![]() ![]() drilling/reaming out bass tuner holes out with a hand drill was ~fun~ (not) but i managed to make it work and everyone was pleased with the results. Mine is a 78 so it has more standard 4 screw Fender tuners.Īfter spending forever looking for a replacement that would at least allow me to not drill out the tuner holes (the originals had the skinniest shaft of any bass tuner ive ever seen) i admitted defeat and we ordered the hipshot ultralite tuners. We looked far and wide for a set of originals but all that could be found was 2 lefty tuners for around $130. So the MM basses from launch in 1971 until 1976 or so had these odd sized/shaped 3 screw tuners that only came on these basses. So it had those Japanese looking ones before? One shouldn't stare too much at the back of headstocks anyway. Nice build! And I really like the look of the tuners. Surely there will be more vintage-partscasters to come Thought this one deserved a bit more of a spotlight on it due to it being a bit more involved on the restoration/building side. Just for grins, heres a couple pics next to my 1978 MM bass for comparison. The vintage-style silkscreened headstock decal is the cherry on top in my opinion. It has all the mojo you could want from a vintage Fender, with the added bonus of being uber lightweight (weighs in at 6.8 lbs!!) and having a look and specs tailor-made for its owner's tastes. Working with the limitations of the musicmaster shape/specs, this one had to be a one-pickup beast, so Brian selected a Duncan Hot Rail and sent me a push/pull pot to allow for coil splitting, which makes it a lot less of a one trick pony! (not the best pics i know, these were random progress shots before i tidied up the wiring-im not the best about remembering to snap pics every step of the way )Īfter levelling out the neck finish and polishing it up again, knocking down quite a few high frets, filling+redrilling the neck holes, reaming out the tuner holes for the new hipshot lightweight lollipop tuners (sadly we couldnt find a set of originals for sale anywhere, and theyre the only type of tuner we couldve found that would have prevented us from modifying the neck), and wiring it up, it was finally time to string it up and hear it in action.Ībsolutely HUGE reward for all the work I did. The customer selected a light/medium relic level nitro finish for this, so i had to ignore my perfectionist urges a bit and leave the topcoat looking a little more scuffed and scratched than i normally do. Original decal was long gone, making this a prime candidate for a matched headstock. Luckily the truss rod worked properly and tint was even and appeared somewhat original. It felt awful and i knew it would have to be sanded as soon as i saw it in person. It had been poorly refinished in some sort of urethane and there were runs, drips and sags all along the back of the neck. It had been installed to a couple different bodies in its life and had 2 sets of screw holes. The neck was honestly a bit of a mess, though i forgot to snap some before pics to show just how bad it was. The customer loved the blacked out look of the old black musicmaster basses, but we took it a step further with this faux anodized look, removing the pinstripe around the edges and murdering it out more. With a vintage neck and usable body setting the customer back only $500 or so, we had plenty of budget room to do some cool stuff.ĭecided to fill the pickguard holes and order a WD 70s musicmaster guard. Finding an affordable mustang bass body proved challenging, until i stumbled upon someone selling a rattle-canned squier bronco loaded body for something like $100. We found this 1975 Musicmaster bass neck and ideas started flowing. ![]() ![]() However this led to me springing a random wild idea on him ready-made shortscale bass necks and bodies are shockingly rare, but i had seen some vintage MM/mustang bass necks for sale online for great deals that needed some tlc and suggested possibly building a partscaster around one of them. We originally planned to refinish/upgrade a squier Vista series musicmaster bass that we found online for a steal, but someone bought it within an hour of us seeing it :/ A previous customer's bandmate reached out to me on instagram wanting to commission a musicmaster/mustang type short scale bass. Recently completed a cool "vintage" build i thought you guys would enjoy seeing. ![]()
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