So, if you have a Fender with a neck date of 1964 and the pots are dated 1965, then you have a 1965 Fender bass guitar. Or, at least its most recently dated part. The general rule of thumb is that a bass guitar is as old as its newest part. They just grabbed whatever part or component was ready and put the instrument together to fill an order as fast as possible.
So how do you properly determine the year of production for your Fender bass? The challenge with dating a Fender bassīack in the 1950s and ’60s, no one at Fender had any clue that one day these instruments would be highly sought after collector’s items or coveted vintage tone machines and that people would be highly concerned about when any particular bass was made. There are even bridge stamps and pickguard codes in some cases. There are pickup and potentiometer date codes that you can try to identify.
#Fender musicmaster serial number serial numbers
Even using official Fender bass serial numbers isn’t as straightforward as you might think. The problem is that a neck might be made and dated and then sit in the factory for a while until finally being bolted to a body produced and dated months later. Ever since Fender started making basses in 1951, they dated certain parts and components to provide a general idea of when the instrument was produced. This is especially true with a vintage bass. Knobs were the Tele/Precision-style knurled chrome.Dating a Fender bass guitar to figure out when it was made is not always as easy as it sounds. Pickguard was white with no thumbrest at all. Had a four-pole pickup with no cover apparently purpose built for this model & a four-saddle, string-thru bridge. Reissued in '93 (?) as a Squier Vista in several colors (pastelly greens & blues as well as black seem to've be the most common, maybe more) with a matching headstock. Bridge was a two-saddle, top-load affair. I've seen later models with the same Jazz-style knobs & black Strat-style knobs.Īll throughout its original existence, it actually had a six-string guitar pickup installed in it, a fact hidden by the plastic cover. Thumbrest installed only on the bass side from then on. Pickguard was only B/W/B, now slightly larger to wrap around the neck pocket just a little. Was available only in black & the same red (altho' I've read the claim somewhere that Wine Red was option, can't say for sure if I've ever seen one).
#Fender musicmaster serial number serial number
A new decal with a bold, italicized "Musicmaster Bass" in addition to "Made in USA" & the serial number there. Appears that the neck had poly over the whole thing (minus the board of course) with nitro on top of that on the headstock.ġ974 or '75, switch was made to full-sized tuners. I've seen some white ones that look like they might've had a white primer coat but I wouldn't bet on it. Can't speak of the finish on later models but the pre-'75 ones had a thick clear poly finish directly on the wood over which went the color then a nitro clearcoat (which usually resulted in the white & blue ones turning yellow & green, respectively). Knobs were the black plastic ones commonly found on Jazz basses. Probably every early one I've seen, if it still had it, the thumbrest was installed as a tugbar, ie. Pickguard was only ever W/B/W & did NOT wrap around the neck pocket at all. The rarest of the three, blue, a light shade, is harder to pin down.
Available in white & unspecified red & blue (Altho' the red looked like Fender's Dakota. Decal had the Fender logo with nothing but "Musicmaster Bass" underneath in a plain block typeface. Small tuners usually called tulip tuners. Here's some details as best I know about the Musicmaster:įirst version introduced in 1970.
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