The Bronco that wouldn't Buck

I got an interesting job in a couple weeks ago.  What made it interesting was, just that week, I read a repair article sent to me by Stew-Mac, a luthier parts and tools house.  About once a week, I get an e-mail with their "Trade Secrets," and particular week, the article showcased a vintage Fender Bronco Bass.  They were low end student instruments, short scale, and budget priced.  Their worst quality was that the pickup was bright and wimpy.  The repair tech at Stew-Mac discovered that the bass came with a guitar pickup installed.  In fact, they used the same pickup for the Fender Mustang, Music Master and others, including their low end short scale basses!  For the sake of "Vintage" the Stew-Mac guy, created a bass pickup of the same size as the original, but using the proper gauge wire, pole pieces, and windings, thus making a clone to act as a nice deep toned bass guitar!


While the article was still fresh in my mind, I get a fairly new Squier Bronco Bass in for the same complaint.  The bass had too bright a tone, and pretty much, no output to speak of. 

The owner and player of it was a lady, who liked the short scale and light weight, but wanted a deeper tone.  I have not the equipment, nor expertise's to tackle the same project as the Stew-Mac guy, but got the OK to install a P Bass style, split coil pickup and remove the wimpy original

 As we can see, the new pickup is shorter and thicker, using two coils instead of the original thin straight one.  That meant that the pickguard and the body underneath had to be routed to fit the new configuration. 

At first, I thought I'd be able to cover any left-over original route in the pickguard by the placement of the new pickup.  I soon realized the pickup placement would end up in different areas to line up underneath the strings. 
I marked the area to be routed on the pickguard and created that modification first, using a fine cut wheel on a Dremel tool on low speed.  I cut, using the Dremel up close to the final lines and used a series of files to finalize my lines.  The hand work, I knew was going to throw me off my budget estimate!  Oh well....
Next, I marked the body and used a router and template to rout the body to fit the new pickup.  I cut out a cardboard cover to protect the top of the body of the guitar from router scrapes.  That part of the project went smoothly and with the pickguard over everything, only the pickup showed, except for the extra cut left over from the original pickup.  That ended up being covered by a facade of tortoise-shell thin pickguard material I cut and glued in. 
The pickup installed in place and re soldered to the controls, I gave it a light tap test for a signal.  I got nothing!  The pickup, which I had on a shelf in a box for years was dead!  It registered an open circuit.  I unsoldered it and removed it from the bass and then I noticed a broken wire underneath, linking the two split coils together.  I was sure and confident I could merely re solder the wire back in place under the coil.  Unfortunately, the area was old and weak and my repair did not do the job.  I closed up shop for the day and thought I'd give one of the local music stores a try to see if they had anything used that I could replace my broken one with.  Was God ever on my side;  the guy came back on the line and they had a used P Bass style pickup for $ 5.99.  By noon the next day, the Bronco bucked up to order!  Lessons learned, and God on my side, and they even tipped me!  Long live the Bronco!