Mondo fake?

[Telemachos]

This??

[Jazz P Bass]

It looks 'old' enough.

[Justin Thomas]

Was that signed/dated with a black magic marker? Never seen THAT in an old Fender before... pencil, yeah! Pen, on occasion... my two cents...

Justin

[David Schwab]

What fine point felt tip markers did they even have black then? I guess a Flair pen?

The problem with that pickup is it looks too old.

[jason lollar]

string wrap looks too thick and I have never seen one use anything but masking tape over the magnets that I can remember nor do I remember black marking pen like that but on the other hand I dont remember alot of things unless I write it down

[Mark Hammer]

I'll accept the very real possibility of someone trying to pass off something as something else. But I will also note that a great deal of time has passed between 1968 and the present, with a substantial chunk of that interval being years when we didn't know what "vintage" was, or thought that it had to be pre-1960 to be vintage. For all we know, the magic marker was added on top of hard-to-see pencil by someone in 1979, who didn't think it mattered all that much because it was from a "2nd hand" or not-so-new guitar. Same with the string.

In 1976, my cousin gave me his '64 Epi Coronet. Because I didn't think of it as "vintage", I took the pickups off (gave the P90 to musician Marshall Crenshaw, who also played a Coronet), swapped the wraparound for a Leo Quan, did a bad fret job myself, and painted the damn thing over top the cherry red (but chipped) finish. Had he given me the guitar 10 years later, I would have treated it entirely differently, and maybe it would look like it was worth the $1500 they ask for these things nowadays. In 1976 I also bought a 1959 Princeton in a pawnshop, tossed the Jensen it came with, replaced it with an 8" JBL, and screwed a flange connector on the top for mounting a gooseneck to hold a mic in front of the speaker.

SOME vintage stuff has been kept in pristine condition by folks who knew what it was and respected it, and some has been the proverbial grampa's attic stuff that was left untouched because no one knew it was there. But some of it has also been manhandled and defaced by folks like me who didn't know any better. I think if someone wants to charge top dollar for it simply because it's old, then it is incumbent on them to respect and preserve its authenticity. But none of that means the pickup can't be what the seller claims.

Whether it is a fair price, in euros, is something I can't tell.

[David Schwab]

In 1976, my cousin gave me his '64 Epi Coronet. Because I didn't think of it as "vintage", I took the pickups off (gave the P90 to musician Marshall Crenshaw, who also played a Coronet)

Here's a thumbs up for Crenshaw

swapped the wraparound for a Leo Quan, did a bad fret job myself, and painted the damn thing over top the cherry red (but chipped) finish. Had he given me the guitar 10 years later, I would have treated it entirely differently, and maybe it would look like it was worth the $1500 they ask for these things nowadays. In 1976 I also bought a 1959 Princeton in a pawnshop, tossed the Jensen it came with, replaced it with an 8" JBL, and screwed a flange connector on the top for mounting a gooseneck to hold a mic in front of the speaker.

Yeah, we have all done stuff like that, because they were used guitars, not vintage guitars.

Here's my used '74 P bass as it looks today (or as it looked in July 1996 anyway. It's a bit beat up today)



I have a '59 Jazzmaster, that while it's not in the best of shape, the pickups don't look like they were sitting in an old coffee can under a drain spout of an old barn like that Tele pickup does. They were also both dead, but otherwise look fine. I think I've lost them over the years, as the guitar is in pieces, but I plan on restoring it this summer.

[jason lollar]

Right it doesnt mean its fake if the string wrap is different or the tape on the bottom or the other details - it could just have been fussed with or repaired. I would hope people repairing a vintage pickup like that would re-use the original string wrap and use original looking materials now but if it was done some time ago no one really cared much about it. The value of old Fender amps and guitars just wasnt that much

[Mark Hammer]

Wait, you turned your Fender...into....a...Tokai? What the hell were you smoking, and does it add new meanng to the phrase "Powerpuff Girl"?!

[David Schwab]

Wait, you turned your Fender...into....a...Tokai? What the hell were you smoking, and does it add new meanng to the phrase "Powerpuff Girl"?!
[ATTACH=CONFIG]22510[/ATTACH]

Only I did it first! The Talbo came out in '82. I modded my bass in 1980.

This photo is from '81. Here it has the original neck, of which I spliced on a new headstock. The bass had already been refinished. Now it was fuchsia, having previously been day-glo pink! Hey, it was the 80s! The original neck was bad, and it wasn't a very good P bass to start with. The new neck made the bass sound much better, even with only four strings on it.



The Musicman Albert Lee also has a similar look, because it's what's left over after you remove wood from a Fender body shape.

[Leo_Gnardo]

felt tip finepoint markers

As I recall ski champ Jean-Claude Killy was hawking the Spree (fine tip felt pen) in USA TV ads way back then. He was a major participant in the 68 Olympics so I wouldn't rule out the use of that sort of item @ 1968.

[David Schwab]

As I recall ski champ Jean-Claude Killy was hawking the Spree (fine tip felt pen) in USA TV ads way back then. He was a major participant in the 68 Olympics so I wouldn't rule out the use of that sort of item @ 1968.

Wow, I actually have a distant memory of that! I was a big fan of the Flair pen when they came out.

I also remember Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo. Probably my favorite cartoon at the time.

[Leo_Gnardo]

<Wow, I actually have a distant memory of that! I was a big fan of the Flair pen when they came out.>

I was going to high school just up the road apiece (West Orange) from your present location. It was a bit of a controversy to allow students to hand in their work written in Flair or Spree. Only the coolest kids, you know how it is, had the trendy pens. But teachers took to the red ones immediately.

<I also remember Clyde Crashcup and Leonardo. Probably my favorite cartoon at the time.>

That ... was me. I have since given up trying to save the day for the various Clyde Crashcups in my life, and getting rarely any credit for it. Put the G back in my name too. The TV execs didn't like it back then, it was "nonconformist." Now it's gnarly.

[Possum]

I have seen alot of vintage Tele bridge pickups with fat string like that, you only need to cruise Ebay to see different examples of vintage pickups from different years. Unfortunately there is no reference guide of what happened when. There are counterfeiters in Europe though, you do have to be careful, the lack of good hi-res photos and the marker writing is hmmmmm. The fact that the stagger is so uneven points to it being real. They did have markers back then, one of my interests is cartooning, and felt markers were being used in '68 by syndicate cartoonists. A quick look on the web says felt tip pens happened in '62, but they had thick felt markers going way back before that.

[David Schwab]

I was going to high school just up the road apiece (West Orange) from your present location.

I grew up in Orange, on the border of West Orange, down the street from the Edison museum. I had friends that went to school in WO. Wonder if he have any mutual friends from back then? Now I'm on the edge of East Orange and right down the road from my old neighborhood. Kind of funny how that worked out. I can walk down the street and point at buildings and lots and say "used to play in a club here, used to date a girl there..."

I had an orange Flair I liked, but didn't bring it to school. Just the black ones. I don't know if they changed it, but if you got the black ink wet, it separated into magenta and cyan!

When my son was little, he was watching reruns of the Alvin Show. I hadn't seen it in years, because they had the newer version in the 80s and all. So it was on a Crashcup segment, and I realized I knew the lines word for word! Until that moment I had forgotten how much I liked that cartoon when I was little.