1971 Tele Bass - or is it?

[labougie]

I'm looking at a '71 southpaw Tele bass. It has the date stamp 23 10 71 on the neck heel, and the serial number (345xxx) on the neck plate ties in, but the body is weird. It's been very badly refinished in black (about 1mm thick and with severe cracking) but it's the pickups I don't get. Instead of the humbucker you'd expect, it has a single coil 4-pole. The rout for this pickup looks like a factory rout. I say this because in one of the pics (at www.sonicidentity.com/) you can see where at some stage, someone's put in a Jazz pickup just below the existing one and then removed it, filling the hole. This filled Jazz rout has clearly come through the finish. If the original humbucker rout had been similarly filled then routed out again for this single-coil pickup, you'd expect that fill to have come through the finish as well, which it hasn't.

I don't know much about Fenders - has anyone got any ideas on what I'm looking at? Thanks, guys.

 

[pohorsky]

This makes it easier for us, and by the way, welcome

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[pohorsky]

it's the pickups I don't get. Instead of the humbucker you'd expect, it has a single coil 4-pole. The rout for this pickup looks like a factory rout.

I don't know much about Fenders - has anyone got any ideas on what I'm looking at? Thanks, guys.

That's the way it first came out, as a retro 51 p bass, like this one.
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(link removed) some more pics the same bass

 

[Dave W]

The 1968-71 Tele Bass had the same 4 pole single coil pickup as the original Precision Bass, like the example in pohorsky's post. The second version with the big neck humbucker wasn't introduced until 1972.

 

[labougie]

Great stuff! Thanks everyone. My assumption from all this is that since my customer wants to sell it, I'd be best off stripping the (unoriginal) black finish and leaving it bare wood so that a prospective buyer could (a) see what he was getting and (b) re-finish to his/her own specs. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[Knobby]

it's the pickups I don't get. Instead of the humbucker you'd expect, it has a single coil 4-pole. The rout for this pickup looks like a factory rout.

I don't know much about Fenders - has anyone got any ideas on what I'm looking at? Thanks, guys.

That's the way it first came out, as a retro 51 p bass, like this one.
image removed
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(link removed) some more pics the same bass

That one looks just like mine, which is a Sept '68.