Is the aftermarket bridge installed in the right place?
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UFO: Unknown Fender Object
- Thread starter Lujon
- Start date
it's a bas(s)tard, but it's fretless, so = who cares! 
congrats on your "UFO," @Lujon! 
congrats on your "UFO," @Lujon! 
Looks great; I'd slap a black pearloid pickguard on that baby and rock away! 
Smooth_bass88
vaxx!
- Oct 31, 2006
- 12,123
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- have been on nationally released albums, charting on the Billboard 200
Fretless with Bartolini pickups and 70s spacing- very interesting and unique.
Well, I think I figured out why it's shorter and the frets are closer together. I measured more carefully and found it's a (edit) 33.75" scale bass!
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Now, I'm not saying you're wrong, but if was measuring for scale and got 33.5" and intonation issues I'd be awful suspicious of it being a 33" or 34". Did you measure nut to 12th or nut to saddles?
Hmm...plays well, sounds good. Leave it in it's pristine muttliness. Rock it.
EDIT: I was wrong again, it's 33.75" scale. I measured from nut edge to the 12th fret: 16.875". I confirmed this using the stewmac calculator for each fret position and then fret to fret measurements. I'm so glad it's at least correct, if a bit odd.
When I first measured it I was measuring nut to saddle on the E string, which is about 34"
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Ya...Looks great; I'd slap a black pearloid pickguard on that baby and rock away!
...or maybe a clear guard, nice grain on that bass.
Didn't the router hump disappear around 1964/65? I've always believed it was a very early feature, like the brass ground strip from the bridge pickup rout to under the bridge.
If I had to guess, I'd say it was a very well put together parts bass. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong at all with that. Some of the nicest Fender shaped objects are parts basses. You lucked out with it, well done.
Edited to add: Looking at it closely, it's predrilled for the "mystery screw" between the neck pickup and the neck, but not for the pickup covers. That's kind of odd. What's the body thickness?
Edited to add: Looking at it closely, it's predrilled for the "mystery screw" between the neck pickup and the neck, but not for the pickup covers. That's kind of odd. What's the body thickness?
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I agree with everything you said, but you spelled "chrome hardware" and "black Pearloid pickguard" wrong.
'65 P with a bump
'66
'67
'68 with hump... or bump? or ramp?
'69
1970. The shape seems to be getting small and subtle enough to be subjective territory.
Can we call this a micro-hump?
'71
'72
'73
'74
Certainly by 1970 it was vestigial, nothing like the pronounced bump on a '60 for example. Your picture of a '66 shows it off well - a long, distinctly rounded but low-ish hump. Of course, lack of a bump is no indicator of anything - they were often sanded out during refins. Dating a Fender can be a minefield, because they never threw anything anyway, so you might very easily find a "thin" pre-1969 Jazz body on an early '70s J that **should** have the "thick" body, but they had some thin bodies left and used them up until they ran out.
Of course there are the bigger changes, like the '70s revised pickup spacing, CBS era neck binding, three screw vs five screw bridge, or the aforementioned body thickness, which can help you narrow a J down to a fairly accurate date range bearing in mind the "parts bin overlap effect". But you never really know. If it plays nice, it IS nice. That's what really matters.
Of course, the only person who really knows is... J TORRES.
