Dating fender bass serial number

Body stamp dates were used by Fender from the early 1950's to the mid 1960's and then stopped until the 1980's where they started again sporadically to this day, sometimes you see them and sometimes you don't.Potentiometer codes are pretty reliable for dating, usually indicating the year and week it was made.Since several models can share one chassis type (for example, the early brown 5G7 Bandmaster, 5G5 Pro and 5G12 Concert), this kind of interpretation is inaccurate.

Later in 1976 Fender moved the serial number to the headstock just below the logo.Some things are very obvious such as non-original or reconed speakers, non-original transformers, replaced pots, re-tweed, re-tolex, re-grill, etc.and these changes are often disclosed and of a non-malicious nature.One exception is that most Fender pots from 1966 to 1969 are dated to 1966.Pickups were only date stamped from 1964 to about 1979 but can be really useful in helping pin down the year.