Defined by its gold anodized pickguard and split-coil pickup, the 1957 to 1959 Fender Precision Bass marked the start of the modern electric bass. Here’s a full breakdown of specs, authenticity markers, and market values, year by year.
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The 1968 Gibson ES-335 marks the final year of Gibson’s one-piece mahogany neck and long tenon joint, the last of the Kalamazoo-era semi-hollows before the construction changes of 1969. This guide covers finish rarity, hardware authentication, pot code dating, and current market values for collectors and sellers.
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The ES-125 spent nearly 30 years as Gibson’s quiet workhorse: affordable, versatile, and loaded with P-90 character. Here’s everything you need to know to buy, date, and identify one.
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An original 1968 or 1969 Fender Pink Paisley Telecaster takes some careful checking to authenticate. This guide covers the Cling-Foil finish chemistry, neck dating, CBS-era hardware, and the “puzzle piece” test every serious buyer needs to know.
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The dot-neck Gibson ES-330 is one of the more misunderstood guitars of Gibson’s golden era. Fully hollow, dogear P-90 equipped, and joining the body at the 16th fret (not the 17th, not the 19th), it’s a very different instrument from the ES-335 it’s so often compared to. This guide covers every specification of the 1959 to 1962 dot-neck era in detail: neck profiles by year, knob changes, saddle materials, serial numbers, FON dating, cases, pickguard construction, vibrato variants, and the other details that separate an original example from a modified one, and a 1959 from a 1962.
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The Fender Jazzmaster changed more times in its first 14 years than almost any other model in the Fender lineup. This guide documents every spec change year by year: gold guard to tortoiseshell, slab to veneer, clay dots to pearl to blocks, spaghetti to CBS black logo, Klusons to F-tuners, and a complete custom color reference with the correct pickguard pairing for every finish.
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The 1966 Gibson ES-335 is a pre-Norlin Kalamazoo instrument built to the same standard as the early 1960s examples: Patent Number humbuckers, ABR-1 bridge with nylon saddles, trapeze tailpiece, and tortoise side dots most buyers don’t know to look for. This guide walks through every authentication detail with close-up photos of a clean original, including a full set of intact case candy, one of the rarest things to find on a vintage Gibson.
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The 1962 Fender Stratocaster comes from the end of the pre-CBS golden age of Fullerton production: pre-CBS, pre-veneer on early examples, and built to a standard Fender rarely hit again. The main challenge in authenticating a 1962 is the mid-year slab-to-veneer rosewood transition, but there’s more to it: black-bottom pickups, pot codes, the puzzle-piece finish test, nail holes with bare wood inside, and a mint-green pickguard that only original celluloid produces. This guide covers every detail.
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