2/23/2023 0 Comments Fender musicmaster bass pickup![]() I do greatly prefer the slimmer 1976 and earlier Musicmaster Bass necks to the much chunkier 1977 to 1982 necks. The bass has round-wound strings on it, but those may also be switched to flatwounds - as I find that combination to sound particularly good on Musicmaster basses! I may swap out the pickup for a reissue vintage Strat or Mustang pickup eventually, as these are much closer to the Mustang/Musicmaster guitar pickups that were used in original Musicmaster basses (yes - there are 6 polepieces under the plastic cover for ALL those Musicmaster basses!). ![]() The pickup is a bit different from the original pickup in that it has a bar magnet across the bottom of the pole-pieces (as is typical of many Fender Squier pickups) as opposed to just having magnetic polepieces. The bridge is a recent Bronco Bass bridge, as is the pickup - with rest of the parts (neckplate, knobs, strap-buttons) being standard reissue hardware. Those are Strat knobs on the controls in this picture - I replaced them with the proper Jazz Bass style knobs. I made the pickguard using an old hacked up Musicmaster Bass pickguard as a pattern, though I later realized I could have bought one from WD Music Products pretty cheaply. The neck was a straight-forward refret, using Fender's current "medium" guitar fretwire as opposed to the "jumbo" fretwire used on Fender's full-size basses from 1966 on. If anybody has some details on this, please let me know or post a comment ! I'm not sure what was used to finish 1965 through 1970 Mustangs and Musicmasters - but my 1966 Mustang Bass does not appear to have a topcoat on it and the color is a bit different from Dakota Red. These colors also did not have clear coats applied over them, so they do age slightly differently than typical Fender finishes - with more darkening and less yellowing. I believe that at least from 1970 on, these were fairly thin polyurethane finishes as opposed to acrylic and nitro lacquer finishes - so it may be that the red and blue were "offset" colors formulated in a different base. ![]() This family of instruments had their own formulations of blue and red - with the blue being a slightly darker and greyer variation on Daphne Blue and the red being a slightly darker version of Dakota Red. ![]() I decided NOT to do a clear coat over the color coat, in keeping with the style of original Musicmaster Bass finishes - though I will point out that Daphne Blue is not a "correct" color for Musicmaster (or Mustang) basses or guitars. I eventually tracked down a 1971 Musicmaster neck that had been defretted and a set of the fairly unique early Musicmaster Bass tuners.Īs is often the case - the large body plugs I had glued in when I repaired the body were showing their seam marks, so I ended up sanding the front and back faces of the body flat again and spraying a few more coats of Daphne Blue. The initial stages of rebuilding and refinishing the body are covered in this post. The body was a cheap ebay purchase - I think I paid $15 for it plus shipping. I started off with an early 70s poplar Fender Musicmaster Bass body that had been mercilessly routed for different pickups and then apparently broken in half and badly reglued together. Here's a long overdue follow-up on a post from a few years ago. ![]()
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