Did Vintage Fender Mustang Basses ever come stock with P Bass Pickups?

pull the pickguard off and see if there is any extra routing evident.

 

AFAIK, they never came w/ p-bass pickups.

GT

 

Lets see a pic....

 

Doesn't look stock to me. They look like full size precision pickups , mind you I'm not an expert on it and I'm browsing on my phone.

 

In a word, no.

 

They're not aligned correctly, either. See how it's noticeably drooping towards the bridge on the bass side? Whoever cut the guard didn't do a good job.

 

Just looks to me that the pups are lowered on the bass and treble side to compensate for FB radius.

 

Not original, but probably an improvement.

And, I agree, I believe they're just lowered to follow the fretboard radius. Installation looks good as far as I can see from thr pic.

 

Using the neck & bridge as a guide, they're tilted, and I mean on the horizontal.

 

Maybe............

The angle of that photo precludes any positive answer. With the curves of the pickguard, the angled thumb rest, the positions of each half of the pickup being set for the string radius, etc. makes it impossible to say for sure. We need a head on photo to determine whether the pickup has been installed perpendicular to the strings which, of course, are not parallel to each other, either.

 

NOPE !

 

No, not original. I once purchased a '72 Mustang that had already had a very poor job of a pickup rout/chisel to fit a Precision split coil. I made a silk purse out of that sow just to flip it with a P pup, but I wish I'd rather gone toward a proper restoration for a replacement Mustang split coil pickup.

 

No. Split pickup, yes. P pickup, no.

 

Don't think I would say an improvement. With a P pickup it just becomes a short scale P. With a original Mustang pickup it as it's own sound.

 

Here's a photo of a 1978 Mustang (Competition version) on another website. Pickups are like most Mustangs - smaller and rounded. I've never seen an original Mustang with full-size P-bass pickups.

 

Looooooove that color!

 

Yes, but when properly set up on a Precision Bass, they are also adjusted that way.

Never stock. That was the entire marketing of Fender at the time: completely different lines of instruments, unlike now with five million variation on the same thing.

Then, the "pro" line was, of course, P bass and J bass to go with Strat, Tele, JM & Jag. The "student" line included Mustang bass and guitar, and "entry" level was Musicmaster bass and guitar. There were other models from time to time in all the ranges, but that was the essence.

 

No.

And by "Vintage" you mean "old original issue", right?