Thursday Lunch Report April 8, 2010

Thursday Lunch: I made my own lunch today, consisting of a roast beef sandwich and apple. Ice tea to wash it down again.

I am getting a lot of interruptions at work that are preventing me to be able to reply and post a lot of pictures. I hope you all understand. I'll do more tomorrow.

Fender bass prototypes: Do any exist?

I submitted a question to George Fullerton via Tim Page in 2004 about the existence of any Fender bass prototypes. George mentioned that as far as he knew, all of the prototype Fender basses were cut up. Leo had no use for something that he was finished using.
- But –
Bill Carson mentions in his book, that he often had to save historically important things that Leo was going to throw away. Carson, for instance, said that he rescued the pickup winder that Leo had used for the early K&F instruments from the trash can.

Bill Carson also mentions in his book that there were some old Fender instruments of historical significance that he kept in a storage area for years until they turned up missing in the early 60s. He mentioned some basses being among them.
He said that many of these stolen items emerged on the vintage market in the 80’s.
He did not elaborate or name anyone responsible in his book.

I point out this because a Music store called Larkstreet Music in Teaneck, N.J. has an old Precision bass that was supposedly owned by Freddie Tavares.

Here is a picture from their website:



Is it real or not?

It was a test bass for new ideas about finishes and maybe pickguard and finger rest design.
Could this bass be one of the early prototypes resurfacing?

Was this the first hint of the changed pickguard seen on the mid 1957 Precision bass?

Or is this just a modified Precision of no real historical importance?

Please comment

Here is another view of my 1984 SB-2. You can see the wear on the fingerboard if you look at frets 3 to 5.


-bassman

Without any corroborating evidence I couldn't say for certain if it is a prototype or not. I would say at best it is a production bass that Freddie messed about with. It looks like the blue is a refinish over red and the pick guard is odd. I would guess it is production bass that was used to experiment with the car colours when they first started using them and later had an experimental pickguard put on. Proto types which worked were not cut up they were given away.

I've had a look in a couple of books. I think that perhaps this is a prototype for what became the 'Telecaster Bass' which in effect was a reissue of the first style of P Bass. It would fit with the age of the neck and with the era when they were also experimenting with car colours. To me it seems far more likely that this was something used in the creation of that reissue than in the creation of the original P bass.

Hmmm...not sure if it's a prototype, or just a hacked up P-Bass, but it's pretty cool looking.

That site is great. Lots of drool worthy stuff at Larkstreet!

Just to be clear- I have no affiliation with Larkstreet Music and it is only my own curiosity about this bass that got me to post it on today's report.

The bass has the features of an early 50's model because of its tuners, large string ferrels in the back of the body and the slot head screws holding the neck in place.
If you actually go to the store's website, you can see the picture in much better detail. I copied it an put it on my photobucket account just in case they took the picture down for any reason.

I have always wanted to see the some of the trail and error bass instruments that Leo, Freddie, George Fullerton, Dale Hyatt and Bill Carson must have used to arrive at their new innovations.

I think this bass is much older than any Telecaster bass prototype. I say this because of its features that I cited earlier.
I don't know if any provenance exists that puts this bass in the possesion of Freddie Tavares, but if that exists they must be asking a lot of $ for it.

-bassman

What's up with the finish?
I didn't notice to red before. Looks like 3 different shades of paint, blue, red and white (or is that Fullerplast??)

Strange!

Late post here. Lark Street is a nice store! It is owned by Duke Levine's http://www.dukelevine.com brother, Buzzy. I took the bus over from NYC one day when I was visiting back in December. Yes, lots of drool worthy acoustics and electrics. At the time he only had a couple G&L's, a Red Sparkle ASAT Semi-hollow and a Legacy, both USA.

Pat

How are you doing, Pat? - ed