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Dating pickup

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 4:27 pm
by mourten
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 :)

Posted: Thu Aug 30, 2012 5:29 pm
by Mages
should look like this

Image
Image

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 12:20 am
by DGNR8
Right. Black and waxy, with cloth wires. I actually don't know what else to look for.

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 7:30 am
by NickS
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?

Posted: Fri Aug 31, 2012 11:52 pm
by Mages
musicmasters and duo-sonics were never staggered. strats were staggered from the beginning but sometime in the CBS era they stopped doing it.

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2012 8:52 pm
by mourten
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 :)