1955 Fender Tele Bass *The Real Deal*

[oipunkguy]

[oipunkguy]

the inside of the control cavity it's marked October 55

[Sarah93003]

How cool is that!

[oipunkguy]

well i took this bass home tonight and tried it out. it was just as fun to play as it is to look at. one interesting note: the tuners work in reverse to tune up the strings. in other words you turn the tuning key clockwise to tune up, instead of counter clockwise.
also i'm going have pull out a few frets that won't press back down. I plan on rebarbing the bottom of the frets, but also I will fill in the old fret slot with cyanoacrylate (super glue) then once it's dry reslot it with my saw and push the fret back in. I really don't want to take off anything original on this bass if I can help it.
I'll probably also age the pickguard screws at some point just so it looks more correct.

[oipunkguy]

last night I worked on this bass a little more, and found a few things that was cool, and others that was disappointing. first off the disappointing part. I took off the pickguard to find a "WD" sticker on the bottom of it, so obviously it's not original. I also took out the pickup and it was dated 68, so the pickup wouldn't be original either, even though it has a fair share of age to it. the first fret had been replaced in it's lifetime as well, a much thicker fret then the rest on the neck.
the neck was also hand written 10-55. after examining the neck pocket, I'm 99% sure that the original finish on this old gal was a sunburst.

[oigun]

Hey Aaron, if you have any questions regarding the bass project drop a line to Gil Yaron (preeb at tdpri).
He is an absulute expert in vintage pre cbs fenders and it is a nice guy. I'm sure he is dying to get specs of that bass.
http://gilyaronguitars.com/

[michaelhigh]

I gotta question: Not to belitttle the effort here, but is there any way to get prints without the annoying yellow date code on them? I collect cool photos like these in my slide show but I pass on pics with distracting print or even people posing... These pics are worth keeping but for the yellow numbers. Thank you for the history depicted in the shots, I do surely appreciate vintage basses as a bassist like myself would.

[Veenture]

I pass on pics with distracting print or even people posing... These pics are worth keeping but for the yellow numbers.

For me it would be a piece of cake removing the yellow date numbers in my Microsoft "Paint" application, if I wanted to save the pics.