bronco, musicmaster, it's all good ...

Rob DiStefano · Post by **Rob DiStefano** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 11:46 pm

always wanted one of these short scale cheapo basses and pulled the trigger on monday, bass arrived today. actually, not bad at all, considering it was $135/shipped, which is at least worth the price of admission for the neck and body. the rest, well - changes are Mandatory.

immediately tore it apart and literally threw out the dumb junker strat pup and crappy electronics. installed cts pots and a switchcraft jack then set about winding a really robust '51 pup. the pickguard needed a bit of dremeling to accodate the larger single coil and it all worked out just fine. a set of dr flatwounds, a good setup and she's ready to fire up ... love the tone and playability.

i really like this bass and wish i had gotten one years ago. now that the surgery is a success, time to get better tuners, a musicmaster 4 saddle bridge, and a new bone nut.

life is still good.

prior to potting the pup - 12600 turns of 42awg over tall a5 mags ...

mixtape · Post by **mixtape** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 12:40 am

Comfiest bass I've ever played. I fell in love with the neck and had to have one and make a project of it. You did the right thing by getting rid of the stock pickup immediately; other mods are lower-priority but nice to have. I' m going to get around to refinishing mine one of these weeks.

And welcome!

Rob DiStefano · Post by **Rob DiStefano** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:56 am

mixtape wrote:Comfiest bass I've ever played. I fell in love with the neck and had to have one and make a project of it. You did the right thing by getting rid of the stock pickup immediately; other mods are lower-priority but nice to have. I' m going to get around to refinishing mine one of these weeks.

And welcome!

actually, the pup was/is the cheapest mod.

Thom · Post by **Thom** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 2:33 am

Excellent. Have you been winding pickups long? What is your setup?

Rob DiStefano · Post by **Rob DiStefano** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:36 am

Thom wrote:Excellent. Have you been winding pickups long? What is your setup?

my dad got me into pickup winding back in the late 50's to late 60's. fast forward a 4 decades or so and i couldn't find pickups with specifications i required for the guitars and basses i build, so i got back into winding about 6 years ago, strictly single coils so far, mostly fender types - telecaster, stratocaster, p-bass, j-bass - but i'm now doing some prototyping with firebird mini humbuckers.

i've used a number of different coil winding machines - sidewinder, thomas, even that crappy overpriced schatten - but all wound to slowly and weren't robust enuf for real production work. i now use a pair of mini lathes that are modified specifically for transducer coil winding. the heart of any system, besides a good variable speed control and rpms that will well exceed 2000 (i mostly wind at about 2500 rpm), is a solid turn counter. i use a red lion infrared trigger that feeds a red lion digital counter. it's incredibly accurate, and knowing the turn count for any specific coil is as important as the bobbin materials and build, and coil wire.

winding a strat pup at a relatively slow 2100+ rpm ...

[youtube][/youtube]

Rob DiStefano · Post by **Rob DiStefano** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 10:27 am

here's a finished, vacuum wax potted '51 bass pup i built yesterday for a friend in arizona ...

Thom · Post by **Thom** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 11:56 am

Cool - thanks for sharing.

Rob DiStefano · Post by **Rob DiStefano** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 12:11 pm

it's all good - if it's not responsible fun, i try to avoid "it".

i do a fair amount of work with dummy coils for strats and teles, and since i like loud in-yer-face r'n'r, i can see a clear advantage with working one up for this hybrid bronco/'51 bass. i'll rout under the pickguard for a strat dummy coil (which makes good use of the junker single coil that comes with the bronco). replacing the tone pot with a p/p pot will allow the dummy to be turned on/off, if need be. the dummy will cancel out a fair amount of humbuzz noise, particularly in a high gain amp situation. the trade off will be a very slight reduction in treble that typically is hard to detect, if at all.

i'll chronicle the dummy surgery images here, if y'all like.

ah yes, life is still good.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 3:46 pm

Rob DiStefano wrote:i'll chronicle the dummy surgery images here, if y'all like.

That would be nice. Thanks

cur · Post by **cur** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 9:14 pm

Cool project. You might want to put it in the project forum.

Sidney Vicious · Post by **Sidney Vicious** » Sun Apr 28, 2013 1:48 am

You know you're a guitar geek when you watch an entire pickup-wind video - which I just did!

Nice work, Robbie D.