NBD: Fender short-scale porn

[RiverRatt]

Well, as close to porn as I can get without any lighting. I hate what a flash does to guitars, but it's all I got at 9 p.m. I went to a pawn shop in a nearby town that just opened recently. It usually takes them awhile to get a good selection of used guitars and gear, but these guys already had some nice pieces. I was playing some Muddy Waters licks on an old Martin D-28 and this old Fender bass caught my eye... especially the $249.95 price tag. Well, I looked at it a little too long. I put the Martin down and walked out with a $200 Fender Musicmaster Bass. I know these are like the bastard step-children of Fender basses, but it plays great, the neck is beautiful, the body has this funky patina to it and the paint and lacquer has checked beautifully. It appears to be one of the really early ones with the Strat pickup and small tuners. It also has the small logo and the serial number is stamped into the neck plate (325,000's). The price is starting to go up on these, too. Any ideas on what it might be worth? It has to be more than $200.

 

[fstrat59slp]

Totally jelly man I like it alot! Congrats on your pawnshop find

 

[RiverRatt]

There are a few extra screw holes under the pickguard and the electronics are all original but messed with. I don't know about the pickguard... it has a large sticker from Chandler Music on the back of it. It looks like it might have been a trace job. The pots are the originals, dated 1971, and the pickup under that black cover is a gray bobbin Fender with flat pole pieces. Somebody cut the wires about 1/4" away from the pots and wired the pickup straight to the output jack. That's an easy fix, so I'm dealing with extra screw holes and a possible replaced pickguard. Oh, and the strap button on the upper horn - it looks a little suspicious.

 

[delstele]

Look's like a well played, loved instrument... Enjoy!

 

[custom53]

I couldn't tell you what they are worth, but I love these guitars...! A friend of mine had me do a set up on one that was donated to his church.. I tried to buy it from the church after I was done.. Fun little bass..

 

[poeman33]

Cool find. Here is the wikipedia page on them... (sorry no values listed)
Fender Musicmaster Bass - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Marshall Mann]

Nice Alan! That thing has mojo!

 

[brp]

That thing is awesome!


I agree, that upper strap button looks aftermarket.

 

[66 galaxie]

Cool bass Alan!

 

[Vinsanitizer]

Very cool! I knew someone back in the day who used one in a bar band. It looks a lot like the Candy Apple Red/White-striped Fender Mustang I once had.

 

[RiverRatt]

It's the same body they used on all the Mustang and Bronco guitars & basses. I know it's the shortest-scale bass Fender ever made. There's an old dude with an early-1970's Fender case that might fit it at his "trading post" but he's asking about retail for it. I'm probably going to fix it up and flip it. It's fun, but I need the money more than I need another bass.

The first real guitar I had when I was a kid was a daphne blue Mustang but it didn't have the rally stripes.

 

[RiverRatt]

A few more photos of it on the bench and getting it ready for the dreaded eBay listing. There were a lot more screw holes under the pickguard than there should have been and I already mentioned the pickguard being a trace/cutout. The only other thing I ran into was in the electronics. I spliced the cut wires back together to try and keep from having to re-flow the solder connections, but there were too many gaps and I had to do a few. I didn't create any new solder joints - I hated doing that much but I love that smell when you heat up that old resin!

I put it back as close to original as I could, closed it up, put the strings back, and went to check it out. I immediately noticed that the output was weak, and the tone control didn't do much. I was moving the tone knob and every now and then I'd get a little blast at full volume. I could see why the previous "repair" had been done... it was pretty much unplayable like this. I was thinking that it was a bad pot and I already had a new CTS A250K pot ready to put in, but there was no sign of a ground bus wire ever being connected between the pots and that bothered me. I finally noticed the thin foil on the back of the pickguard underneath the pots and a dim lightbulb went off. Apparently the original guard relied on either foil or a thin piece of metal on the pickguard for grounding, and this pickguard just didn't provide a connection. I added a bus wire, again using the original solder joints, and it came back to life!

I ended up playing the thing for two hours that night with everyone else already in bed, but they left me alone. I don't really have a proper bass amp - I usually just record the bass direct. I had it running through my Tweaker 15 and a 1x12 cab with a WGS Green Beret in it at pretty low volume. This little bass plays smooth as silk and sounds great - sort of a punchy J bass tone. That guitar pickup makes a hell of a bass pickup!

You can see the date on the neck, and both pots had a 71 16 date code. I coudn't see the EIA number but I think they are Stackpole. They don't look like CTS.

 

[stringbender11]

Very cool Bass there. I played the guitar version a while back at a 2nd hand shop qand liked the feel quite a bit.

 

[RiverRatt]

It's the closest I've been to owning a vintage guitar in a long time

 

[stringbender11]

I would think these have to be pretty rare, as I didnt even know they existed until this thread. I've seen the 6 string version here and there on CL or eBay & as i said I played one at a shop, but havent seen the Bass version before.
Hard to say what you'll get for it if you flip it, be cool to keep it too of course.

 

[RiverRatt]

I've already got a $400 bid, which is double what I paid for it. They made these for about 10 years and they are about the least collectable Fender guitar or bass ever made. The Musicmaster bass is pretty much the same instrument as the Mustang bass.

There's just a feel to these old guitars that no new guitar can duplicate. The way the neck wears has a lot to do with that, and the decades of sweat, skin, dirt, beer, smoke, etc. work some kind of magic. Also, this thing is light as a feather. I have strats that outweigh it by several pounds. It's a fun little bass to play. The only time I played bass in a band, I borrowed a Fender Precision bass and one of those monster Bassman stacks from the leader/singer/guitarist. It was like hanging a couple of cinder blocks over your shoulder.

 

[GIBSON67]

That's a very cool find! Now a days things like that are usually over priced and junked up even more! Great score!

 

[S.A.T.O.]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX1f9nEe4Kw]Van Halen Little Guitars played in the US Festival 1983 - YouTube[/ame]

 

[stringbender11]

Well cool, sounds like you'll see a good profit on that little bass, and i'm sure someone will be happy to have found it. I agree about the older ones feeling different, the 6 string version I played was around the same year, and it had a different feel than anything newer. Not saying it was better necessarily, but definitely a much different vibe than a modern Fender. Felt more 'handmade' actually, is how I would put it.