LeftyBassist.com

Hi All,

This may not get anyone excited apart from me, but I've scored a used Squier VM 70's Jazz from the GC used site. I had to buy it sight unseen as usual, but it turned out to be a good 'un. It was made in 2011, and was very dirty when it arrived. After a deep clean, set-up and a new set of strings, Thunderbirds are indeed go!

It's not in the same league as Billw97's yet, but I will work on it over time. I think it looks pretty cool as-is, so I won't tackle the refinish . I have a couple of quick questions for those out there with one of these: what did you set the pick-up height at? The fender guidelines are very helpful, but I'm not sure if the Duncan designed pups count as vintage style or standard? Secondly I note that the glue around one of the block inlays has cracked and fallen out in a small section (about 5mm in length). It's not going anywhere, but I'd like to avoid gunk filling up in the hole over time, so any advice about what glue I could use to fill the hole would be great.

Overall I'm very happy with this New-old-bass. I traded my old G&L L2K tribute in, as I could never really get a sound out of it that made me grin, despite a lot of trying. This bass makes me smile all the time.

Cheers,
Dave

Cool man. Why refin? It looks great.

Congrats! And I agree with Matt, it looks great as is.

+1 one on what They said! Looks fine the way it is....

Cool, nice score! The value for money these basses offer is incredible and they look great!

NoXX wrote:Secondly I note that the glue around one of the block inlays has cracked and fallen out in a small section (about 5mm in length).

Wow, I'm surprised it even IS a real inlay! I always thought the blocks and the bindings were painted on. I've held and played several of these and could never spot any filler, glue or seams between the fingerboard and the black material and I thought the texture looked very similar to that of the fingerboard wood. I would never have guessed they were real inlays and bindings. Awesome!

NoXX wrote:what did you set the pick-up height at? The fender guidelines are very helpful, but I'm not sure if the Duncan designed pups count as vintage style or standard?

I set all of my pickups the same, whether active or passive and get really good results.

While fretting at the 19th fret, I set both the G side and the E or B side to be an 1/8th" away from the highest point in both the neck and bridge pickups. If the pickup has pole pieces that extend above the pickups, I measure to those.

I like my strings to be as close to the pickups as possible without hitting them while I play... and since I can get fairly aggressive, I found this distance to be perfect in this regard while maintaining the more aggressive tone I like.

Thanks everyone for the kind words and advice! I don't plan on altering the finish, but I will probably swap out the bridge and tuners over time, as Bill did. I've just put black straplocks on it, and will most likely add a black Hipshot bridge and tuners. The current tuners are holding, but feel like they may spontaneously combust at any moment (and have sharp edges from the rough stamping). However, given that I got it for a steal, I am not complaining at all.

Howdy folks,
Time to update my friends on my progress. Firstly I need to thank Bill for all of his assistance with the Hipshot gear. I am now a Hipshot guy for life This is my first attempt at working on a bass, so it's been a fun ride. Here's what was done:

-Stock tuners replaced with 4 treble-side black Hipshot HB7
-Stock bridge replaced with Hipshot A-Style black brass bridge
-Stock electronics removed
-Cavities sanded down and cleaned
-Copper shielding of cavities and back of pick guard
-Control plate pot holes reamed
-Volume and tone pots replaced with 250k reverse audio taper CTS
-Stock Jack replaced with Switchcraft jack
-New tone cap is a sprague orange drop 0.047 uF
-Bass rewired and nut adjusted
-Stock knobs replaced by US Fender Jazz knobs (with brass bushings to fix split shafts).
-Grounding is now great - only faint background hum and single coil noise (was very noisy before)

Peace, Dave.