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P bass dating help
- Thread starter J_WELF
- Start date
I bought a '75 off of a bandmate and believe this article (at bottom) properly describes the considerations outlined by TB'ers above. Your serial seems like a '75 (mine starts 623XXX) — I think the pots on mine were dated to '73 — but I like what the article states:
"The general rule of thumb is that a bass guitar is as old as its newest part. Or, at least its most recently dated part. 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."
Dating a Fender Bass: Serial Numbers and Hot Clues - Bass Guitar Shack
"The general rule of thumb is that a bass guitar is as old as its newest part. Or, at least its most recently dated part. 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."
Dating a Fender Bass: Serial Numbers and Hot Clues - Bass Guitar Shack
Thats what I like most about my P bass, but I ended up married to a J anyway.
Back when I was starting there were no P basses around to date, only Kay, Silvertone and Hagstrom.
Everyone knows P-Basses are rarely "true". They're more like "Runaround Sue"
I have always wondered about this. When I was a pup, any instruments made while CBS owned Fender were automatically dismissed as inferior.
Fender and the CBS Takeover
For all the talk round these parts about things like shims not affecting tone, I'm surprised that to this day a sloppy neck pocket is seen as anything other than a cosmetic blemish. All the folks proudly lifting their instruments sans screws bring back memories of highschool jocks showing off one handed pushups, sure it might be visually impressive but your not getting a better work out and may in fact be injuring yourself. Trueness of the surface of the neck pocket is a much more important factor to consider as that is where the screws apply anchoring force and any defects or gaps there will hinder the instruments natural tone, and it's something that almost no one looks out for due to this strange obsession with inconsequential side gaps in the neck pocket.
I'm surprised at the advice to pull the neck off. When y'all are selling instruments, do you let buyers do that?
If I was selling an instrument and someone arrived with a set of tools and proposed taking the instrument apart, it would be a hard no. 'Cause I don't know if that random someone knows what they are doing, if they know how to put it back together properly, if they are about to bur out screws and damage threads, etc.
If I was selling a '62 Strat for tens of thousands of dollars, I would certainly agree to take it to a luthier or instrument valuer with suitable insurance to take it apart and verify the year and the matching components, but…
If I was selling an instrument and someone arrived with a set of tools and proposed taking the instrument apart, it would be a hard no. 'Cause I don't know if that random someone knows what they are doing, if they know how to put it back together properly, if they are about to bur out screws and damage threads, etc.
If I was selling a '62 Strat for tens of thousands of dollars, I would certainly agree to take it to a luthier or instrument valuer with suitable insurance to take it apart and verify the year and the matching components, but…
If you ever had the experience of purchasing a vintage instrument, you'd not be surprised at all. They command top dollar and are also easily faked. Woe be the person that doesn't check the basics. And any seller that balks at this request really couldn't be trusted in my book.
And removing the neck on a Fender is about the easiest thing that you can do. It's 4 screws.
Were I selling a bass like that, I'd have already taken the neck off and had pics to offer.
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I have a 70's Jazz and got a lot of help in dating it. It's not uncommon for the pots, pickups, neck and body to be from different years (like a 3 year span)... that's how Fender did it then -- some parts sat around as stock, sometime for years, and were "pulled" to complete basses as needed. Basically, the latest year on any given component is the year the bass was sold as new. The neck plate serial number isn't trustworthy because those can easily be swapped. You need to get (and post here, I'll help) pictures of: the end of the neck (take the neck off), the body pocket (the signature and stamps will help a little), and the pots (the numbers on the backside) and the underside of the pickups -- even if the numbers are gone, the color etc. can help date.
The body looks too clean, so it's possible it was refinished unless the rest of the bass is in equally great condition.
If the seller won't help with this kind of inspection out of shadiness or laziness, assume it's an average bass, don't overpay and see how it sounds/feels before you buy if you can, or have the return policy reflect the amount of cash you're willing to risk. It's surely a 70's bass (or early 80's with mostly 70's parts). How many parts of it are 70's is unknown. I'm not sure it really matters if it's early or late 70's. That the neck has dots and not blocks might indicate earlier 70's but I don't know for sure.
The body looks too clean, so it's possible it was refinished unless the rest of the bass is in equally great condition.
If the seller won't help with this kind of inspection out of shadiness or laziness, assume it's an average bass, don't overpay and see how it sounds/feels before you buy if you can, or have the return policy reflect the amount of cash you're willing to risk. It's surely a 70's bass (or early 80's with mostly 70's parts). How many parts of it are 70's is unknown. I'm not sure it really matters if it's early or late 70's. That the neck has dots and not blocks might indicate earlier 70's but I don't know for sure.
devnulljp
Supporting Member
Yeah, no good music was ever made on CBSFenders
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Leo Fender was notoriously...frugal. But he listened to his customers, and it was his company (his name on everything) - he cared about quality, he just managed to pull it off with mostly inexpensive parts. CBS was also "frugal". They seemed to care less about their customers or quality - the machines didn't get maintained well (things got sloppy), the wood got changed from swamp ash (lighter ash) to even cheaper, heavy ash, and the amp circuits got changed to fix "problems" which customers didn't seem to have, adversely changing how they sounded in the process.
Could you play good music on a CBS Fender? Sure. Were they as good as the pre-CBS ones? In general, no.
If you look closely, that bass has had a LOT of work done to it. It's not even close to a factory instrument. It spent more time in the hands of Mr Sadowsky than it did in the Fender factory.
Yes, on an actual stock Fender, Marcus would sill sound like Marcus.
It's not about the players. It's about the instruments. And you'll note, please, that I'm describing what people's perceptions of CBS Fender were at the time.Yeah, no good music was ever made on CBSFenders
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^^^ this 100% when it comes to vintage instruments ^^^Were I selling a bass like that, I'd have already taken the neck off and had pics to offer.
That said, there are still a good amount of older players who aren't as 'hip' to the current market or spend no time on forums like this, where people are super into this stuff. For them, they just know they bought a bass around 1974 or sometime around then and want to sell it for a decent price. Sometimes people aren't out to screw other people, they just don't know or care about every detail of the instrument they want to sell. You just have to do the research, keep an open mind and open eyes, and feel out the seller and the situation.
