Squier Classic Vibe Bass VI Upgrades - Part 1 (of 6)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ต.ค. 2024
- From Junk to Jewel: Upgrading a Squier Classic Vibe Bass VI
PART 1: Overview and What Needs to Be Done
OK, so it's not exactly junk - but it's not exactly not junk, either. There are a lot of cheap components on this and other Squier guitars. Though Squier is a branch of Fender, there is a wide quality gulf between the Indonesian-made Squiers and the American-made Fenders. In the middle are the Fender guitars built in Mexico and Japan; no doubt where you are as a player, you can find a Fender to fit your hands and your budget. Find out more about fender at www.fender.com/ and more about Squier at www.fender.com....
In this part of the upgrade series, I'll give you an overview of the 2022 Squier Classic Vibe Bass VI in classic black. It's also available in a nice three-color sunburst. I'll also discuss what modifications and upgrades I'll be making throughout the series.
Stay tuned for more about this "100% designed by Fender" instrument; a Bass VI is a guitar like no other - it looks like a guitar and plays like a guitar, but it sounds like a bass!
Specs on the Classic Vibe Bass VI are as follows:
Body made from poplar and has a gloss polyurethane finish
Neck made from maple and has a medium vintage tint done in gloss urethane finish
Fingerboard made from Indian laurel, a type of wood in the fig family - not rosewood as I state in the video - which grows widely in Asia
Scale length is 30" and the fingerboard radius is 9.5"
Nut width is 1.685"/42.8mm, and they claim the nut is made of bone (I am skeptical)
Frets are "narrow-tall"
Stock pickups are "Fender Designed" alnico single-coil Jaguar pickups
NEXT: Staytrem Bridge and a Look at the Stock Tremolo
Excellent work Chiba. One of the most overlooked instruments in the plethora of guitar-ish things out there. Starting with basically firewood and some poorly soldered and melted down bicycle parts, if we appropriately replace certain attack surfaces with the good stuff, they're gem-worthy instruments.
Having built a few of these from scratch with a bevy of vintage and cutting edge parts, it's cool to see the opportunities available on an 'upgrade' project. Might have to steal that from ya - but I'd of course sent you a cut of the profit...
I do the same with low-end Jazzmasters, upgrading the pups, wiring, pots, bridge, nut, tuners and strings and the results are similarly frigging awesome, one-of-a-kind pieces of engineering. I don't want to paint over a perfectly good and new finish, which is why I do the "from scratch" work from select timbre out of the UK or wherever, client's choice of course, typically with Nitro. Finding the necks is the biggest hassle, but I've got my "dealer" now so it's much less painful. (Sounds like a drug thing, but I guess in a way it is a similar process....)
Rock on dude, Cheers, RR
thanks man, appreciate it!
hey moto chiba!
really nice work done!
why didnt you also change the tuners? is your low E string not flabby? i thought it would be a good idea to change them to gotoh sd91 or something.
all the best!
I don't think the tuning machines need upgrading. The low E is not flabby now that I put a heavier gauge one on there.
For kicks I ordered a Harley Benton Guitarbass which seems to be a close copy to the Fender/Squire Bass VI. It seems that the new Fender 24-100 string set may improve intonation. I’ll give a it whirl. Note: along with a new set of strings I may upgrade the tuners 🤔
Probably a good idea on the tuners, it's something in my future as well although these OEMs on the Squier are not terrible.
Pretty much everything HB makes is a copy of something, so I imagine its quality is not that different from the Squier BVI.
The finish is "polyester". Same as automotive paint. This is not really a problem, is very durable. Certainly not as "vintage" or desirable as nitrocellulose, but we're talking about an under $500.00 guitar here.
certainly no illusions or complaints about the paint - it is what it is for an inexpensive import - I just didn't like the feel on the back of the neck
I put a set of fender 24 strings with a few 100g. E string and it solved the intonation problem.
good tip, thanks!
Fender 24-100 Gauge strings to the rescue.
Why complain about a budget guitar? Thats why it's half the price of the fender. You are right about the tuners,but I've that experience with guitars that cost twice of the bass vi
Because I can? It's less complaining and more stating my opinions, which happen to be negative. I took care of the problems.
Actually the description does say "polyurethane", please excuse me; however I am skeptical...
Huh. I liked the pickups! Sounded great to me. But I also bought it for the sound. Not sure I’d want to upgrade since I already like the way it sounds but maybe it’s one of those ‘oh dang’ moments.
My strings weren’t oily but I also didn’t like them. Ordered a new set from stringjoy. Hope those work better.
different ears, different results - glad you dug the stock ones, sure makes it easier to get going with the guitar :)
@@chiba131 So… I think I was wrong. It happens! So the first time I was playing it at home, the pickups sounded good, but the strings that came with it felt lame and far too loose (I like looser strings than most on my guitar, but this was a bit much). So, switched to better Stringjoy strings and…. well now the strings sound great, but the pickups not so much.
I have two theories. Okay wait at least three. We’ll see as we go along lol. Theory 1: I was just wrong (ugh, it happens). Theory 2: The floppy strings lent themselves well to low frequency harmonics in some way that made them ‘work’ well with the pickups. Perhaps the lower tension allowed for a deeper oscillation somehow. Theory 3: The original strings were of a different type (pure nickel maybe) and the stringjoy ones are not (they aren’t, they don’t make pure nickel ones for bass vi). Interestingly, Fender doesn’t seem to carry their own stock strings? The ones that came with my guitar were 85s on the low end according to their own stats (iirc edit: I looked it up, it’s 84) but the ones on their site are actually 100s on the low end, which… is actually a higher tension than anything stringjoy offers. This confuses me. Edit: I looked it up the ones that came with were nickel plated, not pure nickel, so that mostly throws theory 3 out the window.
And I should add, I don’t think the pickups sound ‘bad’ now, so much as I feel like it sounds… somehow closer to a guitar than I wanted, when I very much wanted more of a bass.
Did you go for the Lollar or the Stonewall for the pickup upgrade?
I’m having a very hard time deciding between going for new pickups or switching to flatwounds and hoping that will make it sound closer to what I want. I really really love flatwounds (across the board, even prefer them on my guitar). BUT, I already have another bass (a 5 string) and that has flatwounds and in general I prefer my instruments to have as little crossover as possible when it comes to sonic qualities.
So, after some work, I tilted the bridge and neck pickups a good bit with the highs lower. Kept the middle roughly level. With some EQ bump around 60 and a dash of high cut (and maybe a bump around 200) I got it very very close to what I wanted. But I recognize not everyone would want to have an eq to help fix the issue.
@@bubblepipemedia3414 Fralins! they even started selling what I ordered as a set after I talked to them :) www.fralinpickups.com/product/bass-vi/
Specs say nut is bone, not synthetic.
Yes, the spec does indeed say bone. Maybe all the other ones are bone. The one on my guitar was not.
For me, in the neck pocket, it's not a "seven" but the "F" of Fender !
Negative Negative Negative Negative. No positive Vibes, these Basses are good. Did not appreciate your negative approach. Who ARE you? 🦗 🦗….. exactly
th-cam.com/video/E_0aQOxkLZI/w-d-xo.html
I thought the same thing.
Maybe he should just have bought himself a different instrument
I liked the video. It was a good overview of what you are buying. But complaining about how the inlays were cut…these things are sooo fairly priced for what they are. Especially in 2024 when nothing is fairly priced.
And calling out cheap electronics that function is silly.
On to part II.
Add all the time and equipment costs, why not just buy a Fender version instead of moaning?
I don't always take the easy path. Sometimes the journey is interesting. Other times, not so much. Had I known then what I know now, I'd likely get a Japanese-made one.
A '90s MIJ Bass VI will run you about $2500. The new Fender Vintera is $1399. The price on the Squire VI has gone up to $475 but that's a hell of a lot cheaper than the other options out there. Even spending for a Staytrem Bridge and pickups you could still come in hundreds less than the Vintera which is why someone might do this.