Squier Bronco - Bass VI Mod

[AaronXII]

Picked up a used Squier Bronco Bass to convert it to a Bass VI.
Parts:

• fender tornado bridge

• new tuners

• bass VI Bone Nut (eBay)

• string joy Bass VI Strings

[s_mcsleazy]

pretty sweet. i'd be curious to see what the headstock looks like.

[jagstang]

Oh yeah, great job!

[bubba899]

Ah man this is a great mod! I'm going to have to have a go at this. I'd love to see the headstock.

[ohm-men]

Very nice ! I really like how it looks.
Did a simelar thing last summer, but went a step further. (Actually a revamp of something I did 10 years ago.)
I owned a Squier VI in the past, but the Bronco neck works better for me.
I reshaped the headstock to make it more Bass VI like. Looks a bit like a stretched Jm headstock

[Horsefeather]

Is that intonated yet?

[AaronXII]

I don’t think it was intonated in those pics, but it certainly had no issues getting intonated and tuned up. It went faster than I thought it would. I’m Still working on the headstock. I’ll post pics when I finish up

[smjenkins]

Both look like cool projects! How did you guys get two extra tuners on to a bass headstock?

[AaronXII]

Patched the existing holes for the 4 bass tuners with dowels and wood glue. Then drilled 6 new holes for guitar tuners.

[smjenkins]

OK, cool. That makes sense. Thanks for explaining.

[ohm-men]

Patched the existing holes for the 4 bass tuners with dowels and wood glue. Then drilled 6 new holes for guitar tuners.

Yup, indeed. Exactly that!
I did alter the slope on the tuner side of the bronco headstock so I could line up the 6 tuners.
I then printed out a Jm headstock full size, laid it over the somewhat reshaped Bronco headstock and drilled new tuner holes.

[AaronXII]

I also altered the angle of tuner side of the bronco headstock. It has lead me to reshaping the headstock completely

[Flurko]

This looks really nice, i'm curious to see the headstock too !
there's a bronco for sale at 100€ locally, now I'm tempted but I already have an instrument in bass VI tuning, even if it's just a 25" guitar with ultra heavy strings...

The bronco conversion reminds me of something by Kanji Kawabata, who seems to be mostly making handmade strats for Tomo Fujita, whose name I never encountered a month ago but seems to have a big following online :



(screenshot from their instagram, because the modern web is silly and you cant juste hotlink images from a real site anymore)

[AaronXII]

This was work in progress after Dowling the existing tuning holes

[ohm-men]

This looks really nice, i'm curious to see the headstock too !
there's a bronco for sale at 100€ locally, now I'm tempted but I already have an instrument in bass VI tuning, even if it's just a 25" guitar with ultra heavy strings...

Well, I have the same. A 25" scale guitar with heavy strings and a VI.
Both are very different though... They kind of contemplate eachother.
The low tuned 25" scale guitar (B-b) is great for Spagetti-Western and moody reverb, echo, delayed stuff, where the VI gets you in that low/deep erea.
It does great things, from Höfner (neck and bridge out of phase) to spanky (just the bridge) to Mustang Bass (middle Pu), P and J kind of bass sounds, etc...

For € 100,- I'd take the plunge and buy the bronco. Slap a 6 string bridge on it, a set of guitar tuners and get a set of d'Addario Bass VI strings and your good to go...