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Fender pre-CBS Club: pics mandatory!
- Thread starter Mastermold
- Start date
Not till I get it back from Maple Street Guitars for some neck surgery, but I'll be joining this club soon! Just scored a 1960 P for $400 last weekend...sort of a trash cat visually and abused with a Jazz-bass bridge cover, chickenhead knobs, and crappy finish ON the fretboard, but it's the real deal. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the gallery as a a new fellow vintage owner 
Can't wait to see this!Not till I get it back from Maple Street Guitars for some neck surgery, but I'll be joining this club soon! Just scored a 1960 P for $400 last weekend...sort of a trash cat visually and abused with a Jazz-bass bridge cover, chickenhead knobs, and crappy finish ON the fretboard, but it's the real deal. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the gallery as a a new fellow vintage owner
Nice. Did you score it locally?Not till I get it back from Maple Street Guitars for some neck surgery, but I'll be joining this club soon! Just scored a 1960 P for $400 last weekend...sort of a trash cat visually and abused with a Jazz-bass bridge cover, chickenhead knobs, and crappy finish ON the fretboard, but it's the real deal. In the meantime, I'm enjoying the gallery as a a new fellow vintage owner
Yup! It was sold to Music Go Round out in Duluth, which is a distant burb in the Atlanta area. My former bandmate works up there and alerted me that they had a weird vintage P come in, but no one looked up the serial, apparently. The second I found out what it was, I jumped in the car and RACED up there.
Sweet! I grew up around there and know exactly where your at. I'm now a little further out towards Athens. Nice snag. Where is the pictures?
They (Music go round) must have moved? I usually swing in there twice a year on the way home from my dentist. The last time a couple of months ago I noticed they were gone.
That drive up must have been pure nervousness and ecstasy.
Finishing up some tinkering now that it's back from the shop (I think very slight loosening of relief & action tweak)! Then the covers go back on and I'm breaking out the nice camera/lights.
Also, MgR DID move. They used to be out in, I think, Stone Mountain/Lilburn area, yes? It didn't close up, luckily, just relocated to Duluth. Bigger place. I'm happy they stuck around given that they're pretty much one of a kind in this era, and I'm happy to do business with 'em.
As soon as I walked in and saw the bass still on rack, my stomach un-knotted and I RAN and grabbed it. Friend/bandmate told me two other guys had played on it earlier that day so I wasn't letting ANYONE else touch it.
Ok at this point if I don't show some photos, I might get mobbed, so that's next haha
Here she is, a P dated to 1960 per the serial & neck (04-60 penciled in)!
It was in bad shape at the gear store: hadn't been given a cleaning in at least 10 years, black paint on all the hardware, action completely out of whack (more to that), pickups almost bottomed out. The nut is clearly a replacement and had not been fitted AT ALL. And worst of all: the neck was hurting for some TLC.
I pulled all the hardware off and dunked it in carburetor cleaner, and a few hours of that left chrome intact and melted away a lot of rust and corrosion, though I couldn't get most of the stuff out of the bridge trucks. The bridge cover is a Jazz bass cover (pic has what looks like weird curly-cue damage; that's the reflection of a piece of art), and you see the chickenhead knobs. And yep: someone yanked the top strap button and replaced it with a SCREW. There's an amateur clear finish on the entire body that was also on the fretboard, where it looked just terrible, though the rest of it isn't that bad.
I took it to Maple Street Guitars, where Jake put washers under the truss rod nut, so it could work instead of just crush wood. Next, he filed the string nut down to a place I like, and finally, he got 98% of the finish off the fretboard.
While he was afraid to crank the truss rod, which I understand, he put some Fender .040-.100 strings on and suggested I tune low if I don't want to try anything. Well, I'm a tinkerer, so I popped the neck off and VERY carefully got the relief down to right where I like it. It could benefit from a zen master luthier still, but I'm in no hurry. And finally, I re-set the action and added some strips of yoga mat beneath the pickups, so they're sitting pretty.
For now, I'm keeping the screw and chickenhead knobs. I kinda like it being trashy. But one day I'll pursue a full restoration, though before that, I may opt for a refinish job by a pro.
It was in bad shape at the gear store: hadn't been given a cleaning in at least 10 years, black paint on all the hardware, action completely out of whack (more to that), pickups almost bottomed out. The nut is clearly a replacement and had not been fitted AT ALL. And worst of all: the neck was hurting for some TLC.
I pulled all the hardware off and dunked it in carburetor cleaner, and a few hours of that left chrome intact and melted away a lot of rust and corrosion, though I couldn't get most of the stuff out of the bridge trucks. The bridge cover is a Jazz bass cover (pic has what looks like weird curly-cue damage; that's the reflection of a piece of art), and you see the chickenhead knobs. And yep: someone yanked the top strap button and replaced it with a SCREW. There's an amateur clear finish on the entire body that was also on the fretboard, where it looked just terrible, though the rest of it isn't that bad.
I took it to Maple Street Guitars, where Jake put washers under the truss rod nut, so it could work instead of just crush wood. Next, he filed the string nut down to a place I like, and finally, he got 98% of the finish off the fretboard.
While he was afraid to crank the truss rod, which I understand, he put some Fender .040-.100 strings on and suggested I tune low if I don't want to try anything. Well, I'm a tinkerer, so I popped the neck off and VERY carefully got the relief down to right where I like it. It could benefit from a zen master luthier still, but I'm in no hurry. And finally, I re-set the action and added some strips of yoga mat beneath the pickups, so they're sitting pretty.
For now, I'm keeping the screw and chickenhead knobs. I kinda like it being trashy. But one day I'll pursue a full restoration, though before that, I may opt for a refinish job by a pro.
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Going back and looking at some of the gorgeous finishes on prior pages' basses, I think that's my next move now haha...not tomorrow, but once I get some time in on it.
Also, how hard would it be to get a replacement logo sticker to fit the era? I know those sorts of things can smell like fraud, but I've got a photo of the neck date and all if the good folks at Fender wanted to vet it or something.
Here's a before and after of my '64P. Just to get your creative juices flowing....
Beautiful just the way it is IMO.
Personally, all I’d add would be a new headstock decal, period-correct knobs and flatwounds.
Paint remover aka aircraft remover would get the paint off the bridge saddles.
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Oh yeah. You've been right down this road. That's a beaut!
The decal is a must-do soon, as the old one was clearly stripped due to amateurness. But until I'm sure the neck can handle it, I'm a bit insecure about putting flats on (like the currently direlect GHS flats I've got sitting ready to go), and the chickenhead knobs...they're so obnoxious, I think I wanna hold on to them for a little while. I do want to get a fun, but accurate, re-finish done eventually, and when I do, I think that's when I'll switch back to correct knobs. The pickguard is warped everywhere, too, so that needs some love.
It's funny, I'm okay with storing carburetor cleaner in my place, and it's arguably a carcinogenic substance that should be banned, but paint remover is scary stuff. Still, maybe I can get a tiny amount somewhere and use it just to soak the saddles. I'm pretty sure all the leftover gunk is paint, so it'll be worth checking out.
