Bronco Bass Fretboard Mod

[Horsefeather]

Hey all,

I have this one piece maple neck Bronco bass with a very rattley truss rod. I've tried getting melted beeswax past the adjusting nut without success and I've also drilled through a face marker dot, also with no success. The rattle is worse than before now.

I have resolved to remove the damn thing entirely and replace it before putting the neck back together with a new fingerboard. I will also use the opportunity to change the scale length to 28" and make it a 6-string baritone.

That is, if it's possible. Has anyone had luck passing a one piece maple neck through a sander to take the top 1/4" or so off? After removing the frets, of course.

If this is a viable technique, I might also take the face off the body, route some chambers in it for weight, and give it a new flame maple cap or something fancy.

[mortron]

Is it definitely the truss rod? I have one I thought was the rod, but it's one of the tuners I am fairly certain.

The wood on my Bronco bass is pretty soft and already light as heck. I can see taking weight off as just ensuring neck dive.

Presuming this is just one of the newer Bronco basses, you may be quicker and cheaper to find a donor Bronco if they're cheap enough. My one worry about machining away material is how much the neck may move/react to the changes.

I'm sure there are those that have done it tho... Hopefully they can chime in. Now I am wondering if maybe it ISNt the tuners on my bass lol

[Horsefeather]

I think it might have been an old post of yours I encountered when dealing with this that spurred me to inspect my tuners. I was really hoping it was just them. I took the covers off of them all with no change in the rattle. I tried muting the strings past the nut while inducing the rattle--also no change. I think it's definitely the truss rod. Especially since it does cease when I loosen it up.

The thing is I already have a good Bronco bass. I bought this one only to use as a mod platform to make a Bass VI thing. Then I changed course and got a 30" scale actual 6-string neck so this bass became redundant. A guy on craigslist put up a want ad for a Bronco so I wrote him and offered this one with the qualifier that it has the rattle. He balked (naturally) so I decided to dig into it. Now that I'm seeing it's not easily fixable, I figure I'll just turn it into another project.

A pawn shop in the area has a Bronco baritone conversion and I went to check it out. Didn't like the bass proportions for a baritone, with the bridge so far back, but I was impressed by how much lighter its body is than either of mine. I apparently got two really hefty examples. Definitely no neck dive happening here.

I didn't mention it before but another reason I wanted to redo the top of the body is to move the pocket 1" north to help get the bridge closer to the middle of the body. Here's what a 28" scale with the neck shifted 1" north looks like: