MrFingers

The case is legit Fender vintage, but not from 1969. It's a "no tail" logo with an R, and no "Made in USA" underneath the "Fe". That means 1972-1975. Also corresponds with the corner insert for the body.

Dismantle it, that way it can be classifieds of "bass parts", and thus circumvents the rule.

In all seriousness, in this case: make an exception, and keep the 'Ray. You don't have to play it, you can lay it above a cupboard,...

EDIT: adding to that. I did the same thing with a guitar I got from my (now late) father. Absolutely unremarkable instrument, modified quite a bit, unused for years, but it's still that guitar. So it lives in a thick gigbag on the (dry and insulated) attic. And now, I am glad that I preserved that instrument, eventhough I put it up for sale multiple times, pulling it a few days later.

Given they have the same neckpocket-interface, I tested it via a neck swap. That maple cap makes it way more raunchy, even on the warm PV-pickup.

A while back, I found a hodgepodge with a Fender Roger Waters Precision Bass neck ‘deep in Wallonia’ for a véry good price, and I was already toying with the idea of adding a second P for a while. After some very intense searching, I stumbled on a dusty Italian webshop, where I found an Allparts PBF-CAR body (a colour that has been out of the range for a while). Then I started gathering some parts left & right, with the aim of creating a '64-'66 hybrid without breaking the back.

A day with an assortment of screwdrivers, measuring devices and a soldering iron later, this is what came out. It's quite a fierce one. Where my white one with flatwounds sounds very warm and fat, this one sounds diametrically opposite: angry, fierce, raunchy and punchy. I'm happy with it... although I'm still itching for a neck with a veneer rosewood fingerboard, and that neck on a Slab66 body. With flatwounds on this one, and rounds on the '66.

- Neck: Fender Roger Waters (44.5mm nut width, maple cap, vintage frets)
- Tuners: Gotoh FB-30-LP (the full-size tuners with the large mounting plate)
- Body: Allparts PBF-CAR (Alder. CAR with a silver-coloured undercoat)
- Pickguard: Fender '62RI (stark white, not mint green)
- Pickup: Fender Vintera II '60 (I was very surprised at how good those Vintera '60 P-basses sounded. The intention is to bake in a greybobbin in the future, but this pickup is also extremely good, much better than the Vintera '50)
- Covers: Fender ‘Pure Vintage’ (I wouldn't be me if I didn't install measures to restrict playing freedom on my instrument, I just removed them for the photo-opp)
- Bridge: Fender ‘Pure Vintage’

- Wiring: Homemade with CTS, clothwire, Orangedrop,...

On 31/07/2025 at 21:18, HeadlessBassist said:

Have you had a chance to plug it in yet?

Yep. Sounds absolutely atrocious via an amp, but has a really nice bark and growl when running through a DI. 😑

Either way, the lollipop tuners have been ordered, so the conversion can slowly start.

That's what really happened. Tuesday in the afternoon, I was suffering greatly from the "post lunch digestive swoon", and the further the meeting (read: monologue from 1 person) progressed, the less I became involved, so I started playing on my phone... Opened the app from the local 2nd hands website, and typed in "Precision Bass" (as I'm still on the lookout for a sunburst/white AVRI 63, hit me up if you want to get rid of you... who am I kidding, no-one does that). And just posted was a Fender P-bass shaped object for de facto Squier money. Trying to hide my excitement (it was to be avoided they might be thinking in the meeting I suddenly became enthusiastic about a legal addendum) I instantly contacted the seller, saying I'm buying it. Got a reply back "I leave on holidays next week... would tonight work, 20h00?". As one does, one says yes first, and then look at the map where it's actually located. The benefit of this napkin of a country is... that its at maximum a 2hrs drive from the capital... where I was located. Luckily it was just a 50 minute drive, so after work I went over there, plugged it in, gave it a whirl and took it home. The seller knew what he had in parts, he just wanted to sell it. 

So now I have a mongrel of a P-bass.  

- Roger Waters signature neck & tuners (!!!)

- Fender HiMass bridge.

- Some sort of nondescript white EMG's

- A Japanese body.

It's a virtually identical neck to the American Original '60 P-bass, just with a maple fretboard. Big piece of wood, but luckily everything hangs really balanced because the body is so heavy it has developed its own gravitational field and has already caught 2 moons. But plays really nice, no deadspots, sustain for dayzzzzzzzzzzzzz. That EMG pickup sounds exactly as you would expect it to sound: like a 9V battery.

The reason why I was so excited is the Roger Waters neck. Not so much for it being Roger Waters, far from it actually. Because it's a maple-cap neck with a 1.75" nut-width and a sixties "thick C" profile. Specs I absolutely adore, and which Fender AFAIK never made outside (non-CS) of this series since the original run ended in 1970. So yeah, it will likely get disassembled, and I'll build a new bass around that neck... Hmm, which famous and very limited edition Fender is famed for using a maple cap neck... and for its uniqueness... 🤔🤔🤔... Or should I go CAR... Either way, it gets full-sized Gotoh lollipops!

6 hours ago, JJMotown said:

Looks like the pickguard is spray painted gold, not gold anodized.

There is no bevel visible, and it appears very thin. I think this is a proper anodized guard.

On 14/07/2025 at 18:41, Skybone said:

There is something weird going on when you have both volumes on full

It's because frequency cancellation, a side-effect of two pickups in parallel². The closer the pickups are together, the stronger the effect. When that happens, the midrange gets reduced. Can be solved by not having both pickups at 100%.

(² like that glassy sound on a Stratocaster on positions 2 & 4)

They were very shortlived (2 years end the 1990's) and were quickly shelved because they were EXTREMELY high quality instruments. Better than Fender was churning out in Mexico.  

Also, what you see is the only iteration there was: translucent red with gold hardware. No other colours.

One of the best that I played was a Squier Pro Tone Precision Bass V. Despite the soapbars...

 

Here’s to hoping they go the Joe Dart route and make it in a Ray24 version (fretless) under the Sterling brand.

Body does look like a 1970's product to me. It has the straight pocket, so: late 1970's.

Neck is from a 1988 Fender AVRI '62 P-bass. Pickguard is way more recent.

What does the pickup look like underneath the covers?

Under the pickguard is plenty of realestate for that. 

12 hours ago, Mrbigstuff said:

If the neck is Fender, it’s had a new nut, fingerboard, inlays and frets

It's a one-piece neck, so replacing the fingerboard is not that easy. And it would show immediately at the walnut trussrod plug, which would have its top cut off. Someone went to town on it by replacing the facedots (as can be seen on the detailed pictures further in this thread, it also shows no gluejoint at the headstock, so fretboard is original), and thus (locally) refinishing the fretboard. New nut is no real biggie. Frets do appear to me to be the original "low and wide" ones as were used after 1966. I don't see any tearout of the maple either that would suggest a refret.

To OP: you can rest assured: the bones of the instrument (tuners, stringtree, neck (except position markers and possible new fretboard finish), body, neckplate (with its black backing plate) and likely the pickguard all check out for a 1974-1975 Precision Bass. It might be thrown together from parts sourced left and right (hurray for the modular design of Fender), but the parts do check out. Once in your possession, you can always remove the neck and search for a date-stamp, and maybe the potmeter codes.

EDIT: the more I look at it, it might even be that the body finish is original as well. Prior to 1975, Fender used a rather light brown and very translucent colouring, before switching to a darker and almost opaque colouring (because then the wood didn't really show, so they could use more/uglier pieces of wood).

It went to hell, got beaten, and refinished, there and then travelled all the way back... But it's legit. What is an instantly recognisable feature is the 2 filled dowel holes at the rear of the body. One near the end of the body, the other next to the neckplate (prior tot 1969 they were both on the centerline of the guitar, the top one was moved because you could see it on a sunburst).

The neck is also a typical 1970-1975 neck, the difference in discolouration between the headstock face (nitro) and the rest (poly) checks out. I bet that if you remove the E-tuner, you'll also see an (unfilled) dowel hole between the bottom two mounting screws for the tuner.

On 02/05/2025 at 20:59, Alanko said:

Another mystery bass is a P Bass played briefly by Chris Hillman of the Byrds

Chris Hillman was (and is) originally a mandolin player, and prior to joining the Byrds he never even picked up a bass (hence his rather melodic style: he approached it as a very big mandolin with very thick strings). That bass was loaned to him to mime in a TV appearance, he thinks it was a Fender body with a homemade neck, and it was absolutely atrocious. He later used a sunburst P-bass with transition logo on Monterey, which was then stripped and stained in brown, and used furher in the Burrito Bro's.

As for that '63 P-bass, it has a rosewood fretboard, so I'd suspect that someone took a hacksaw to the headstock, and reshaped it. Also because a true <57 P-neck had the square heel just like the Telecaster, which doesn't fit in the curved neck pocket. Hence you can install a curved neck in a square pocket, but not the other way around.

Guild Starfire I

In order to hit two birds with one slap. Ánd a 5-string for that one time in a month I crave that ánd the classic-ish stingray sound. Didn’t want to fork out the cash for a true stingray, and didn’t really fancy the standard 5-string Ray cosmetics. This appears to be the perfect blend of 4-string looks, somewhat seventies sound and style and at an affordable price point… picked this one up 2nd hand but defacto new (plastic still on the batter cover) for next to nothing…

plays really nice, sounds a bit barky, but need to rewire it to parallel. An absolute boat-anchor though!

9 hours ago, TrevorR said:

However, my personal vintage is Pre-CBS so that means the chance of having a bass to match is slim to none!!!

Danelectro/Silvertone/Harmony,…

On 09/04/2024 at 07:28, Lfalex v1.1 said:

that'd leave Jazzes, customs, and maybe some of the earliest Japanese efforts.

Maybe Burns or Shergold, also?

Rickenbacker, Guild, Mosrite, Höfner 500/1 with the blade pickups,…

On 08/04/2024 at 21:05, sergelebasse75 said:

Congrats on your new bass! How does that Vari-mid eq sound? Is It useful? Or something that you almost doesnt play and instead eq from the amp? Just curious about that preamp. Thank you

 

It's like a regular 3 band EQ (so an indent at middle of the sweep where there is no EQ applied, and then a cutoff/boost on either side of that indent),the small knob closest to the bridge is the mid-control for boost/cut, and the ring around is is a stepless frequency selector to select the midrange from a rather broad range, where the mid-control is active on. So you can choose which mid-frequency you boost/cut. 

It makes for a very versatile tone circuit that basically allows you to ignore the amp EQ, as you can very much build & shape your tone on the instrument itself. Only downside is that you can't switch fast from one sound to another, and that the knobs are very free-rotating.

In terms of tonality, that vari-mid reminded me vaguely of a WAL bass of an acquaintance that I once played that had the parametric EQ, you can get the same sweep.

On 05/04/2024 at 14:49, Agent 00Soul said:

Not a bass (obviously) but:

 

My first electric instrument was a Jazzmaster that I got in 1984.  Nobody was buying them then so it was dirt cheap.  A few years later, I unscrewed the neck and found out it was dated 15 June 68, three weeks from my date of birth.

 

I still have it.  I didn't know this was a thing until I read this thread!

 

Do you have any pictures from the eighties, when it was stock? It's intriguing because it's a CBS-era Jazzmaster with a small headstock, which is the first one I ever saw.

OP: No, I haven't. From 1987, so that's deep into dark side of the 1980's... Maybe if I can find a Stingray I like.

I need to re-learn that the neck does not start at E anymore and that A is now in the middle

People who know me know that I like my basses designed before 1970, with 4 flatwound strings and not a battery in sight… so when this popped up locally for 2nd hand Squier Affinity-money I had to jump on it.

A 1993 Ibanez Soundgear SR885BK, made in Japan at FujiGen. With the 2 AFR-J5 pickups and the 3-band EQ with variable midrange swoop (I think they call it the Vari-mid), afaik the only year they came in this combination. Decent bit of kit with Gotoh hardware and a very fast neck. Good enough to give it a try.

Well... since we're posting. New to me since the beginning of the month (2019 model)