Silk Purse from a Sow's Ear, or The Squier-itter Bronc-ora

[Praxist]

hey folks, been a while, how's things?

So the last time I made a thread here was for this: http://www.talkbass.com/forum/f57/praxists-1st-annual-tb-bass-build-competition-entry-p-rick-681961/

Went well and learned a ton of stuff but ended up doing precious little with my new skills for the last year and a half. Anyway, a friend let a Squier Bronco come my way for too cheap to pass up and after playing it for a while I decided to hack it up and turn it into something different. I was originally going to just do some mild mods, but a drunken argument with a friend led me to the current plan: take an average bronco and make it into a ritter or the like. Now i'm no luthier, and Mr. Ritter is obviously gifted, but i'm always up for a challenge!

My grand plan is to reshape the body and headstock to something like a Ritter Cora and apply a variation of his platinum antique finish. Like i did with the p-rick, i plan to pay homage to Mr. Ritter's fine boutique work, while also maintaining the Squier ethic of mass produced crap done quickly and cheaply.

So welcome along for the ride, please feel free to point out the folly of my plan, i probably won't listen but we can all be entertained lol.

 

[Praxist]

So first things first, here's a shot of the headstock with my alternative design:

And a shot of my lovely full scale drawing template thing:

And here is a shot of the new shape drawn over the bronco tracing:

and then here is the cut out template overlaid on the body:

More to come

 

[Praxist]

here is my high tech tracing of the shape of the template onto the body:

mostly cut out and hit with the random orbital sander to start the roundovers. Still hadn't hit the cutaways at this point.

Rounded over everywhere and sanding started:

the back:

And a closeup of the cutaways - I had to be cautious with these because they can't be rounded as much as the rest of ht e body plus I wanted meat to still support the neck well.

by they way, I know my grammar's bad and don't really want a bunch of grammar nazi's pointing out that there's no apostrophe in "nazi's" so if you're planning this kind of thing, dont' bother because my grammers' atroshious any wayz.

 

[Praxist]

At this point, I had filled all the little screw holes in the body and was leting them dry so i turned my attention to the neck. I got it mostly cut out and then my jigsaw died.

another angle:

quick purchase and beg forgiveness from wife and off to the races again.

Here is a picture of the neck heel, on which i drew some dots that I was hoping to put extra neck screws like ritter, but I ended up scrapping that idea after a while.

I guess I should mention that this project is nearly finished, so these pics all represent work from back in January of this year.

 

[Praxist]

So I went to do a body/neck/pickguard mockup at this point and realized I needed to reshape the pg, duh. I know ritter doesn't use them but this is one of those squier bronco details that I'm leaving in place.

new shape on the pg:

Here's the back of it with my pickup shape drawn over the hole:

 

[Praxist]

I might get more up tonight, but otherwise it will be tomorrow

 

[M0ses]

Are you 100% sure that the backs of the tuners will fit that closely together?

 

[Hopkins]

Are you 100% sure that the backs of the tuners will fit that closely together?

This

What size tuners were original?

 

[Praxist]

^ good eye there! Yes they do fit that close, but just barely. I've had to shave the edges of the washers on top so they fit together but it works. They are the remaining gotoh's that i used on the p-rick.

 

[ctmullins]

I'd like to point out the folly of your plan. And your grammer and speling suks. And your ridiculous mashups always bring a smile to my face.

Carry on, demented sir!!

 

[Stealth]

The P-rick was a brilliant piece - I'm sure this will be no less brilliant.

Sub'd!

 

[Praxist]

Thanks dudes, i dunno about the brilliant part.

So after working on the body FOREVER with sandpapery bits, it was still really messy:

Here's the back with the final shape and roundovers. Still getting the surface even everywhere with no problematic bits.

here's what the front looks like. The shiny dot near the bridge is my filling a dent with superglue.

And another angle of the upper horn. I was trying to keep it from looking too phallic, and it took a lot of sanding. I've never spent so much time rubbing a phallic shape in my life.

 

[Praxist]

So then i turned my attention to the headstock. I avoided overthinking things and beat the **** out of it. My drill work was as clean as it can be when done with a crooked shaft in a chuck that didn't close properly. Not bad for maple! Not to worry though, I'm able to pretty it up.

And another shot. This one really shows how the Ritter headstock shape was nailed. -ish.

Ta da! See that half round file up there? That thing is awesome and highly recommended. Made very short work of the headstock edges and was quick and easy. .

A better angle:

And last shot of that work, the back before the holes are filled:

 

[Dark Horse]

In the future, when enlarging the tuner holes, it is easiest to just plug the existing holes with dowels and then use a Forstner bit of the desired size to redrill them. Makes for much neater and more accurate holes.

Looking forward to seeing how this turns out ... the P-Rick was a cool project.

 

[Praxist]

good call Mr. Horse, it would probably also be even better if I used a drill press.

 

[Praxist]

So my plan was to depart from ritter's foil finish and instead cover the entire bass with foil and antiquing, neck, fingerboard, nut, headstock, body, pickup and pickguard, all in platinum-looking foil. So i had to prepare everything for foiling, which means smoothing and priming everything. So you can see that i filled the one old bronco screw hole, cut the new pickguard shape to match the shape of the new body. THen I put it in place, drilled new holes in tasteful spots and started prepping and beveling.

A closer look:

The holes drilled and the old one filled with a toothpick, epoxy and sanded down:

 

[Praxist]

Here's the finished pickguard, drilled out, filled old hole with epoxy and edges beveled. All done by the same half round file.

Here it is as a mockup:

Next up, priming and foiling the neck!

 

[agreatheight]

Looks sweet!

 

[Praxist]

Thanks!

So to prepe the neck for foiling, I filed away every little nick and dent with the half round file, sanded it smooth with 120 180 220 320 and 400 and then sprayed it with black automotive filler/primer. It took two coats to get a nice smooth finish.

You can see the remants of a mark on the headstock near the nut, it's just an artifact of the differing surfaces there. I left the tiny screwhole as a reminder of whence it came.

The whole neck got it, frets and all.

A shot of the back:

And the heel:

 

[Praxist]

Here's the leafing stuff i used. I bought two packages, but one was enough to do everything. I did a small tester piece twice and found that applying the leafing onto the unsanded primer gave a better finish than the sanded primer, so I left the actual guitar unsanded after priming.

The adhesive sizing applied. It seems like it is basically very watered down white glue. It was as thin as water but dried quickly

The sizing across the rest of the neck:

And the foil applied. You just hold it over the surface and start placing it down and hten push on it with a brush to the surface before lightly burnishing with cheesecloth. Looks challenging but its supereasy to do it.

This is the antiquing style that ritter has going on, but i think it looks too much like trompe loeil crazing and so i filled in all the nooks and crannnies

mid foiling:

the whole shebang

fretboard:

and the heel area:

Next up is attacking the body for completion.