Fender Musicmaster

The Fender Musicmaster was a single pickup companion to the Fender Duosonic. It actually was shipped to stores a few months before the Duo-sonic back in 1956. Word has it that the reason for this was a shortage of pickups and, as a single pickup model, more units of the Musicmaster could be shipped in time for the Christmas  buying season. This guitar, along with the Duosonic, was the first guitar of Fender’s student guitar line.

In these years, the body style and other appointments were the same as the Duosonic with the exception of the single pickup based electronics. The body rout on the original Musicmaster would allow it to be converted to a Duosonic if one replaced the pickguard and electronics. This was somewhat like how an Esquire could be converted to a Telecaster with a simple upgrade.

Unlike the Esquire, Fender’s other single pickup model, the Fender Musicmaster had its one single coil pickup in the neck to middle position. This position was kind of limited tonally as you might expect. It lacks the spank of the bridge pickup and the tonality of a neck pickup making it a bit of a compromise.

As with the Duosonic, the Musicmaster originally was equipped with a 22.5 inch scale length neck with 21 frets and a 1 5/8 inch nut. Early models that were made between 1956 to 1959 had a truss rod skunk stripe of walnut down the back of the neck. The neck profile was the standard Fender ‘V’ profile and, as is the case with other Fender guitars of this era, it varied between a soft and hard ‘V’.

Changes to the Musicmaster over the years followed the changes to the Duosonic, both in color and fretboard wood.

In 1964 the Musicmaster II was introduced at the same time as the Duo-Sonic II and Mustang. The red, white and blue colors and the 24 inch scale length along with a restyling of the body were introduced at this time. In 1969, the Duosonic was discontinued. However, the Musicmaster continued to be listed in the Fender product catalog, in both 22.5 inch scale and 24 inch scale models until 1982. Availability of this guitar was limited and it only saw a few actual production runs between 1969 and 1982.

The Musicmaster hasn’t yet been reissued as a direct copy of the vintage guitar. However, a guitar by this name was released in the late 1990’s in the Squier Vista series. This guitar featured a single, splitable, bridge humbucker and it did not have tone control.

Related posts:

1. Fender Swinger The Fender Swinger was a limited run short scale guitar made in 1969 when then CBS run corporate management came up with the idea of using their existing parts inventory to build a guitar. The idea was to combine the guitar bodies left over from the failed Fender Bass...
2. Fender Mustang The Fender Mustang was introduced in 1964 as part of a redesign of Fender’s student guitar line. The basic idea was to add in things like a tremolo bridge and advanced pickup switching to the revamped Musicmaster and Duo-Sonic. The Mustang was perhaps the most successful of this line,...
3. Fender Duosonic II The Duosonic II was released by Fender in August of 1964, during the transitional period where the company was changing hands from Leo Fender to the CBS corporation. It was a companion to the new Mustang model that was released at the same time. The intention was the the...
4. Fender Duosonic The Fender DuoSonic guitar, sometimes spelled with a dash as in Duo-Sonic, was introduced in 1956 as a student guitar. Leo Fender realized that the price of the Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars were too expensive for many new guitarists. Also, the 25.5 inch scale neck was too large for small...
5. Pre-CBS Fender Duosonic The period between the time Leo Fender started the Fender Electric Instrument Company around 1948 and the company’s sale to CBS in 1964 is known as the ‘pre-CBS’ period. The original Fender Duosonic was introduced during this time period, in the summer of 1956. Fender guitars made during this...