Baritonal Blues In A - I Need More Sleep

Well, anyway, my eyes are a bit ropey at the moment, which is my only excuse, but this evening I thought I'd sidetrack meself with a bit of baratoning of the Bronco.

So I got my impressive set of heavyweight strings - nowt drastic just 13 - 65 - and set about putting them on.

Now I know Boncoish has a normal rather than meaty big scale in the neck department, so I was expecting things to get a bit floppy if I tried to tune it down to A-A, but as the heavy A, D and G strings went on OK, I got more hopeful. perhaps even cocky. Not something I like to admit, but I could have been running before I could crawl, if you see what I mean.

Anyway, all the strings were on, I had tweaked the truss rod,  re-cut the nut, all that bobbins and we were looking good.

Then I tried to tune it, and do you think I could get anywhere near? No problem on the heavy 'uns, they went like a dream but the three lightest strings, more chance of the Pope swearing at mass or more to the point, when I did they were either hyper-tight or flippy-flappy-flopping around.

So I spent an hour convinced that I was missing something blindingly obvious and re-doing everything over and over (and yes, expecting a different result), until finally the penny dropped and I noticed that I had put the strings on in the wrong order. Five minutes later I'd swapped them around (thanking somebody else's god for split Klusons) and it sounds brilliant, and no floppiness apparent at all.

So yes, I need more sleep, schoolboy errors a-go-and-go-again.

La la laaaa

Broncotone

Well, I picked up this weird sort of Bronco meets Musicmaster body a while back, know nothing about it, but it is a bit of an oddity and let's face it, that always appeals.

Weirdly (or maybe not as I'm no expert) it is normal Fender scale, like a Strat or Tele, I mean, rather than the shorter scale I at first imagined.

So I nailed on an old Strat neck and it plays fine - the pickup is a horrid cheapo bar magnet thing, but surprisingly it sounds pretty good 'n' grungy and I have to admit I really rather like it.

But I can't really make up my mind what to do with it. Back in the sepia days of Jooky I would have covered it in paisley and had some fun, but I don't want to do that as it is a bit shonky in truth, so instead I thought I'd have a play at turning it into a Baritone.

The obvious way to do it is get a Warmoth or Allparts neck, but slack Alice strings apart, scale-wise, I read a suggestion a while back that simply changing it to heavier strings - 13-65 - would give a good approximation, so I'm going to try that first.

Obviously there will be a bit of tweaking involved (but it already needed a chunk of that, so no problem there) and I will no doubt put a better pickup in, but as a little fun-to-do, well, it seems fun to well, do. So I will.

I've got some chunky strings coming and if that doesn't work out will get a proper conversion neck.

So a plan of sorts, which let's face it is no plan at all.

La la laaaa