Dating pickup

mourten · Post by **mourten** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 4:27 pm

Recently bought a 59 musicmaster(my first shortscale), how do I know the pickup is actually '59?
There's no serial or anything on the bottom of it but I've heard that's the way it's supposed to be on pre-CBS Fenders?

btw, it sounds great and the short scale is awesome

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:29 pm

should look like this

DGNR8 · Post by **DGNR8** » Fri Aug 31, 2012 12:20 am

Right. Black and waxy, with cloth wires. I actually don't know what else to look for.

NickS · Post by **NickS** » Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:30 am

DGNR8 wrote:Right. Black and waxy, with cloth wires. I actually don't know what else to look for.

When was the pole-piece stagger introduced, and was it across all models?

Mages · Post by **Mages** » Fri Aug 31, 2012 11:52 pm

musicmasters and duo-sonics were never staggered. strats were staggered from the beginning but sometime in the CBS era they stopped doing it.

mourten · Post by **mourten** » Wed Sep 05, 2012 8:52 pm

I've taken a closer look on my pickup and it is clean, really clean.
It's not possible that a 50 year old pickup looks kinda new, right?

It's not staggered but has not cloth wire and the wiring is covered by this black.. thing, if you know what I mean(this is as far as my english goes), well its quite common on newer pickups.

Other than that, it looks like the pickup on the pictures above