One of my favourite instruments in my collection is my Squier Vintage Modified Bass VI. I wanted a Bass VI ever since I first learned about the instrument via its appearance in This Is Spinal Tap – remember the guitar that Nigel wouldn’t even let director Marty Di Bergi look at? – and finally pulled the trigger when funds allowed a while back.
The current Squier model is part of the Classic Vibe series and it’s an affordable way to get in on the Bass VI phenomenon. But what you’ll soon notice is that as soon as you begin to search online for info on these beauties, you’ll be bombarded with Facebook and forum posts about how many things you have to change on them in order to have a functional instrument in your hands. Replacement bridge. Neck shims. New pickups. New vibrato. LaBella strings. With that amount of financial investment, your affordable Bass VI is now a money pit! And all to get a usable instrument out of something you paid like $800 bucks for (in Australian dollars anyway).
Naaaah.
Look, you can improve any instrument by upgrading its parts to higher-quality ones. And the Squier Classic Vibe Bass VI can definitely benefit from a replacement bridge with a wider intonation range if you find that you can’t quite dial in the perfect intonation with your choice of string gauge. The Fender Vintera II Bass VI comes from the factory with a longer saddle baseplate to give you this greater range of intonation precision, and it’s a very welcome feature. The Classic Vibe Bass VI would be a better buy if it had this feature too.
But here’s the thing: the online chatter about these instruments has created a false impression that you’re basically buying a husk of an instrument with a bunch of placeholder parts that you need to replace. And it’s just not true. The pickups feature Alnico magnets (not cheaper, flatter-sounding Ceramics or something) and they sound pretty nice for the price. The vibrato is gonna give you the same charmingly rustic action as a typical Jazzmaster or Jaguar, more or less, and yeah, there are better upgrades out there but you’ll be fine if you don’t want to do that. You may want to shim the neck if you’re unable to get the perfect action for your needs, but that’s also a matter of taste.
Personally I’ve made a few little tweaks to my Bass VI. I’ve installed a trio of Seymour Duncan Hot For Jaguar single coil pickups. They didn’t drastically change the character of the instrument, just made it a bit more beefy and warm. And I shimmed the neck so I could achieve a more even action across the whole fretboard. Doing that – which is so easy you can do it yourself with a little slice of cardboard or plastic – also allows you to achieve a steeper break angle of the string over the bridge saddle, preventing the string from popping out when you pick too hard. That’s a problem that has plagued this design since the beginning of time but has been easily fixable for exactly as long. Or you can go for a fancypants bridge like the Mastery which will seat the string much deeper than the standard bridge. I may or may not do this with my Bass VI one day. At the moment I don’t feel the need.
But y’know what? If doing all this stuff makes you feel better, sounds like fun and connects you more to your instrument, go absolutely nuts! That should go for any guitar though. It’s your instrument, nobody else’s, and you need to be happy with it for your own sake, not to impress some dudes on a forum or in a Facebook group.