Squier Bronco Bass Build 

If you want your own custom artwork on your instrument, you can reach out to Shea here: www.designedbyshea.com/contact

i just finished moding my bronco. took me about 10 months. I stripped the finish. routed a second pickup above the bridge. Finished it in a color shift green-purple. and loaded it up with 2 51 p pickups with stacked knobs. Thing Absolutely RIPS

Painting the headstock would really bring the design together really well. Maybe even black nylon tape wound strings could be cool too.

What a great MOD. My respect to your wife on that amazing freehand work! And thank you for sharing your tips and knowledge on making that bass so much cooler and better!

Dude! That’s inspiring!! Love the result and the coworking space. The dog! It’s so joyful. I hope to see you live one day!

I bought a Squier Classic Vibe '60s P bass thinking I might modify it. But it turned out I loved it just the way it was. It's actually become my favorite bass. I like it better than basses I have that cost me five times as much.

I ended up keeping the tuners but I painted mine a color shift blue and purple sparkle, cut a custom pick guard and put a mini humbucker in it with 500K pots, an orange drop cap and went fretless with a CA glue fingerboard & flat wound strings. It's pretty dope now. I got the bass (brand new) in trade for a Bruins jersey that I paid like 12 dollars for on Temu. LOL Score!

Wow, that bass looks fantastic. Was never a fan of the original color but now it really pops against all that black. Great job Shea.

Went to town on my bass with a handful of paint pens, swapped pickups, switched to flats, added a hip shot drop d that doesn't match the other keys, and cut off part of the headstock. Absolutely love the idea of making an instrument like this truly your own

My biggest goal with my parts-basses was one of a kind. One body hand painted and one airbrushed by my kids. And I painted headstocks to tie them in to the paint schemes. One is a Musicmaster body and one is a Mustang, both are sporting Bronco necks. They're mine and I love 'em. Plus I learned a TON assembling them. This is great!

I LOVE Shea’s artwork on that.

I've been wanting to get and mod a Bronco for a while. I bought a Squier Mustang bass (which was my intro to short scale basses), and now I want another short scale!

Such a cool looking and sounding bass. The chance to work with your extremely talented wife makes it all the more special. Great job!

Shea’s artwork is perfection!! Digging this mod project for sure!!

Great job guys!

Every bass I acquire gets the exact same neck treatment. I own a few MIM and USA Fenders, but when the phone rings, it's the Squiers that go to the party!

my friends got me a harley benton telecaster in a beautiful shell pink for my birthday. i was just looking for something new and i was more than okay with a cheap guitar but holy damn, this thing feels just so good for 150 euros. but right after i got it, i felt like making it more "my own". i love a light tasteful relicing so i chapped to paint at some places and aged to built in pickguard (wich was already more of a minty color to make it look more vintage) for some days in a mixture of coffee, black tea and vinegar. had it on for a couple months, then decided to go with a vintage white pearl pickguard. the sparkle fits perfectly with the shell pink colour. speaking of the color, it reminded me so much of japanese cherry trees so i got a pack of fret inlay stickers of that sort. and it sparkles like the pickguard too! it's my pink little beauty now. looking forward to change the pickups one day!

Enjoyed this! Love modifying instruments. I've done a lot of upgrades and switching out of parts, mostly for Fender stuff. Highly recommend tinkering! It's a fun way to be creative and develop some new skills.

Very cool project & great result! I'm currently refinishing a Squier Jazzmaster that Fender was selling at big discounts over labor day. It's in pieces now as I'm doing the long process refinish. I filed, sanded, & cleaned the neck the day I got it. Grabbed some bougie pickups. One difference is that I'm going to pay a quality local shop to put it all together for me when it's ready. It's not that I don't know where all the parts go, but I've put in a lot of effort, and I want it done really really well. I'm ready for wallpaper application today, and I'm a bit nervous to get it cut exactly right, but it's that good kind of nervous that comes with making art. This video ramped up my excitement for the rest of the project! Thanks, Philip! I love your new bass. Fabulous artwork!!

Just taking a break from my bass practice to sit and peruse a bass video. You video popped...as that Bronco now does~~! I so enjoyed watching and also you and Shea working together on making this bass a right goodie and something you now feel connected with.

Sorry for the multiple comments. But I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this video. I didn't expect to find it as interesting as I did. I really enjoyed seeing your interactions with your wife, and how you communicated your thoughts and ideas to each other. I think being able to work on something like this with your partner is awesome. And most importantly, the end result looks great. I imagine Shea will get a lot of work out of this video.

Beautiful work and really cool artwork! Sounds great! looks phenomenal!

The first instrument I ever modified was a Squier Bullet Strat, when I was a teenager. Repainted the body, did a matching headstock, and swapped in an HSS pre-wired pickguard. Now I can't leave any of my guitars or basses stock... Whoops. Love what you did with the Bronco!

I've been modifying the basses I own since day 1 basically. Only recently, I've been building my own bass from luthier-grade planks and a plan of course. It's a short scaled bass, and plays like a charm !

Hey, well done! That turned out beautifully. Your wife’s design work really makes that bass look amazing, and your hardware choices really complement her design aesthetic in a cool way. On paper, your bass modification would have seemed a bit “iffy”, at least to me, but the two of you really pulled off something spectacular...

Very cool Phillip! Having an artist for a wife helped me out as well. I’ve mentioned my build before. My total budget was around $500 for my bronco. Reshaped and refinished the body and headstock Installed all new electronics like what the g&l fallout has with mfd pickup and 3-way toggle. Modded the pick guard And by far the screwdriver trick is almost a must for a neck with rough fret ends. Followed by the soft sanding wedge and 00 steel wool. I will be swapping my bridge to fix intonation issues with the older two saddle bridge that came with my bass. It’s a player and a keeper. Good vibes.

I recently finish my first project - Defretting and aging my first bass (Marlin Sidewinder). I really enjoyed the process and have just bought a old 5 strings from ebay, that's in several pieces. Got big plans. I love the process and the ethos of your approach is similar to the feeling I get. Thanks for sharing you project.

I absolutely love this!! Awesome work!! I think for me, I'd put a Seymour Duncan Hot Rails pickup in it.

What a beautiful bass. One of a kind. Truly wonderful. All the best.

Your wife absolutely killed it with that illustration. There is absolutely a business model there with just illustrating bodies. Personally, I wouldn't have bothered with the back illustration as that will never be seen unless you flip it over. I also would have woodburned "Liz" on the front of the headstock, especially since you took off the Squier logo. She absolutely killed it.

I have three matching hollow body 1960s Japanese basses that I have modded. They were basically unplayable when I got them (separately). I had to replace tuners. I had to replace bridges. I changed the wiring to take the selector switch out and wired them VVT. One is set up for flats. One is just a standard passive bass. I had to replace the pick up on one so now it has an active EMG system with a BT 9v preamp, volume and blend. They are so old. Different colors. Now they are unique in looks and their voices and best applications.

I didn’t see the lipstick pickup coming. I was sure it would be something like a Fralin split coil… That said, I almost always replace the stock pickups in my basses with high-end pickups. The Radioshop 60s P Bass pickup is the best P Bass pickup I e ever heard (I put one into my Sire P5R). I’ve got Fralin, Lollar, Radioshop, and the Fender Pure Vintage 63 in my basses. All of them sound great.

Very cool! Great choices, and that artwork is fantastic. I modded a Squier Tele with a bigsby, custom shop pickups, new wiring, etc. last year. I love it, and it hangs with stuff I’ve spent a lot more money on. I was going to have a hot rod guy pinstripe it, but I may have to send the body down to you all after seeing this!

Around 20 years ago, I needed a bass to play at church and I went to a music store that I had patronized for a number of years and asked if he had an affordable bass in stock. He said he had just the thing and went in the back and brought out a brand new/old stock bass that had been lost in his stock room for over a dozen years. He had just uncovered it-a 1987 Mexican Squire P-bass. What a gem, but I have since replaced the pickup, pick guard, the bridge and have completely re-wired it. It plays and sounds like a much more expensive instrument.

The first guitar I ever bought for myself was a $150 Epiphone SG Special. I refinished it in a dark steel blue satin, with gloss stripes going down the center. I threw on grovers, and put on a fine tuning tailpiece. Then I put a Gibson P-94 in the neck, and a Dirty Fingers in the bridge, and wired it up kinda tele style, where the neck pickup went through the tone knob, but the bridge pickup was just straight from the volume to the output. It was an incredibly versatile instrument for only having two pickups, a master volume and tone, and a three way selector. That guitar saw me through many shows with my first band. My main guitar now is a thinline strat that I special ordered the body for (it's hard to find strats with a 69 tele thinline control rout), painted shell pink, and wired with a single P90. Not as versatile, but it's a rock machine

i think ,only if you change the pickup position to the sweet spot near the bridge, then only the bass will be heard in a mix ! ❤ great job...

the first bass i ever played and learned on i took all of the hardware off to clean it, cleaned the pickup cavity, put new pickups in it, and have beat the crap out of it making it my own over the years. it has evolved with me and i can’t wait for the rest of our journey

Love this video! I’ve been debating buying the squire bronco for a while. Very cool mod!

My last build is a Roadworn Mike Dirnt Pbass Body with an early 90s Samick neck. I also routed a MM style cavity in the Bridge position and added a Multi Coil Pickup. Your definitely right, each Instrument I own needs its specific Tuning,Strings and setup to really come to life.

Needs some headstock art to complement it! By the way, actually loved the tilted tuners, its a vibe! Great video and great execution!

for rolling the fret board edges they make a tool called a burnishing tool .its pointed at the front and sort of flattens out also allowing it to get up next to the frets check it out its what i use

I picked up a spector legend and swapped out the pups and preamp with an emg set of each. Damn did it make a difference!

My first and only bass is an old Ibanez that I found at a goodwill for $10. It was in terrible shape and looked like someone tried to modify it and just did a bad job. Me and my friend totally refinished it and I bought all new hardware for it and it’s the bass I’ve played ever since

This is your best video yet in my opinion! I really enjoyed it and my fiance actually watched a guitar video with me lol 😆 nice work dude and your wife is very talented 👌

that bass looks plain amazing! my most-modded bass is also named Liz (well, Lizzie) she's a squier jazz that a friend gave me for parts, but eventually I put her back together - I'm not a big fan of the bridge pickup sound, so I cut the foam off the back so it would sit flush with the body & pass only the weakest of signals - I can leave it up for hum canceling or roll it off for basically a little onboard gain boost, but the sound is all neck pickup either way further mods I'm planning include peeling the foam off the back of the neck pickup too & getting springs on the screws (the foams kinda janky and won't expand right so the pickup is stuck a tiny angle off from where I want it), drilling out some string-thru channels, and possibly designing a custom pickguard that hides the recessed bridge pickup (right now it's just covered by some black duct tape lol)

Wow, what an cool looking instrument. I used to play in a band with very limited rehearsal space. The Headstock of my bass regularly hit the cymbals in an odd moment. That's why i don't like all-in-line tuner arrangement on bass but also on guitar. During the pandemic i buildt a diy guitar Kit. It is was supposed to be inspired by Rhett's Pink Sparkle, but after chopping of parts of the headstock, it has become something very very different.

Philip is the coolest bassist on RU-vid

Sounds great - and your wife's design and execution is stunning!

I have done the same thing with the screwdriver method... works pretty good. Pickguard cut out is not easy without a router and template so nice job, just easier to get that 45 angle by hand using the same 'dremmel' with the sanding barrel to perfect the outline to also do the 45 smoothly...I've done quite a few. I've also angled tuners the same way and looks good IMO...and great vid man

And now I need a lipstick pickup! My Fenderstien bares all the scars of learning how to mod. Sanding the finish off the neck had the biggest impact on how she feels and plays. (Am due for Linseed Oil) 98 Fender Jazz Body with early 00s Percussion Neck, both MIM. Bartolini Classic Thunderbird in the center position (Watt & Entwistle tribute)wired straight to the jack, Badass II bridge on it’s second set of saddles. I squared off the frets but one day want mandolin wire. Right now it’s Low B to D but am gonna get a new nut and strings. DGDG 2024. Every bass player who’s ever tried her out loves her.

I built a parts bass last year out of mostly Squier parts. Put the Vintage Modified J neck with the black blocks on a Classic Vibe 70s P in the special edition Sea Foam and one of the VM Duncan Designed pick ups. Greer Amps Super Mass neck plate and Dunlop strap lock strap buttons. Super comfortable to play

I have modded all but one of my 9 guitars and basses, some of them multiple subsequent mods. It comes from a vision of how that instrument can better suit me. I have never changed the instrument for aesthetic goals - just functional.

I bought a bullet strat with a GC gift card. Bought a baritone conversion neck from warmoth and have plans for more upgrades. My bass is a warmoth parts bass also. Love tinkering around with instrumenta

Amazing mod! I'm in the process of updating/modding my Squier HM bass after 30+ years of ownership. It'll be getting a Hipshot A-style bridge, Frank Bello signature EMG pickups, and new frets. I'm also considering adding a custom pickguard to break up the body shape a little. The upgrades cost more than it's worth, but this is a bass I'll never sell so it's worth the investment.

This was a joy to watch; well done !

Have modded two old Broncos, one red, one black. Fitted one with a huge MM-style humbucker and the other with a red dual-rail HB pickup. Then I ran heat-adhesive white edging tape around the edges of both and fitted both as complementary red / black / white "De Stihl-style" colour schemes. Nothing wrong with those six-pole pickups - they are overwound and will make a very hot replacement Strat pickup. My wife christened them the "Bucking Broncos", without knowing what a humbucker was! I also have one of those Coral Pink Sonic Broncos (now fitted with another dual-rail HB) as a backup to my Capri Orange Squier Mustang. Go for it, they are great value (and I normally play long-scale basses). (PS. Not had any problems with those Sonic tuners btw.)

I've upgraded the pickups on my Yamaha bass. I also changed the chrome hardware to anodized black. Not sure about graphics but I like the look of that Bronco.

not a bass, but the guitar i first modded was a 2012 affinity stratocaster. her name is daphne, and she’s been my modification testbed for anything i’m interested in trying. when i got it, the decal had been sanded off the headstock, so i’ve added a 70s fender decal (though i’ve kept the squier s/n and have no intention of ever selling it.) the tuners have been replaced with split shaft wilkinsons, i’ve rounded the edges of the fretboard, both the neck and fretboard have been glossed, and i’ve added a cheap ceramic humbucker in the bridge position. the other pickups are stock, but i plan to fully replace the pickups and electronics at some point down the line. i still need to do some work on the frets, but it’s still playable. i’ve thought about stripping off the paint and painting it something a bit more interesting than just simple black, but i’m not entirely sure what direction to go with that. this is absolutely stunning. the paint work looks amazing on the pink-ish color and looks unlike anything i’ve ever seen. huge props to everyone involved in this project, especially shea, that fact that it’s all freehand is astounding

Love how that turned out! This will be a project soon!

Sooo cool. Just looking at it makes me feel refreshed. Congrats, guys

oh wow. This inspires me to start something on an old guitar project! thank you

The work you put on this bass is fantastic ! I have a very cheap squier 51 PB reissue since 2 years ago, I have changed the pickup and she sound fantastic, the neck was fine , no sharp edges .... one day I will perhaps change the electronics but other then that it's one of my favorite bass ...

Nice mod! Creating several partscastors and mods for last few years. Learning how to build and set up makes all my guitars sound great 😊

Diy and music. When worlds collide! Thanks!

I never modded a bass other than replacing the knobs & removing the pickguard and bridge cover (EB 3 copy) At one time I had major plans to build a new body for it and to use the body for an SG copy. But I changed my mind. I have modded 2 guitars. One was my first electric to use for slide and to mimic other guitars in some fashion (and it had weak pickups, and some broken parts) I modded another guitar I bought used that had been modded already, so I replaced worn out parts and some other changes.

that pick guard tip is really useful! I've been wanting to put a pick guard on my Ibanez bass since I play with a pick pretty often, but nobody makes pick guards for them, especially left handed pick guards. Maybe I'll get around to cutting out my own

Beautiful bass. Its awesome what we can all get from the little things like modding an instrument. Even more so that it was done with your wife which surely added to the sentiment. It turned out wonderfully. Keep it in the family and pass it down one day!

I learned so much b about guitar/bass work from my MIM Mustang bass. That poor thing has gone through so many transformations!

Such an amazing project! She really shows the love and effort you put in. 🤗

Nice mods! I’m definitely digging the artwork. It has a minimalist Sarah Ryan vibe.

There's nothing like modifying an instrument to make it more personnal et better suiting for you... I started modifying my basses a year ago and I've never liked my instruments more than now (one of my basses became a fretless and another is now my number one 5 strings bass)... Good job to you and Shea!!!

Oh, the tuners!!! I'm SO stealing your build, bruv!!

You are all so talented. Gratifying to watch and inspiring.

Man, such a fun video. It turned out amazing!

Very cool. Everyone added their talents to the build. I was really impressed with cutting a piokguard by hand. Do you know what Dremel bits were used to cut and shape the guard? (I've tried numerous times using a hand saw and files but...no bueno)

Wonderful family project! Great job.

looks nice

I need to dig up the pictures of my P-Bass project (and get back to it). I found it with a custom paint job already done and have since replaced the pick-up, the bridge, and altered the nut to string it BEAD. It's one of my more fun basses to play to be sure.

This is dope as hell, and that bass looks and sounds incredible!

great job! it turned out much better than i could have imagined it!

Boy, that soundtrack is great!

I literally bought that exact bass as my first bass like 2 weeks ago so I guess this is a sign to maybe start modding it

Great video, I like it!

Good video! That bass sounds awesome, and looks quite unique. Shay's work is really impressive.

LOVED THIS! I have just finished customizing an old Squier Jagmaster I bought with a plan to restore and sell.. but after spending so many hours with it I have started to feel so connected with it. With all the creative decisions I have made during this process, i have ended up building kind of my dream guitar 😅 Never gonna sell it now!

that is the coolest instrument ive seen all week. awesome video

Really cool, Phillip and Shea!

I just bought a trisonic pickup for my bronco! Gonna put an anodized aluminum guard, gold tuners, and a gold bridge cover on it eventually

I just purchased a Bass VI and have begun ordering replacement items to modify it as well I didn't think about a custom art design, but this may have just been an unexpected inspiration

The resulting bass looks great and sounds like a real motown/jazz/blues machine. There is just one other mod that I can think of to finish this bass off and that is to make it fretless. Of course, that is something that is not for everyone so I can understand if you would prefer to keep it fretted, but that's just what the tone of this instrument is telling me. Otherwise I would suggest getting some kind of strap-locks if you are looking to play this bass live, I do that with all my instruments and to damage one with that much care and attention spent on it would be heartbreaking.

Wow, Shea did a great job on the body, Liz definitely looks the part 😍 She sounds great too 🙂

Squiers are great instruments, some of them are great platforms for hotrodding while some of them as the CV Series are perfectly fine as they are. This is amazingly painstaking work! I thought she’d do this with the help of computers. After getting one done anyone would feel guilty unloading it because it is a one of a kind work of art.

the pick guard choice is amazing

You make it look so easy when you’re cutting the pickguard. I’d like to do the same but I can’t find Musicmaster bass pickguards in Mexico, neither someone to cut the sheet. :(

Wicked. My first was a Squier bronco!

My man! Super fun project and it turned out KILLER! Lucky man, what a lovely talented special lady friend you have !

Hot rails strat p up works great on a Bronco.

I've been adding a bronco to my basket on and off for a month. Just found this video and I'm ordering one. Still not sure on the colour. White or coral.

I had a affinity series bronco that I installed 2 lipsticks in...definitely a 60s vibe with flats...went a different route with the sonic series tho...a single lace sensor and rounds, for a musicmaster feel

Love the angled tunner.