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Post subject: musicmaster bass serial number???
Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:10 pm
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howdy all.. 1st time on here so be gentle with me...lol a friend has given me a couple of her deceased partners guitars to clean and fix up.. 1 of them being a early musicmaster bass..i say an early 1 becuase the headstock has the smaller logo and no serial number under it..which brings me to my question.. whrer did they hide the number on these.. if i get that i can maybe find out its exact d.o.b...and verify that its authentic..
seems like a happnin bass( im a guitarist myself) although it has been modified.. still has the original pots and strat pick up in it but it looks like a jazz bass pick up mounted infront of the bridge, the pick gaurd isnt original as there is no bit that you rest your thumb on or holes where it wouldve been attached and i suspect its a replacement bridge as from memeory the original ones where a slightly rounded shape on the edges and this is straight but it does have fender usa stamped into it

in any case if any1 could help out as to where the serial number is that would be very much appreciated..

cheers f666


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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 11:29 am
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Location: In the pocket north of Washington D.C.
The serial numbers on Musicmaster basses or all older ( pre-1977) Fender basses are located on the neck mounting plate above the embossed F.

The problem with this is that the neck plates are interchangable and easily replaced with generic blank neck plates because any neck plate with a early 70s ser. num has value in itself and they are often sold to put on strats and teles.

The other way to date a Fender is to check the pot codes on the vol and tone pot.

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Posted: Thu Feb 25, 2010 8:27 pm
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hey BCbassman, thanks for that mate...
yeah id say this 1 has definately had a few modifications or replacements.. the neck mounting plate is totally blank..

i did look at the pots, the 2 volumes are dimarzio`s.. not sure if they wouldve been the original pots.. it says on them " DIMARZIO 1 MEG 1377851"
the tone pot looks older and has a big yellow /ochre capacitor on it. the no`s on it are 80-20 then under ithas a little symbol with .05 in it then under that it says 50v, i cant find a brand name on the tone pot but the numbers are "932367 250k
304 - 7023"

thats the only nubers i can find after sanding the crap off the casing..
obviously it means they are 250k pots but what the rest of the numbers mean i havnt a clue..

how do i use these to date the instrument?????
any help is greatly appreciated..cheers f666


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Posted: Sat Feb 27, 2010 10:29 am
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Location: In the pocket north of Washington D.C.
If you use this link- you can get dates from the pot code.

http://www.guitardaterproject.org/potcodereader.aspx

I entered your code from the 250K pot- The only original pot in your bass and got this:
This potentiometer was made by
Stackpole Electronics, Inc.
in the 23rd week of 1970

This means that (given this is an original part) this is the earliest possible date your guitar (speaker) was made.

The Dimarzio pots are replacements and not original and they were probably added when the Jazz pickup was installed.

All Fender pots are 250K, so that's the original pot.
Musicmaster basses were not made before 1970, so if yours has the original tuners that are small, it is probably a 1970 or 1971 Musicmaster Bass.
The serial number is only on the neck plate, so that is gone.
Good luck restoring or just playing that bass.

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Post subject: Re: musicmaster bass serial number???
Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2020 3:02 am
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I just posted a thread about a Musicmaster bass that i'm trying to put a date on. It has a 5 digit serial number - 10472, which for other Fender guitars would indicate that it was made in '57 but as far as I know Musicmaster basses were first made in the 1970s so I'm guessing that they may have used some weird numbers on Musicmaster basses. Do you know if any Musicmaster basses made in the 70s had 5 digit serial numbers?


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