a black Sung Il BB404 from Northwest Guitars that'll be arriving tomoz. Anyway, took sifi's offer they arrived about an hour and half ago ago, straight into the garage with a round rasp file, opened up the holes and here we are! Got some nice white cupcakes and the white pup cover so I reckon it'll look good! I've got roto flats on it and the 4 pole bass pup just makes it a vintage 70's sound, in my collection maybe something I haven't really got. I know the Sung Il is 19mm spacing but I'm reliably told either on here or the 'other' forum site that there wont be any slipping off the fretboard with the E or G, just less land. I hope they're right I've just filled the old bridge holes with epoxy and wood where I'll shave them flush tomorrow. The old bridge is on it's way to Manchester, as the guy who was cutting the pickguard has a Bronco but with the new 4 saddle and he wanted the 2 saddle, rather than it languishing in my draw he put in a decent donation to charity. Works for me.

Just out of curiosity I went back on his Ebay site, there's a banner now saying he'll be back on 28th October, I missed it by a whisker. I'm getting the new PG tomorrow hope it's OK, but it was twice the price of Brian's. 😭 I'm looking at the rest of my basses to see if any of 'em need a different pickguard now Brian's back in the game! 😆😆

Yeah as I say it's well strange. I didn't realise either that earl was Brian. I was tapping his Ebay site up before but every time I went to place an order I had a message for weeks saying 'this seller is taking a break' and it wouldn't process my order. Kodiakblair mentioned to me that he was moving house which may explain that, he had the very pickguard that I needed. Oh well, hopefully this other outfit will come up good, although I could have saved a few bob had I gone to earl. Never mind, what's done is done. Cheers anyway.

Hmm, that's very odd. It may be that I'm using Nordvpn and it thought I was in a different country, but I always use the UK server so yeah, it must've glitched. Apologies Earlpilanz for losing a sale due to my useless tech skills..

Thanks all, got some new tuners coming in the post from a guy off here, Gotoh GB7 's I will need to open the holes a tadge but for the price I'm not going to complain. 👍

I tried him, but wouldn't ship to UK for some reason at least that's what it said on Ebay when I clicked on the page 😕, however someone on another forum told me to try this place up in Manchester https://tinytone.co.uk/product/scratchplate-builder/#configuration its knocking me back £62 with postage both ways as I'm sending the original to them. That went in the post yesterday so hopefully by next week it'll come back to me. Thanks for the suggestion tho 👍😀

Cheers mate, always good to see a little bass pron and cracking instruments these.. 🙂👍

Lovely looking bass mate, they're little packages of dynamite IMHO for bangs per buck really happy with mine and how she sounds - just the tuners to upgrade and I'll be a happy bunny 😄 On a similar note, already someone has offered me a set of Gotoh's for a good price which look like they'll fit so I'm gonna take those up :👍

I have a lovely little Bronco I bought for my son in around 2002 - 2003, I recently liberated it from the garage after 20 years cleaned it up added new pots, cap and jack socket, a McNelly pickup to replace the old 6 pole strat, and of course new strings - Roto flats in this case. Sounds lovely and proud, I really like it except for the bridge and machine heads. Bronco parts appear to be like rocking horse poo, even trying to get a pickguard is a nightmare - I'm having a black one made up - but that's a different story! The real horrible thing about this lovely bass are the machine heads/tuners. They have a very coarse adjustment which makes it really hard to get into tune and stay in tune, one slight touch and they'll go up or down a pitch, really horrible. Also they suffer from tightening and loosening in differing arcs of the turn i.e the post will flap about or be rock solid depending where you've turned the key which suggests to me either the 'rack' or the 'pinion' has not been machined to their tolerances. Ideally I'd like a drop in replacement with a finer action as I really don't want to drill out the headstock holes if I can help it and also not exceed the footprint of the back plate where they may interfere with their neighbour when it comes to fitting. The diameter of the post is 9.5 mil, the diameter of the holes in the headstock is 11.5 mil. If need be I will have to drill out the headstock, but that just involves me shelling out more for a drill and or/reamer. I've been going cross eyed and getting a headache trying to find replacement tuners so if any of you guys know what I could get and where I'd really appreciate it. Budget - upto perhaps £70 a set but prefer lower😉 Cheers TC

Gotta say Davie is a brilliant an fantastic bloke. Top notch fella. Not only have I learned a hell of a lot from him about basses and builds in other forums, but have dealt with him on buying and selling. I ordered a Roswell Filtertron from DE but got confused and ordered 2 by mistake. They wouldn't let me cancel the other one, but in steps Davie who bought it straight from me. We agreed a price and I insisted he didn't pay until it came through his door. The cash was in my bank before I posted it FFS! Recently I wanted a template to cut the headstock on my PB to the old tele style, a couple of days later it arrived as an MDF template, I was expecting a bit of paper! I asked him how much he wanted and he told me to put some money into a local charity box. I donated a fiver to breast cancer as his P&P was £1.40 and his time and material must've come to £3 so, yeah he's a good bloke and someone you can trust in any transaction. He don't suffer fools gladly, i.e. folks that just talk **** about their new £2000 guitar but are just badge whores, but will spend any amount of his time, vast experience and knowledge coaxing us newbies not to go down the rabbit hole of spending stupid money for something that won't really matter to how your guitar sounds. Brilliant bloke, glad to know him and thank god for him he lives such a long way from me, otherwise I'd be round his house every day!!! 😁

Thanks for the heads up I wasn't aware of the headstock issue TBF. I believe the 972 is made in a different factory than the Red Subs so hopefully they're ironed out the headstock issues, just given mine a careful inspection and doesn't appear to be anything I can see yet. Hopefully, it's been sorted but only time will tell. Cheers

Not a build but a heavy mod so I hope I'm posting in the right forum, apologies if not and a call to the mods to move it to it's correct home if necessary. I'm new so apologies. So, I'd been a bit curious about fanned fret basses for some time now but there is no way I could afford a Dingwall or such and most fanned frets were commanding prices of £600+ even at secondhand values. Then I read about the Red Sub Coliseum which were being knocked out by G4M for around £270. When I went on the G4M they'd dropped Red Sub but carried an almost identical bass called the 972 https://g4m.com/product/g4m-972-fanned-fret-5-string-blue-burl-burst/ Which I thought I'd take a punt on. TBH when it arrived I loved it, OK the hardware and electronics were a bit flakey but the neck was sublime and a lovely player. However, I do really think that it's more of a 'metal' or 'prog' guitar than a good all rounder due to the pickups positioning. I rather like dub and reggae and was wondering how it would sound with a third pickup added close to the neck. I did some research but concluded that trying to wire a third pickup and find a switch which would allow me to adjust all 3 pickups individually or permutations of the three was well above my level of experience. Plan 'B' was called for which was moving the 'neck' pickup closer to the neck. I build a little pickup mule to find the sweetspot that worked for me; Having spent ages trying to decide I finally stumbled across this configuration which had the pickup at a different angle to the angle it was originally set at; Visually, I was not over enamoured with all the bumpy and pointy bits on the body so I decided to 'phone a friend' namely one of my old band mates from 40 years ago who was building guitars in his retirement. Armed with a set of French Curves we went to work... We subtly rounded the upper horn, and took the pointy bit off the lower horn then took quite a bit of material from the bottom end of the body. Now you will notice that this picture shows an undercoat. The original blue burl is actually a very thin real wood veneer, unfortunately because we were going to relocate the pickup then there was no way of either getting some veneer or even applying it to the original pickup position, so the plan was to respray. With the old pickup cavity blocked with a bit of wood and the new cavity cut out it was time to prep for the respray. Now in case you're confused the photo above was taken before he finished rounding off the bottom of the body he'd forgot about that, so he actually cut those bits off when he'd prepped the undercoat. Colour. What are we going to have? Well I wanted something a bit different to all of the natural or black guitars I already have. So was thinking back to my youth when in the early 70's everything was orange, Space Hoppers, Chopper bikes, Habitat wall paper and also a groundbreaking film 'A Clockwork Orange' was doing the rounds. Picked out RAL2011 and since it matched my little Orange Crush Bass 50 thought 'that'll do' and was at one stage going to call the bass 'The Clockwork Orange' even printed out the decals along with Alex Delarge's stylised eye. Nitro painting; Shielding Headstock - dropped the lettering and just went with the eye flakey machine heads replaced with Wawicks and a Glockenklang 3 eq pre added; Final assembly Neck pickup sounds lovely dialled fully on and the Glockenklang just adds a lot more richness so really happy now with the guitar which didn't start life as a bad instrument to be fair, but it's where I want it now, has no resale value at all but I love it. Cheers.