Pens wrote:The angle of the pickup seems...excessively tilted to me.
It also seems a but further "forward" (towards the neck) than Fender typically mounts their bridge pickups.
I am curious as to what the serial number on the plate would come back with, though.
It doesn't.
If you take the "A" off, it's a '54 serial number, not a '56. To the best of my knowledge, the A prefix was only used on Telecasters with the S/N stamped into the bridge. There were some odd things with S/N's in the 50s. Some had a "-" in front of them, others were double-stamped (flip it over, and there's a different S/N on the back), or stamped at the "bottom" of the plate... but I've never seen one quite like that. If it was a normal '56 serial number, it should be in the 9000 to 16000 range.
Doesn't look like a Fender pickup to me. And the knobs are non-Fender. My guess is that somebody decided to homebrew a Musiclander from a 50s Duo they had lying around.
i didn't even see the swimming pool route when i first read the thread. i wanna say fuck this guitar, but something tells me there's more mojo in it. maybe i just want there to be.
I re-read the chapter about the Swinger in "fender: The Golden Age". The guy who built these things was in the factory since 1953, but wasn't in the position to develop anything before 1964 or so. Freddie Tavares, the man who developed the Strat and Jazzmaster, states that he didn't know about the Swinger when it was made and first heard about it in1978 or so.
You might think that it would be impossible in 1956, for Mr. Tavares, to not know of an existing prototype. At that time Fender R&D was mainly Mr. Fender and Mr. Tavares. So the history book tells. Fender first needed to become a much larger company for things like this to happen I would guess.
Obi Wan says: The Jundland Wastes are not to be traveled lightly.
strat-talk says: Shortscale is a crazy place. There seems to be no rules at all and they're all insane!
the only thing that could be is a late-60ies guitar with old spare 56 guitarparts on it. Ever noticed he wrote about a duosonic control plate? But in 56 no fender guitar had this type of control plate. It first apears on the jaguars, mustangs and duosonic IIs in the early 60ies...
I think it's a fake too. The seller looks like he knows his stuff but it there's too many red flags on this. One not mentioned is the scratch plate. I would guess that it would be one of the aluminum ones used on the Musicmaster, Dou-Sonic and Jazzmaster (as well as some Strats and P-Basses) of that era (or at least white or tort, I don't think mother of toilet seat showed up until the Mustang)
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ekwatts wrote: ↑Wed Dec 21, 2022 12:53 pm
The word "moisty" has made me irrationally angry.