The Fender Essentials: Vintage Instruments with Hardcore History

“Have Fenders, will travel!”

Way back in the dark days before the internet there was a VHS cassette tape titled “Get That Classic Fender Sound”. In it, host and Master of the Telecaster Jim Weider showed us what all those great old vintage Fender guitars and amps sound like. In the introduction to the Telecaster section, Jim remarked “if you don’t have a Telecaster, and you don’t have a toothbrush, you’re in trouble.”

Yes, those vintage guitars and amps were essential tools of the trade, and musicians often had one guitar that they put thousands of hours into. To us here at Scruff’s Vintage, such instruments that have lived a life and have stories to tell are our personal favorites.

Here are a few such examples of essential tools that spent a lifetime making music in smokey clubs, honky-tonks, juke joints and roadhouses. They’ve lived it the bellies of tour buses on icy winter tours, and hot summer outdoor stages. They’re more beautiful for all that wear and still sound absolutely magnificent.

The Fender Bassman is a 1955 model. At some point in time it was stripped off its (probably tattered) Tweed covering and painted black. That was actually kind of a thing to do in the 1960s when Fender updated their amplifier lineup to black vinyl “Tolex“ covering. Then, a beautiful-to-us now Tweed amp was just last year’s model, and so quite a few of them got “upgraded” to the new black look. Some were stripped of their Tweed covering first, some were just painted over. We here at Scruff’s are a bit obsessed with painted-black Tweeds and have a small collection of such amps. More about that collection at some other point.

Besides the paint, which is again very worn, this is easily one of the best “Tweed” Bassmans we’ve ever encountered. Everything you’ve ever heard about vintage Bassmans is in this amp. Stunning, detailed, resonant clean tones and blistering, searing, singing overdriven tones. Just as good as it gets.

As for the 1960 Esquire and 1953 Precision Bass, both have this impossible-to-recreate vintage patina that can only come from thousands of hours spent in smokey dive bars.

Interestingly, while the discoloration from tobacco smoke has become one with the finish, the smell has completely dissipated. They just smell like old wood. Which happens to be our favorite smell here at Scruff’s Vintage. Well, the smell of the beeswax potting in an old Vox AC30 transformer heating up might be better, but barely. Do you have a Vintage Fender guitar or bass you are interested in selling? Click here!