I bought this bass to put a set of strings on. That's why I bought it. I had a set of Rotosound flats that someone offered up and I took. The original bass that was destined to have them (Squier MB4) sold and I had to put them on SOMETHING!
I've always wanted a Squier VM and found this one on CL. Went to check it out and was impressed by how amazingly clean it was and the price was right, so I bought it. Brought it home, played it a bit (little buzzy) and pulled the strings off.
Looked at the frets and it looked well played! YIPES!
Not gouged, but wear nonetheless. It was destined for my usual treatment, but this was going to require the rebuild, plus a leveling of frets... so I went at it...
Shielding paint!?! Extra ground wiring under the pickups!?! Squiers are not bad at all these days. Other than some knotty wood here and there...
They are decently spec'd.
Redid the frets and cleaned up the board, here's the result:
And the whole magilla, shimmed the neck, frets leveled and polished and whole bass cleaned and strung with Rotosound flats:
Squiers are interesting beasts. They are inexpensive and when most people pick one up at GC, they think "Man! This SUCKS!"
And rightly so! Most of the out-of-the-box Squiers are unpolished and play very poorly.
However, these are diamonds in the rough. It took me all of 2 hours of easy labor to make this bass play and sound really nice. And though it comes spec'd pretty basically, it's an easy upgrade on just about everything.
I have a Gotoh bridge and new (white!) pickguard on the way. If I dig the bass, I'm gonna do pickups next.
Squier love!
PS: This is far and away better than the MIM Jazz I had not too long ago. No offense and that bass was also 11 years older, but for essentially the same price, I'd take one of these over an older MIM for playability, weight, and parts.
I've always wanted a Squier VM and found this one on CL. Went to check it out and was impressed by how amazingly clean it was and the price was right, so I bought it. Brought it home, played it a bit (little buzzy) and pulled the strings off.
Looked at the frets and it looked well played! YIPES!
Not gouged, but wear nonetheless. It was destined for my usual treatment, but this was going to require the rebuild, plus a leveling of frets... so I went at it...
Shielding paint!?! Extra ground wiring under the pickups!?! Squiers are not bad at all these days. Other than some knotty wood here and there...
They are decently spec'd.
Redid the frets and cleaned up the board, here's the result:
And the whole magilla, shimmed the neck, frets leveled and polished and whole bass cleaned and strung with Rotosound flats:
Squiers are interesting beasts. They are inexpensive and when most people pick one up at GC, they think "Man! This SUCKS!"
And rightly so! Most of the out-of-the-box Squiers are unpolished and play very poorly.
However, these are diamonds in the rough. It took me all of 2 hours of easy labor to make this bass play and sound really nice. And though it comes spec'd pretty basically, it's an easy upgrade on just about everything.
I have a Gotoh bridge and new (white!) pickguard on the way. If I dig the bass, I'm gonna do pickups next.
Squier love!
PS: This is far and away better than the MIM Jazz I had not too long ago. No offense and that bass was also 11 years older, but for essentially the same price, I'd take one of these over an older MIM for playability, weight, and parts.
