I had one of these as my first fender bass- pretty cool! A couple of things:
a) The bridge is floating (not attached)
b) The body is COMPLETELY hollow- no center block! The pickups are mounted directly in the top.
c) The pickups are Dearmond. I remember reading somewhere that this was the first instrument that Fender outsourced the electronics for. They don't sound like typical 60's Fender pickups- the Rick comparison is probably pretty appropriate- although I always had flats on mine.
d) These are SUPER lightweight (at least, mine was). No neck-dive, though, actually pretty well-balanced.
e) This has mid sixties "lollipop" tuners. Possibly worth alot of money to somebody restoring a '65 to '67 Jazz.
f) Your tailpiece is missing a white script "F" logo (plastic). I can see the shadow of it in your pic.
g) Mine also had a plastic neck shim, that may actually be original!
h) Mine had the original case, which weighed about 30 lbs. empty! I'm not exaggerating- you literally could not tell whether the bass was in it or not by lifting it!
I wish I still had mine. Mine looked EXACTLY like yours. My father got it for me for my birthday in 1984
for $100 from a music store! Just seeing one always brings back many happy memories! I pretty much gigged mine to death by the time I was seventeen!
(mostly because I gigged it with no case- ah, youth!). I would buy yours if I could blow money strictly on nostalgia, but I can't right now.
One of my favorite things about this bass was the fact that it is the ONLY bass I've ever played (or even seen or heard about) that could generate a controllable sustaining low-pitch feedback note (almost any note on the neck!)a la Hendrix or "I Feel Fine". This was only when I tried, by touching the body to a cranked stack. There were no FB "problems" under normal, loud play. One night a friend/ bass mentor of mine saw me do this at a gig and was knocked out! He was working at the time for Pearce amps (I grew up in Buffalo) and had a HUGE Pearce stack at his practice space. We went there after my gig and had lots of fun making bass feedback (as well as pungent smoke and empty cans
) until the sun came up! Wheeeee! Sorry for the rant, just wanted to share, I hope your Coronado finds a good home! Good luck!
