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Real or fake Fender?


KAREL

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This guitar is for sale, passed as a Fender Bass. It is rather lowly priced, so I am somewhat suspicious about the authenticity of this instrument. The tuners look different from any other type I have found online (especially the back). The scratchplate has some unused holes in it and the logo looks a bit fishy. However, I am no Fender expert (not in the least) so this could also just be an older model. Could someone shed some light on this please?

Karel

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Fake. Wrong tuners, crappy transfer logo, pick guard wrong shape & too many screws, trussed hole wrong shape, no truss rod plug in headstock, body shape looks wrong (tho hard to tell from these crappy photos - could be lens distortion). And thats just for starters. Best avoid B|

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There's nothing about the headstock that looks right. Fender put the string tree closer to the A string machine head, shouldn't there be a serial number on the back of the headstock? Fender have never just put "Fender" on the headstock, there's always something else "Made in USA" , "Precision Bass" etc 
The spindle size on the machine heads is too small, I've seen those on some Chinese made Squiers.

Edited by Dom in Somerset
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there's something weird going on with that nut as well,

looking closely at the headstock photo you can actually see where the old logo was scratched away, does it say "Encore"? - or Columbus ? 

early jap copy is my guess  

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It's a 70s copy-era bass, probably MIJ. The tuners are Gotohs and incredibly common on basses from that period. Looks to be one of the better quality basses, it appears to have a solid timber body, rather than ply or butcher block - there are no big black oversprays concealing laminations on the contours.

A lot of these basses originally had Gibson-type nuts & looking closely I think this did too - there's a rough-looking bit of timber poked in behind the nut on this. Looks a bit bodged. I don't think the scratchplate's original - most maple board/burst MIJ copies had tort plates.

Not enough detail or pics to speculate on a manufacturer but clearly nothing to do with Fender. Depends how cheap it is - some of the old MIJ stuff was excellent & if this was sub £100 it might be worth a look anyway.

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5 hours ago, MoonBassAlpha said:

70s mij stuff seems to be selling for relatively big bucks these days. I've always hated that style of tuner, it surprises me they went to the trouble to copy the rest of the bass and then just gave up on the tuners.

Much better to have exposed tuner gears so they get all gummed up with crud, than have them neatly enclosed! Funny how form takes precedence over function?

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