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On almost the three year anniversary of this project being stalled, I had a moment of clarity - I have not gone on with it because of the mods I have to make to the Jazz Bass body, and that is INSANE. What I need is a MustangBass / Musicmaster / Duosonic body (i.e. one without the bridge routs). Does anyone want to quote me on making an unrouted Mustang body with just a neck pocket? And does anyone want an alder Jazz Bass body? (albeit one made of about 6 pieces, but otherwise excellent).
Then I can wake up, pull my thumb out and FINISH THIS. The neck is sweet and ready to go.

OK now I am getting my thinking straight. This needs to have a Mustang body, but the heel of the shortscale neck is longer than the heel of the guitar neck by 17mm. I don't want it to go too far back in the body so I figured I could make a body with a 17mm extension of the neck pocket to accommodate the longer heel. That then puts the Mustang trem a bit behind where it would be for a guitar, so the pickguard shape needs to change. I can't push it back to hold a third pickup - would look too weird - so I can float the third pickup on the body, just like a Jazz Bass, and angle the back edge of the guard to match.
Et voila:

Now I have to build it.

Apologies for the busted images on this thread, something changed with my Flickr settings a while back. In the meantime here are a few of the key ones:
After I modified the Rondo neck and strung it up on the Jazz Bass body - it played like a dream!

Alongside the Jaguar I no longer own, for scale:

And this is rendered from the PDF plan for the body I need to make to finish this. One day!

I have a feeling the tension from a Bass VI is gonna chew through those Mustang pivot points right quick. Although I could be wrong; maybe there isn't actually any more string tension than a regular Mustang.

I doubt it - the tension in a string runs along the string. The break angle at the bridge puts some of that force downward into the bridge, but it's only a fraction of the total, and a steel screw isn't going to be bothered by that. After all a standard VI uses the same bridge without problems.
Unless it's the pivots in the trem you mean? I guess they could be more vulnerable than the pivot edge on a Jag/JM trem. At the moment I just have a couple of M6 screws from under the plate into the cigar tube, so that's pretty stable, but it'll be interesting to see if I can get the trem to balance. One day.

I may have missed it somewhere along the way, but where did you get that neck? Thanks.

It was from one of the SX shortscale Jazz Bass copies - I cut up the headstock and shaped a 6 string nut. String spacing was tiny but it played really well.

What's the width of that neck pocket? I have a 30" scale, 21 fret Bass VI / baritone neck and want to make a Mustang VI with it. Would this drawing work with a 21 fret neck with a guitar heel width?

The extra fret will mean the bridge needs to go maybe half an inch toward the neck pocket, but it should be adaptable. The drawing is a standard mustang body with the bridge and trem shifted, an extra pickup rout and the neck pocket extended forward (i.e. sticking out like a tongue) to give more contact for greater string tension. You'd need to measure how long the flat part of the neck heel is to make sure they match.

I can't swear it'll work because I haven't made it, but if someone wants to quote me to make the body, I'm up for it. Based in Australia, so shipping might be an issue.

MatthewK wrote: ↑

Fri Oct 04, 2019 2:47 pm

The extra fret will mean the bridge needs to go maybe half an inch toward the neck pocket, but it should be adaptable. The drawing is a standard mustang body with the bridge and trem shifted, an extra pickup rout and the neck pocket extended forward (i.e. sticking out like a tongue) to give more contact for greater string tension. You'd need to measure how long the flat part of the neck heel is to make sure they match.

I can't swear it'll work because I haven't made it, but if someone wants to quote me to make the body, I'm up for it. Based in Australia, so shipping might be an issue.

Do you have a digital copy I could print to check it out?

I'll PM you with a PDF.

Yeah, I meant the pivot points in the vibrato plate. I'm still emotionally scarred from my experience with my own VM Mustang plate, which lasted about a month with 12s before I realized a new design was in order. You can see here how hogged out they got, which rendered the whole thing useless. Well, it did become a nice prototype.

People say the US versions are better, though. So if you must us the Mustang vibrato (if you must stang), definitely use one of those.

Another thing to consider is that the Mustang vibrato provides a lot more pitch bending range than the JM design. You might find it excessive when applied to bass.

Oh, and another thing. The Mustang vibrato offers less fine-tuneability in regard to tension and balance than the JM design.

Wow - I'll consider myself warned! I have 12s on my Mustang so I better keep an eye on that too. It's an obvious weak point now that you point it out.
Given that I use the trem on a VI approximately never, I might just go with the screwed down tailpiece.

So... here we are one year later. Is it finished?