Classic Vibe Bass VI

[northcountrybob]

Shims arrived! 

 

Here are a couple of shots. I actually found a "shim" already in the neck pocket. Possibly factory? It's possible to see how it's been compressed in neck pocket, so it wasn't doing much. 

The Crimson shim looks a lot better but doesn't fill the whole cavity. I have a stick from an ice lolly that could probably be made to fit. I could attempt some trigonometry to work out the front and back height of the extension... and then make it very poorly by eye-balling it! 

[BigRedX]

Interesting about the new springs being too big. I suspect this may be due to the Squier having a slightly thinner body compared with the Fender models. I found that this was the case with my Squier VMJ when I tried to fit a John East J-Retro pre-amp and discovered that the control cavity was too shallow and I had to very carefully route an additional 1.5mm depth in order for it to fit properly without shorting on the shielding. 

 

I would suggest measuring the overall body and vibrato cavity thicknesses and see if you can do the same just where the spring fits without compromising the structure of the body. I'd be interested in knowing how you get on with these new springs. On both the Bass VIs I have with vibrato mechanisms, the heavier strings and increased break angles have rendered them too stiff to operate easily.

 

Also have you tried adjusting the pickup heights to compensate for the volume differences between the different pickups? I had to adjust all of mine when I shimmed the neck. However I also use a bit of compression and drive on all my sounds along with using different pickups with very different effects combinations, so any differences in basic volume for each pickup are not really noticeable.

[northcountrybob]

The springs are to wide to sit in the plate of the trem nicely, but not too tall for the cavity. I got the new springs the same height as the original. 

 

I wanted a trem with a stop button (in case of string breakage) so I got hold of a cheaper Hosco/Gotoh which i believe from slap-dash googling is the fender japan offset trem. The yellow spring fits in this one but the blue spring is a little big. I suspect down to slightly thicker coating on the spring itself. I have a stepper bit and a cone cutter somewhere I could use to increase the diameter of the plate hole, but I've not made a decision on that yet. I don't mind drilling into a £45 Hosco versus a much more expensive AVRI though! 

 

The Hosco spring is the same height as the yellow die spring but has slightly smaller outer diameter and larger inner diameter. It also has a proper brass articulating perch vs the stock trem. 

 

 

[Waddo Soqable]

While not being a fan of talk @ss, there's a long thread with much info on the Squier bass VI on there. 

Obviously you have to trawl thru a large wad of drivel, but there's some useful tech ideas and stuff so might be worth a look, here's a link to the last page.. 

https://www.talkbass.com/threads/official-squier-vintage-modified-bass-vi-club.1020321/page-114

Edited June 26, 2023 by Waddo Soqable

[northcountrybob]

Cheers @Waddo Soqable I think I've stumbled onto that thread while researching a few things.

I got the new trem in last night and strung the thing up before going at the neck relief now it's shimmed etc. It's feeling much better. String height on the low E is about 2mm off the 12th fret. A little lower on the high E. 

I have now found some of the fret are poking up at the high end, but I'm going to wait until the wiring is done before working out how to approach that. I'll refrain from posting pics again... it's probably something to post in the build pages rather than here.