A pleasant surprise...
I'm a bassist, have been for a while, though I've never actually gotten around to appraising any of my instruments. Decided to poke around a little bit and made a couple interesting discoveries, though...
My main bass is an old 4-string Squier, which I figured means that unless the person is a Squier fetishist (and I've met a couple of them, swear up and down the actual Fender basses are substandard). I've had to repair the jack on it a couple of times, and based on a look inside it looked to be from some time in the 80s due to the way the wiring was coated and the sheer amount of dust that had built up (I bought it from a pawn shop in 1998). I asked at a local guitar shop if they knew how old it might be, and got told it was likely a knockoff since the neckplate had "JV" stamped at the beginning of the serial, whereas to the best of his knowledge there were no Japanese Squiers.
Well, turns out he was wrong. Turns out that JV is a valid serial prefix covering when the Squier first went into production, according to Fender. Poking about on Wiki also indicates that the Squier was orignally released in Europe as a Japanese-produced vintage collection, focusing on '57 and '62 replicas of certain models. Based comparisons of the pickguard, finish, body shape, etc., it appears to have been a replica of the '62 P-bass.
Thus, it turns out that instead of being just another cheap alternative, my primary bass is actually an authorized vintage replica, and that my jestingly billing it as an '83 bass is actually on the mark. Thing really is as old as I am.
My second bass, which is at home right now is a Fender P-Bass Special 5 (similar model pictured to the left, as I don't have a picture on hand and it's not here to take one). I bought this bass new in 2000 with just about all the money I had when I turned 17, so other than sentimental value it's not really worth much of anything.
Third guitar is one that is kind of on indefinite loan from the church since I'm the only one that plays bass there and nobody uses it. Gibson basses are kind of rare, been wanting an EB-0 for a while. While this one is not technically an EB-0 (as all of said model were in the classic cherry red finish), the serial number on the back of the headstock matches the range Gibson states it stamped in 1962. Trying to find more information on vintage Gibson basses to further verify that it's an actual Gibson bass, though everything I've been able to check so far indicates it as genuine except perhaps the fact that there's only two knobs on it (but then, there's only one pickup and thus no logical reason for four knobs anyway).
My main bass is an old 4-string Squier, which I figured means that unless the person is a Squier fetishist (and I've met a couple of them, swear up and down the actual Fender basses are substandard). I've had to repair the jack on it a couple of times, and based on a look inside it looked to be from some time in the 80s due to the way the wiring was coated and the sheer amount of dust that had built up (I bought it from a pawn shop in 1998). I asked at a local guitar shop if they knew how old it might be, and got told it was likely a knockoff since the neckplate had "JV" stamped at the beginning of the serial, whereas to the best of his knowledge there were no Japanese Squiers.
Well, turns out he was wrong. Turns out that JV is a valid serial prefix covering when the Squier first went into production, according to Fender. Poking about on Wiki also indicates that the Squier was orignally released in Europe as a Japanese-produced vintage collection, focusing on '57 and '62 replicas of certain models. Based comparisons of the pickguard, finish, body shape, etc., it appears to have been a replica of the '62 P-bass.
Thus, it turns out that instead of being just another cheap alternative, my primary bass is actually an authorized vintage replica, and that my jestingly billing it as an '83 bass is actually on the mark. Thing really is as old as I am.
My second bass, which is at home right now is a Fender P-Bass Special 5 (similar model pictured to the left, as I don't have a picture on hand and it's not here to take one). I bought this bass new in 2000 with just about all the money I had when I turned 17, so other than sentimental value it's not really worth much of anything.
Third guitar is one that is kind of on indefinite loan from the church since I'm the only one that plays bass there and nobody uses it. Gibson basses are kind of rare, been wanting an EB-0 for a while. While this one is not technically an EB-0 (as all of said model were in the classic cherry red finish), the serial number on the back of the headstock matches the range Gibson states it stamped in 1962. Trying to find more information on vintage Gibson basses to further verify that it's an actual Gibson bass, though everything I've been able to check so far indicates it as genuine except perhaps the fact that there's only two knobs on it (but then, there's only one pickup and thus no logical reason for four knobs anyway).