ShortScale.org

Musicmasters and duo-sonics never had contours. It's obviously been modded. Still, absolute bargain.

hotrodperlmutter wrote:oh shit, phil, good eye on the contour. could be a partsonicII.

not to be prickish, but what sort of 'security reasons' can arise from printing the full serial number? replication and/or fraud?

"Mr Police Officer, my guitar was stolen. Here's the serial number...

(waits a week)

Mr Police Officer! I saw my guitar online!"

It's not common, but it could happen.

And I'm sorry I worded my earlier post so poorly. Yes it's true - Duo Sonics and Musicmasters never had contoured bodies - I have a '75 Musicmaster (now a Duo Sonic), so I'm well acquainted with that fact. Mustangs didn't have them either - until '69, so that guitar must have either been modified to add a tummy cut, or it's a Mustang body that someone filled in the tremolo routing holes and refinished, etc.

I can't see the top well enough to tell - is there a forearm contour?

Thanks for all the intetest and comments guys! As far as the tuners go, someone apparently changed the post on the one tuner cause there is no doubt after further inspection that evey other part of it matches all the other tuners.
Neck plate ser is L531xx
Neck code is 8 Sep65b
Also it has no forearm relief. I originally thought maybe the original finish might be under the black but now i am thinking its was stripped! Bummer!!! Oh well, if that turns out ti be so im gonna paint it dakota red and be done with it! I'm not crazy about the black.

so it's an unoriginal body then too, no? $450 is looking not so bueno, more and more.

no mustangs came with only rib contours, or without the fu-manchu trem routes.

hotrodperlmutter wrote:so it's an unoriginal body then too, no? $450 is looking not so bueno, more and more.

no mustangs came with only rib contours, or without the fu-manchu trem routes.

Well, we're not sure if its "unoriginal" or not. Since it looks like the body has been stripped and it has been repainted, it could be original and whoever stripped and painted it may have added the tummy relief.
And as expensive as bodies, necks, and all the other parts are, even if the body isn'r original it sure isn't a bad deal! Just not as good if a deal! Bet you can't build one for $450!

Anyway, original body or not, i'm loving this guitar. Here are my plans for it (open for suggestions)

First i'm gonna redo the body Dakota red. I 'm gonna add the DuoSonic pearl guard i have so i can get the neck pup hooked up. It already has the switches wired up in it. Gonna adda pickup cover for the neck pickup. Im gonna leave the fender lace custom pup in the bridge. I'm also gonna try to find a slotted tuner post to replace the non original non slotted tuner post. May replace the neck pup if its not the original one and/or i don't like it.

So basically i'm gonna turn it into a Dakota Red 65 DuoSonic II.

deltaboy72076 wrote:Thanks for all the intetest and comments guys! As far as the tuners go, someone apparently changed the post on the one tuner cause there is no doubt after further inspection that evey other part of it matches all the other tuners.
Neck plate ser is L531xx
Neck code is 8 Sep65b
Also it has no forearm relief. I originally thought maybe the original finish might be under the black but now i am thinking its was stripped! Bummer!!! Oh well, if that turns out ti be so im gonna paint it dakota red and be done with it! I'm not crazy about the black.

No forearm relief means it's definitely not a Mustang body with "filled" trem route holes. I kind of doubted it was - that's not super easy to do flawlessly and invisibly.

Yes, a contour could have been added to a Musicmaster II's body, It's a lot more work to do it by hand than the way they did / do it at Fender, but a decent luthier or woodworker should be able to do it with no problem, and even a novice could probably pull it off with some advice, patience and by going slowly and carefully. However, it could also be an aftermarket or custom made body. There are a few ways of checking. If the body has original Fender brass plates inside the cavities. If all the cavities look the same, and none looks obviously "added" or poorly routed, and the routing is the same as on all other 60s era Duo Sonics / Musicmasters. Ask around, or Google for pics. The holes under the shielding plates would need to match up. Body stamps under the shields or elsewhere (neck pocket) can either support or argue against it being an original Fender body. Any remaining color (paint) inside the cavities from one of the three colors Fender used back then (red, white or blue - roughly Dakota, Olympic and Daphne, although Fender never called them that on the student models) would possibly be suggestive of an original. etc. etc. etc. The two potentiometers (volume and tone controls) have numbers stamped into them that can be used to date those parts. too.

Your neck plate concerns me a bit. It's a '64 neck date. That doesn't automatically mean it's NOT a '65 guitar, but it's another piece that is suggestive of it being a partscaster. Fender used a big bin of neck plates and the workers just randomly grabbed a plate when they needed one, and they would just add new ones to the bin (covering the remaining older ones), so sometimes you will find an older pot or neck plate on a later guitar. A classic case of that is the Fender Swingers, which were all made in '69, but nearly all of them have '66-'67 neck codes; Fender was trying to get rid of leftover parts, which is why they built that particular model. Anyway, that could have happened in your guitar's case, but it's a bit of a long shot, because neck plates didn't usually hang around for over a year... but you can't always take any one thing as being definitive on some of this stuff. If the neck plate dates to '64, the neck to Sept '65 and, assuming the pots date to later, then that's pretty good evidence, along with the back contour and the refinish (non-standard color) that it's a partscaster. You'd have to look to other clues and indicators as to whether or not the body was original Fender issue and then modded, or built by someone else.

Is it a good deal? Oh, most certainly IMO. The neck plate? If it's in decent condition a L series neck plate can easily fetch a couple hundred bucks on Ebay. The neck? I have one with a "slab" board ( 8 AUG 65 B neck stamp) that is in arguably better cosmetic condition (dang near perfect), but that I paid $400 for. I'd say yours is easily worth a couple hundred, so between just those two parts, you're already covered in terms of value or worth IMO. I would have wanted to dig into that guitar a bit more to satisfy my curiosity before purchasing it (just because that's how I am), but yeah, I'd pay $450 for that, no problem.

Wow, thanks for all the info Phil! I had looked up the neck plate # and saw that it was a 64 number and had wondered about that. Looks like i need to pop the guard off this weekend, that will probably answer all these questions and i'm very curious to find out! If it is a parts guitar i'm fine with that. I really really like it except for the black body which i will rectify in time. The neck feels fantistic and this is easily the best playing guitar i have ever owned!! I freaking love it!
You could be right about it being an aftermarket body. The tummy cut looks very professionaly done although as you say, a decent wood worker could have done a good job.
I'll try to get into it this weekend and we'll see what we see.

deltaboy72076 wrote:Just not as good if a deal! Bet you can't build one for $450!

i bet i already did:
seriously, my intention with my comments was not to turn this into a pissing contest. there's some questionable bits about the guitar, and $450 is still a good deal, no matter how you slice it. my point is it's yet to be proven what the thread title suggests, not to take the wind out of your sails.

i was just thinking that i would have some semblance of buyers remorse had i been so convinced it was such an early vintage piece, only later to find the inconsistencies/modifications. probably not enough to detract from the enjoyment of owning this type of guitar.

if you love it, that's great. i can only speak from my point of view, which is effectively meaningless in this particular situation.

hotrodperlmutter wrote:

deltaboy72076 wrote:Just not as good if a deal! Bet you can't build one for $450!

i bet i already did:

► Show Spoiler

seriously, my intention with my comments was not to turn this into a pissing contest. there's some questionable bits about the guitar, and $450 is still a good deal, no matter how you slice it. my point is it's yet to be proven what the thread title suggests, not to take the wind out of your sails.

i was just thinking that i would have some semblance of buyers remorse had i been so convinced it was such an early vintage piece, only later to find the inconsistencies/modifications. probably not enough to detract from the enjoyment of owning this type of guitar.

if you love it, that's great. i can only speak from my point of view, which is effectively meaningless in this particular situation.

That's cool and i see your point I just called it what it was sold to me as. I would love for it to be a minty all original 65 MMII but it isn't real important to me! I would have paid the 450 for it even if i knew it was a parts guitar! ( which we really don't know yet) I've been wanting a shortscale MM2, Mustang, or DuoSonic for years. Almost bought a 65 reissue stang but just didnt want to spenf that much. Had a 70ish Bronco when i was a kid and always wanted another similar guitar cause i loved it!
I'm gonna get into it this weekend and should then be able to tell for sure if the body is original or not.
Regardless, im gonna get it fixed up like i want it and i'm gonna rock the hell out of it cause i am really digging on this guitar!

deltaboy72076 wrote: Regardless, im gonna get it fixed up like i want it and i'm gonna rock the hell out of it cause i am really digging on this guitar!

um ...yeah. I like it exept for the one pickup having no cover. How do you do the switching? I spot no switches. (which is normal on a MM, but an original one requires no switching...)

I also think no matter what the body ist that the price is good. About what is usually considered a good deal for a good partscaster.

Whoever added the bridge pup added no switches! They just unhooked the neck pup but left it there. And i don't like the neck pup without a cover either so i will have to get one. I won't know if its original until i pop the pick guard off. I'm gonna set it up like a DuoSonic 2 for the switching.

kypdurron wrote:I also think no matter what the body ist that the price is good. About what is usually considered a good deal for a good partscaster.

um yeah, this. who gives if it's all original? $450 is a plenty good price for this guitar.

Cool guitar. Lots of charactor. $450 seems like a steal to me as well. It's hard to find a 45 year old electric
guitar that hasn't been dicked with and/or repaired at some point along the line.

cooterfinger wrote:Cool guitar. Lots of charactor. $450 seems like a steal to me as well. It's hard to find a 45 year old electric
guitar that hasn't been dicked with and/or repaired at some point along the line.

And if you do find one unmolested its gonna cost a lot more than $450 which puts them out of my price range!

The body looks like a fine job if it is custom; and contours are great. I can't see a negative here for the price.

I converted a '75 Musicmaster into a Duo Sonic last year. Unlike yours, mine needed to have the bridge pickup routed (sometime after '69 when the Duo Sonic was discontinued, Fender stopped routing the Musicmaster for both pickups), so I got some help from a buddy who is a Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop, and then refinished it. If you'd like some tips and pics of a refinish in progress, you can see the "as it happened" thread here:

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/sho ... usicmaster

Here's the before / after pics in case you don't want to wade through that massive thread:
BTW, IIRC, I paid about $400 for that guitar - NOT counting the paint and other parts I put into it.

Phil O'Keefe wrote:I converted a '75 Musicmaster into a Duo Sonic last year. Unlike yours, mine needed to have the bridge pickup routed (sometime after '69 when the Duo Sonic was discontinued, Fender stopped routing the Musicmaster for both pickups), so I got some help from a buddy who is a Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop, and then refinished it. If you'd like some tips and pics of a refinish in progress, you can see the "as it happened" thread here:

http://acapella.harmony-central.com/sho ... usicmaster

Here's the before / after pics in case you don't want to wade through that massive thread:

► Show Spoiler

Before:





After:

BTW, IIRC, I paid about $400 for that guitar - NOT counting the paint and other parts I put into it.

Wow, that turned out nice Phil! Hope mine ends up looking that good.

no matter how you cut it $450 is a great price for the guitar

and fuck it i like how it looks.