Vintage 1970s Fender USA Musicmaster Bullet Bass Tuners    US $61.00

VINTAGE 1959 FENDER MUSICMASTER GUITAR    US $395.00

1965 Fender Musicmaster olympic white birdseye maple    US $795.00

FENDER MUSTANG MUSICMASTER GUITAR CONTROL PLATE KNOBS    US $16.51

1978 Fender Musicmaster with bag    US $550.00

Vintage 1975 Fender USA Musicmaster Bass Tuners    US $2.25

Vintage KLUSON TUNERS for FENDER DUO SONIC MUSICMASTER    US $199.99

1969 FENDER MUSICMASTER DUO SONIC PICKGUARD    US $225.00

Dou Sonic Musicmaster Fender Bass Body    US $95.00

Vintage Kluson tuners for Fender Music Master 1964 65    US $229.00

Fender MusicMaster Vintage Electric Guitar

The Fender MusicMaster Electric Guitar was considered a beginner’s guitar and had a fairly basic design. It was the first of Fender’s ¾ scale guitars and had a single pickup. It is considered to have an easily playable neck and comfortable body size, which is part of the reason it was so popular with students.

The Musicmaster was introduced in 1956 and it had a single-piece neck and fingerboard made of maple, a 22.5 inch scale, 21 frets and an anodized gold aluminium pickguard. There was no tremolo arm on the instrument and it was finished in a creamy color known as ‘Desert Sand’.

In 1959 the Musicmaster was overhauled to replace the single-piece neck with a two-piece maple neck and rosewood fingerboard and the pickguard was substituted for a plastic one. This second version offered three finishes to the guitar in the following shades: tan, shaded sunburst and white.

In 1964, the Musicmaster was redesigned again and reissued under the title ‘Musicmaster II’, this time it was styled to look more like the Fender Mustang with a larger and slight offset body and the volume/tone controls were mounted on a separate metal plate. These were available in vibrant blue, white or red. Unfortunately during this time, production of these guitars greatly increased, which adversely affected their quality. At this time the Musicmaster II model was offered in a choice of 22.5" or 24" (full-size) scale length neck, the most popular Musicmaster model proving to be the 24” neck.

The Musicmaster provides a lovely sound when playing Blues but it also has a special edge when it comes to grunge music so it enjoyed a mini-comeback in the grunge era of the early nineties. It sounds great unplugged and it has a nicely compressed tone when played loudly through distortion.

Although it had a very basic design some professional musicians have been seen playing it, including Jimi Hendrix; possibly just for a bit of fun, but maybe because of its simple-to-play design.

Production of the Musicmaster stopped in 1982 having gone through an evolution period of five different designs. Pre-1980s Musicmasters are now considered to be vintage Fender models and as such can be quite valuable. However, there were a selection of these guitars produced between 1978 and 1980 that had a design fault where the lacquer finishing reacted badly with the base coat underneath, meaning many of the Musicmaster guitars from this period are now subjected to the paint flaking off the body.