Teesee

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.

That is one beautiful guitar Davie, it's magnificent🤤! If you don't mind me askin what do you reckon the ballpark total outlay on the build?