Nice job, looks great!
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So a mini project bass.
I have been gas’ing a Fender Pawn Shop Mustang
But finding one at a decent price is a challenge.
So I considered buying a Squier Mustang and converting it.
Finally, I said I don’t want another bass. I have a gorgeous shell pink Rascal
This is my new project. Replace the stock Squier electronics. Add in two Stonewall pickups, replace the pots and replace the 3way switch with a blend switch. Add some shielding while I’m at it.
The Alnico pickups from Stonewall should have tons more clarity than the Cunife muddy WRHB that comes from Fender
My new mini project.
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Considering the price of this magnet material, there is absolutly no chance that there is an actual CuNiFe pickup on a Squier ! it’s just some kind of widerange-looking pickup. Which looks good actually.
Nice looking bass by the way, I like the Rascal ! The pickguard especially has a good design I think.
I figure that, considering it’s a 30" and the bridge is far away from the back of the body, this should be a quite long instrument. Maybe as long as a normal long scale bass. Original.
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The pickups do sound pretty good, I’m just gassing and you know, new pickups is an improvement over a new bass.
The body is the same body as a Bass VI, has a similar 30" neck. In length it’s very close to a full scale bass. But the shorter neck and narrower frets I can handle better right now. People say that it plays like a long scale, but it’s not the same and I feel it. Just need some more more oomf from the pickups.
If I could I would be playing my Telebass, but the neck is just too much to handle.
I have two spots in my inventory to fill, a Bass VI, and a MM style. That’s it.
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especially on a Squier or Fender, that’s for certain !
Yeah I can understand that …
I’m sure that an upgraded Rascal can be a very good bass.
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One more thing. The pickups have two single coils each. Maybe wire it with a 5 way switch like a Strat instead of a blend? That could be cool
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not sure, I’d go for a blend pot I think. But your idea might be worth a try !
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I didn’t expect that. I figured it was going to be like two P pickups under those pickup covers.
I like the stock sound of the Rascal and because of the design, I don’t feel cramped playing it like I usually do on a short scale.
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You might be right; I am never going to be a lead bassist, the blend is probably all the tone I need
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It remembers me that I’ve done this post a few times ago : Blend pot : how and why?
I used my Ibanez hollow body to show the mod, but I plan to change the wiring again. My new idea is that the neck pickup will always be ON (100%) and the blend pot will be replaced for a volume pot for the bridge pickup only. Then there will still be the master volume and tone. The reason is that I never use the bridge pickup only, or at a higher level than the neck pickup. This way I’ll have some kind of “half blend” (only the ability to blend the bridge pickup added to the neck pickup) and the benefit would be that the pot curve will be twice the angle of the current MN pot. Not a huge improvement for sure, but it should optimize the bass a little bit for how I use it.
Not saying that you should do that too, I just wanted to share a recent though.
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Or you could use stacked pots and have individual tone and volume for each pickup.
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Curses. Now I’m rethinking. I could do volume/volume and tone. On this bass, at least with the stock pickups, the bridge pup soloed is a really nice tone, MMish
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I hate stacked pots actually so I’ll do everything to avoid them 
Those stacked pots always confuse me and seem unnecessarily hard to handle to me.
Also I’ve never been sure of the real utility of having a separate tone for each pickup, because the low-pass filters will cumulate when the pickups are used together (pickups in parallel = low pass filters in parallel too) so a master tone seems a much better way to go in my opinion.
And also I really like a master volume because that’s some kind of security kill switch in case of feedback or other need to mute the instrument. So the separate volume pots for each pickup don’t work for me.
And also the less pots the better
What I say is a sum up of many years of trying to understand my own use of the instruments. I know that some players like to have the most tonal possibilities out of an instrument but I really prefer something easy to use and rational. But that’s just me 
Yeah the classic JB thing. At least it’s comprehensive but personnally I’d prefer volume/blend/tone. Depends if a master volume is something important for you, or not !
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Squier PJ refurb
My son brought this one home from school. It’s been there a while and hasn’t played well since we got a set up from a local shop. This was about 6 months ago. This was his first bass. Bought off amazon 6-7 years ago. I had a squier MIJ neck and decided to swap the neck and redo the electronics. Bought the Geezer Butler PJ set. Also, found a good deal on a high mass fender bridge.
I was hoping to not have to solder, unfortunately found out that it has one of the longer input jacks and the one in the kit won’t work, so I’m going to have to solder. Wish me luck. Also, found out that the bridge pickup wasn’t going to fit. So, I bought a Dremel and got to work.
Got the bridge pickup in, didn’t take much Dremel work, and it now fits nicely. I’m waiting on a new input jack. Should be here tomorrow. Also, the pickup set was missing a part, so after an easy interaction with EMG customer support, that part is now on the way. Pictures of progress so far. Also, one of my helper…
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On my Rascal I’m going for volume/tone/blend. If I had to do it over again, I would have done that on the Mustang. Still might
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The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
On the upside my pickups are in the mail and on the way. May have them Saturday, which is before the pots and stuff get here.
On the other hand, Scott at Stonewall tells me the middle position on the 5 way switch, which takes a coil from each pickup and “makes” a third humbucker, gives the best sound in his testing of them.
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Got it all put together, this one was a little more than just putting on different parts. A little bit of soldering, had to route out some space for the bridge pick up, pickguard didn’t fit over the neck pickups, so had to do some dremel work on that too, missing parts in the geezer butler pick up set (emg send me all I needed after one email), but finally done except for knobs, but those are on order….
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EMG makes nice pickups, nice job there. Only if they sent the knobs too… but I don’t like their knobs anyway.
Good choice
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Rascal Build update.
The pickups arrived today. These are massive pickups. Each one weighs ~9 or 10 oz. Can’t wait to see how they play. The packaging was good, nice to see things labeled. The neck pickup has an N on the back, the Bridge a B.
The bridge has a higher output than the neck. Next weekend I think is when the Rascal Job will take place.
One of my bass parts will be late, USPS sent me a message that due to hazardous weather they could not deliver. I shot this picture when I received that message.
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@Wombat I just had another idea for your wiring on the Rascal. it could be Volume / Blend / Tone , and one of the pots (Tone) would be a push-pull or push-push that would split the pickups. So you would have both the benefits of the blend pot, and the ability to use the pickups as single coils.
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