Squier Vista Musicmaster Bass question

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:17 pm

Hey all,
I haven't posted in a while, but I've been following along quietly. There's a shell pink Squier Musicmaster bass up on NY craigslist for $200. I'm seriously considering it. The guy sent me a picture, and it looks like the pickup has 6 polepieces, like the original Fender Musicmasters. All the others I've seen have had 4-pole "Vista Tone" pickups. And he says it's a '93 but I thought the Vista series was introduced later. Did any of the Vista basses have 6-pole pickups, or was there an early 90's non-Vista bass that I don't know about?

Thanks for the help!

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:18 pm

I guess no one is interested. I looked at the photo more closely and it seems like there are three small screws around the pickup, so at some point the original pickup was replaced with a tele bridge pickup? I decided to pass, so if anyone else is interested here's the pic:

stewart · Post by **stewart** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:32 pm

seems an odd choice for a replacement.

serfx · Post by **serfx** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:42 pm

stewart wrote:seems an odd choice for a replacement.

i dunno.. twangy bass... i think i might have to put one in my bronco

James · Post by **James** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:45 pm

Tele bridge pickup for sure. Though I'd be more concerned about the dice knobs.

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:55 pm

Haha, yeah. He said he had the original knobs.

James · Post by **James** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 4:57 pm

What comes stock on those? I think I had knurled chrome ones on the guitar versions I had.

astro · Post by **astro** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 6:41 pm

I don't know what these cost new, but $200 doesn't sound bad considering that this bass is essentially the same specs-wise as a Mustang bass, except for the pickup (which is easy to swap for something better)

.cale · Post by **.cale** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 4:13 pm

FUCK THOSE DICE KNOBS!

I would've jumped on that, even if the pickups been changed.

BoringPostcards · Post by **BoringPostcards** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 7:59 pm

Is it too late to still go for it? The originals had mustang pups in them, so that tele pup may make it sound a little closer to the original then the vista tone ones, which weren't that great.

They came out in 96 If my memory serves me right and they were around 500 CAD. Whatever that was in USD at the time, I have no idea.

They're solid basses, I'd jump it if I were you.

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 4:06 am

I think it's too late now. He was looking for a quick sale and I'm sure he found someone. Craigslist guitars usually go quick here if they are reasonably priced and the seller is not a total flake.

I kind of regret letting it go because I'm probably going to wind up shelling out at least twice as much for a mustang bass. But honestly I wanted a mustang in the first place so I'm sure I'll get over it.

What scared me off was that the seller thought it was the stock pickup, which made me think that he had never looked under the pickguard. I don't know enough about the model to know if the stock rout has enough room for a tele pickup, so I was afraid of getting it home and finding a mess under the hood.

astro · Post by **astro** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 4:14 am

jeff wrote:I think it's too late now. He was looking for a quick sale and I'm sure he found someone. Craigslist guitars usually go quick here if they are reasonably priced and the seller is not a total flake.

I kind of regret letting it go because I'm probably going to wind up shelling out at least twice as much for a mustang bass. But honestly I wanted a mustang in the first place so I'm sure I'll get over it.

What scared me off was that the seller thought it was the stock pickup, which made me think that he had never looked under the pickguard. I don't know enough about the model to know if the stock rout has enough room for a tele pickup, so I was afraid of getting it home and finding a mess under the hood.

If you don't know for sure if he's sold it, you've got nothing to lose by asking him

If you are feeling adventurous, you could try modding a Squier Bronco into a Mustang bass. I modded a bronco to look like a musicmaster bass, and the bronco has a body and neck that are the same dimensions as those on a Mustang bass. I don't think the body would require any more routing other than drilling holes for the string ferrules opposite the string-through bridge. I also have both a reissue Mustang bass and a vintage one from the 70's... the bronco can hold its own with them, quality wise.

Here's my modded Bronco

Here's a "before" pic with my RI mustang bass

Justyn · Post by **Justyn** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 2:46 pm

How are those japanese mustang basses anyway?

I'm thinking of getting one

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 5:41 pm

My girlfriend had a bronco for a little while, but I didn't think it sounded very good. Plus, I found the neck to be too clubby and the frets were not finished well at all. We might have just gotten a bad one. I'm sure converting to string-through would have helped a lot, but we don't have a drill press in our apartment.

She's been playing my CV jazz bass, and since she's getting more serious about it I'm trying to help her find something that will be more comfortable for her to play and not as heavy. My former bandmate has one of the RI mustangs and I like it a lot. This is a convenient excuse to buy one!

Is that a black pickguard on your RI mustang? It looks really nice.

astro · Post by **astro** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 6:11 pm

Justyn wrote:How are those japanese mustang basses anyway?

I'm thinking of getting one

jeff wrote:My girlfriend had a bronco for a little while, but I didn't think it sounded very good. Plus, I found the neck to be too clubby and the frets were not finished well at all. We might have just gotten a bad one. I'm sure converting to string-through would have helped a lot, but we don't have a drill press in our apartment.

She's been playing my CV jazz bass, and since she's getting more serious about it I'm trying to help her find something that will be more comfortable for her to play and not as heavy. My former bandmate has one of the RI mustangs and I like it a lot. This is a convenient excuse to buy one!

Is that a black pickguard on your RI mustang? It looks really nice.

The thing with the cheaper Squiers is that the quality control can vary, but I would say that the duds are the minority. If you were to go the Bronco route, I would recommend trying a few out, to avoid getting a dud. Mine has very nicely finished frets. The stock pickup is garbage, but it's a standard strat shape, so any standard single coil will fit in there. I put a Red Lace Sensor in mine (with new pots & jacks) and it sounds killer now. I just kept the stock bridge.

The Japanese RI Mustang basses are very nice! Yes, mine has a black pickguard: I wanted a 70's look to my bass. I have a vintage one from the 70's, too, and the RI has a much slimmer and faster neck, and the pickup sounds more full and modern, but gets very vinatgey with the tone knob turned down. Since I bought it, it's become my #1 bass. I would recommend going used for these, though... Fender now wants close to a grand for them new, which is ridiculous, especially when you consider that they don't even give you a gig bag with it. At that price it should come with a hard case! Used you can regularly find them for $500 on ebay.

JordanD · Post by **JordanD** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:42 pm

My friend just bought a Vista Musicmaster Bass in Shell Pink for a really ridiculous price. It's a real quality instrument and easilly worth what this guy is asking (even with those ugly knobs and replaced pickup). I don't like the stock pickup too much myself, I offered him a hot rails to put in there but he wants to keep it stock, haha.

jeff · Post by **jeff** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:04 pm

UPDATE: we bought a white CIJ mustang bass today! Found a used one for a good price, and I used my CV jazz bass as a partial trade in. Unfortunately the pickguard is a particularly heinous brown tort, so now we're left to decide what to swap in instead.

DanHeron · Post by **DanHeron** » Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:16 pm

jeff wrote:UPDATE: we bought a white CIJ mustang bass today! Found a used one for a good price, and I used my CV jazz bass as a partial trade in. Unfortunately the pickguard is a particularly heinous brown tort, so now we're left to decide what to swap in instead.

Black guard. Like Astro's above, looks awesome.

or, a red tort looks good on white I think:

robroe · Post by **robroe** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:03 am

i have the same bass. i painted the pickup covers white last year for a matching set with my bronco.

astro · Post by **astro** » Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:50 am

DanHeron wrote:
jeff wrote:UPDATE: we bought a white CIJ mustang bass today! Found a used one for a good price, and I used my CV jazz bass as a partial trade in. Unfortunately the pickguard is a particularly heinous brown tort, so now we're left to decide what to swap in instead.
Black guard. Like Astro's above, looks awesome.

or, a red tort looks good on white I think:

I really don't know why they bother with the cheap crappy tort. With tort it's an all-or-nothing kind of deal: it either looks really good (like the vintage celluloid stuff), or it looks like total shite. The brown Japanese stuff does look slightly less bad than the inkjet-printer "tort" that Squier uses, but it's still in the "utter shite" category.

I bought a really nice celluloid tort guard from WD Music for my P-Bass, a few years ago. It's by far the nicest tort that I have ever seen anywhere, but it wasn't cheap (I think I paid $60 for it).

If you want to go for a solid colour you can't go wrong with black like I did

(my custard '69 Mustang RI guitar got the black guard treatment as well), but I bet parchment or mint or even plain white would look good. I don't know about pearl on white... especially the modern pearl material that looks like a luncheon counter. Yuck