The Musicmaster bass, the other short-scale

Kim Gordon from Sonic Youth playing a Musicmaster bass

Fender short scales are exceptions in Fender's culture. It used to be typical for Danelectro, Höfner or Gibson basses, but rarer for Fender. In 1964 the Mustang bass had been released, a kind of reduced P-bass for student, soon adopted by short-scale amateurs like Bill Wyman from the Rolling Stones.

The Mustang was joined soon by her little sister the Musicmaster around 1970 (its birthdate is not really clear since few information are available on the subject...). They both share some common characteristics :

• the same body shape (except that the Musicmaster is not contoured for the right arm neither stomach)
• a 30" neck

The Musicmaster was slightly redesigned in 1976, adopting clover leaf tuners, the 70's large logo of Fender and sold in two tones : white and black.From1970 to 1975, the Musicmaster was equipped with cheap heart-shaped tuners

This headstock must be transitional since it still has the former logo and new clover leaf tuners

The pickup is a guitar modified single coil, the E poles were lowered and the round wound wire reinforced. It is obviously the cheapest pickup CBS could have done to lower the cost of this new student bass. Exit the split-up pickup, welcome hum noise and unadequate pole pieces ! Thinking of it, Leo Fender had improved the jazz bass single coils by doubling the pole pieces...

The white color tends to turn into a yellow mustard tone. The pickguard for the black model is black. It is really hard to say exactly when the Musicmaster was withdrawn from the catalog. It seems that the last models were sold in 1981, keeping the serial number from the late 70's in S8XXX. I've never seen any model with a serial number in EXXX. Some web sites pretend that the last Musicmasters were sold in 1983. It is possible some old stocks were remaining but production had been stopped long before.

This Musicmaster is from the second period with its yellowish color and the clover tuners

The Musicmaster was resurrected in 1997 with the Squier Vista Series and in 2003 under the name of Bronco. The Vista has a painted headstock and a rosewood fingreboard. The Bronco is much cheaper, the tuners are poor, the neck has a maple fingerboard, it exists in red or black. In 2005, Squier released the Hello kitty series, with a manga design.

The Vista Series is a good reissue serie with a touch of glamour !

The model doesn't exist, it is a modified Squier Bronco with a Fender logo
Aiming teenage girls, the Badtz Maru model is a very affordable bass, cheap and stylish !

[Update 05-03-23] The Bronco is definitely a long seller under the Squier brand. A revamped Bronco bass has been released recently under the "Sonic" series with different colors (coral and white with a mapple neck, black with Indian laurel neck) and better tuners