Mustified Bronco

[alittlebitrobot]

My taste in bass design has always been for the more modern styles but, for some reason, I've recently been drawn to the Fender Mustang. In particular the JMJ model. Literally zero chance of me ever buying one but it did mean that I found out about the Bronco, which I also liked the look of. The other things I liked the look of was the Tahitian Coral paint job, the maple fretboard and the price tag, so I was keeping an eye out for a few months until I saw one come up online, discounted as "B-stock". When it arrived it was pristine, so I'm guessing it was a return or something. Happy days.

I immediately loved the weight of it and the shape of the neck. The fret job was spot on too. Nothing to complain about except that putting a cheap 6 pole strat single coil on a bass is just unacceptable. The tone wasn't horrendous, but it wasn't much good either, so I set about planning some modifications. From what I've seen online, replacing the cheap single coil with a more expensive one is the most common mod to this bass, and the next most common seems to be replacing it with a P pickup. My issue is that I don't like the tone of a P bass so I decided to go for double J because I have a set of J p'ups in my shoebox of bass parts and that's the key to this project; keep it simple, quick and as cheap as possible. I have a 2 year old and a part-time job - spare time for bass-modding is minimal.

 

So, let's start with the stock model, followed by my Photoshop mock-up, incorporating the Mustang-style pickguard shape with metal control plate. I want to use nylon tapewound strings because I love nylon tapewound strings, but I don't want to have to source short scale versions, so I need to extend the E string by making it through-body so I'll need to drill a hole behind the bridge. Luckily some Mustangs have that bridge with the wee overhang at the back end, so that'll hide the hole and look the part.

 

Budget-wise; I needed to buy that bridge, replacement white p'up covers, some pickguard material and a small rectangle of 3mm aluminium. Oh, and the strings but they were second-hand. 

I'm writing this all after finishing the job, but I'm going to break up my posts anyway.

 

[ped]

Cool project ( I’ve just finished a J/J Musicmaster). Re the strings, can’t you bend tapewounds around the post enough, or cut them? I can’t say I’ve ever really used them. I assume the control layout is VVT?

[alittlebitrobot]

I won't bother explaining it but I went about the pickguard in the wrong order and binned my first attempt. Luckily the sheet of plastic was big enough to get two out of it, so this is the second version. The metal control plate went well but aluminium gets so gummy when cutting or sanding. So, for the record, I cut out the silhouette of the pickguard, refined it on the belt sander and then scraped the 45 deg bevel with a utility knife. I then drilled the screwholes and screwed it in place before marking out the pickup hole so it was definitely perpendicular to the strings in the end. This also meant that I could later use the neck pocket as a routing template with a bottom bearing bit.

 

right, E string time. I drew what I guessed was an angle similar to the break angle of the bridge. I don't think tapewound strings can take a 90 degree bend. That's not something I've tested - I may be dead wrong - but they just feel like they shouldn't be bent that severely.

I have a disassembled LÄMPLIG trivet from IKEA that comes in handy around the workshop. In this case, it forms a metal lining for the 'tunnel' and won't let the ball-end pass through.

 

Oops. Chipped the paint. Surprisingly fragile. After this photo, I hammered it in enough so that the ball-end of the string is within the body.

 

 

Oh look, @Burns-bass has one for sale right now, and willing to post! Somebody get on that, toute suite.

[alittlebitrobot]

34 minutes ago, ped said:

Cool project ( I’ve just finished a J/J Musicmaster). Re the strings, can’t you bend tapewounds around the post enough, or cut them? I can’t say I’ve ever really used them. I assume the control layout is VVT?

 

I wanted to completely sure the silks wouldn't sit on the saddle and I don't feel like tapewounds can be cut or bent super-tight. The controls are volume, master tone and a three-way switch.

[alittlebitrobot]

Now, the headstock of the Bronco drives me up the wall. When I was looking at the photo I'd dragged into Photoshop, I assumed there was some kind of glitch or maybe just something weird with that specific bass. Then my real one arrived and it had the same thing. There's a weirdly-awkward curve to the bottom edge where it goes kinda straight between the D and G tuner., so I brought it to the belt sander to sort it. Here's a fade between the stock shape and my alteration.

 

The bass comes with a plastic nut, but I had a "brass" nut in my shoebox that was the right width E-G but slightly too thick, so I routed a groove in some mdf, stuck the "brass" nut in there and brought it to the sander until it was the correct thickness. This process caused the brass to fall off what was actually some other metal, so I blowtorched it until it went black and blue and purple in a fun way.

 

Having routed the bridge pickup cavity and caused a paint chip at the E string entry point, I got my acrylics out and mixed up some Tahitian Coral. This turns out to be mostly red, some white, and then some yellow to taste.

 

The bridge comes with these whopping 12mm threaded inserts but this is overkill tbh, because I've already got five screws in the thing. However, I like the look of these little doohickeys so, rather than drill two deep holes in the body, I just drilled enough for the bolts to stick into, with a wee dab of glue to keep them in place.

[alittlebitrobot]

skip to the end, and here it is! (except this is with the nut in it's 'still pretending to be brass' state)

 

The pots are the original ones that came with the bass. A pair of 250k pots which I've wired as volume - tone - 3 way selector switch.

If there's any electronics boffins reading, can you help me with something? The bass had a .22 capacitor, but I replaced that with a .47 one. The only thing is, the tone pot has *basically* no effect. It's not absolutely zero, in which case, I could just assume the pot isn't doing anything, but it's just slightly more than zero. There is an absolutely miniscule difference between fully open and fully closed. Capacitor problem? Pot problem? Something else?

Anyway, despite the lack of tonal variety, the sound is much-improved from the stock Bronco.

 

Edited 1 hour ago by alittlebitrobot