Recently completed a cool "vintage" build i thought you guys would enjoy seeing.. A previous customer's bandmate reached out to me on instagram wanting to commission a musicmaster/mustang type short scale bass. 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 :/
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 found this 1975 Musicmaster bass neck and ideas started flowing.. 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. 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..
Decided to fill the pickguard holes and order a WD 70s musicmaster guard. 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.
The neck was honestly a bit of a mess, though i forgot to snap some before pics to show just how bad it was
.. It had been installed to a couple different bodies in its life and had 2 sets of screw holes. 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 felt awful and i knew it would have to be sanded as soon as i saw it in person. Luckily the truss rod worked properly and tint was even and appeared somewhat original. Original decal was long gone, making this a prime candidate for a matched headstock. 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. Fits the age of the neck nicely id say!
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
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After 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.
Absolutely HUGE reward for all the work I did.. 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.. The vintage-style silkscreened headstock decal is the cherry on top in my opinion..
Just for grins, heres a couple pics next to my 1978 MM bass for comparison.. Lovely pair of twins if you ask me
Thanks for reading this novel of a post. 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. Surely there will be more vintage-partscasters to come
