#1976 fender musicmaster guitar plus#
#1976 fender musicmaster guitar series#

Lastly, you can also check out the Blackstar Acoustic Core. But again, it only has one channel, so it’s not the best for singer-songwriters. It’s a small, battery-powered acoustic amp that is also great for practicing at home or playing live. On the other hand, it only has one channel, so if you want to play and sing at the same time, you won’t be able to do it.Īnother option is the Blackstar FLY 3. It’s a bit cheaper and it still quite powerful, so it should work really well as a practice amp.

#1976 fender musicmaster guitar series#

The more recent Squier Musicmaster and Bronco necks are also of the later chunky shape unfortunately.If you think that the Acoustasonic is not a right fit for you and you’re trying to find something more affordable, don’t worry – there’s a few more affordable options out there.įirstly, you should consider getting the Fender Acoustasonic 15 – it’s a smaller version from the same series of amps. I do greatly prefer the slimmer 1976 and earlier Musicmaster Bass necks to the much chunkier 1977 to 1982 necks.

The bass has round-wound strings on it, but those may also be switched to flatwounds - as I find that combination to sound particularly good on Musicmaster basses! I may swap out the pickup for a reissue vintage Strat or Mustang pickup eventually, as these are much closer to the Mustang/Musicmaster guitar pickups that were used in original Musicmaster basses (yes - there are 6 polepieces under the plastic cover for ALL those Musicmaster basses!). The pickup is a bit different from the original pickup in that it has a bar magnet across the bottom of the pole-pieces (as is typical of many Fender Squier pickups) as opposed to just having magnetic polepieces. The bridge is a recent Bronco Bass bridge, as is the pickup - with rest of the parts (neckplate, knobs, strap-buttons) being standard reissue hardware. Those are Strat knobs on the controls in this picture - I replaced them with the proper Jazz Bass style knobs. I made the pickguard using an old hacked up Musicmaster Bass pickguard as a pattern, though I later realized I could have bought one from WD Music Products pretty cheaply. The neck was a straight-forward refret, using Fender's current 'medium' guitar fretwire as opposed to the 'jumbo' fretwire used on Fender's full-size basses from 1966 on. If anybody has some details on this, please let me know or post a comment ! I'm not sure what was used to finish 1965 through 1970 Mustangs and Musicmasters - but my 1966 Mustang Bass does not appear to have a topcoat on it and the color is a bit different from Dakota Red. These colors also did not have clear coats applied over them, so they do age slightly differently than typical Fender finishes - with more darkening and less yellowing.

I believe that at least from 1970 on, these were fairly thin polyurethane finishes as opposed to acrylic and nitro lacquer finishes - so it may be that the red and blue were 'offset' colors formulated in a different base. This family of instruments had their own formulations of blue and red - with the blue being a slightly darker and greyer variation on Daphne Blue and the red being a slightly darker version of Dakota Red.

I decided NOT to do a clear coat over the color coat, in keeping with the style of original Musicmaster Bass finishes - though I will point out that Daphne Blue is not a 'correct' color for Musicmaster (or Mustang) basses or guitars. I eventually tracked down a 1971 Musicmaster neck that had been defretted and a set of the fairly unique early Musicmaster Bass tuners.Īs is often the case - the large body plugs I had glued in when I repaired the body were showing their seam marks, so I ended up sanding the front and back faces of the body flat again and spraying a few more coats of Daphne Blue. The initial stages of rebuilding and refinishing the body are covered in this post.

#1976 fender musicmaster guitar plus#

The body was a cheap ebay purchase - I think I paid $15 for it plus shipping. I started off with an early 70s poplar Fender Musicmaster Bass body that had been mercilessly routed for different pickups and then apparently broken in half and badly reglued together. Here's a long overdue follow-up on a post from a few years ago.