Surprises found in a 1956 Fender Esquire

me [Applause] [Music] now [Music] hey everyone welcome back and thank you so much for being here today should be fun because i've got this really cool old fender guitar here this is a 1956 fender esquire and it sounds incredible if you want to hear it i did a full length video review on my youtube channel last week you can check it out but today i actually want to open this guitar up and take a look inside try to authenticate all the components and hopefully narrow down exactly when this guitar was made because in the 1950s the fender workers would hand write the date inside of the bodies and the necks but they would also write other things like their initials or their name so you never know what surprises you might find in these old guitars and we can also take a look at the pot date codes and some of the details on the electronics as well but i should say i don't just go around taking apart old fender guitars this one is actually a player grade guitar and it has been taken apart many times before i'm sure so we'll get into that later on in the video but i'm going to set up a little workbench here and we'll take a look inside this old fender and see what surprises we may find all right let's get to it i'm going to go ahead and cut these strings off they're pretty much dead anyways let's go ahead and remove the neck first on this guitar take a look at the neck date there were a couple of fender workers that would sign the necks during the early to mid 50s most famously tedeo gomez tg here's the original neck plate with serial number ten thousand seven seventy one on the back of the neck here we have the uh router pinhole which is a clear sign this is a vintage neck and you've got a little bit of checking going on in the original finish if it'll show up here on video and your four mounting holes with the kind of circular indentions around the outside it's again something to do with the machines they used or how these holes were drilled and then we have a number two circled no idea what that means i don't know that anyone does but i've seen it on a number of guitars around this period a little bit of flame on the neck there and then i'll have to show you guys the neck date so let's take a look at the butt of the neck here and we will find the original neck date which is january 2nd of 1956 right after the new year but typically you do not see the date written down to the day it might just be january 56 so that's a little unusual and kind of cool that this was you know this is about as early 56 as it gets uh unfortunately there's no signature here so we do not know if this is a tg or xa neck potentially which might add some value but really it doesn't matter this is a really nice original finished neck and you can see that this is all legit original tuners and the esquire logo which is so cool you don't often see these esquires so let's take a look at uh what's underneath the pick guard here i've got something to show you guys there okay so this is the original pickguard it does have some play wear to it you can kind of tell it does have a shiny back which is accurate for this time period all right now you can see underneath the pick guard here and i'll zoom in a little bit for you guys so even though this is a fender esquire a single pickup guitar all of the guitars were routed for neck pickups as you see here and in fact this guitar has had a neck pickup in it at some point as you can see the mounting holes here in the route uh it's not really a huge deal it's really non-invasive mod if you were to do so it's something that i've thought about with this guitar and now that that's already been done it's guilt free but also um i bought this guitar with the understanding that there was a repaired humbucker route in the neck position here and that's why i was able to pick up something like this because when you get into you know routed repaired modified and finished work guitars you you know get a heavy discount for that however looking at this right now it's nearly impossible to see the repair or to find where the work was done uh i don't know i may have to go in here and really look and and try to find it but whoever did this it's an incredible job uh it looks it looks legit you've got your router circular router marks in here um and then we've got the neck pocket with original finish still intact and there's something written here in the neck pocket i do not know what it is maybe we can take a closer look and see so i can't really tell what that says to be exact but the original finish is intact and this is just something written in pencil there a lot of times you will see esq for esquire or they will write esquire or blonde or something like that underneath the pickguard area but i'm not sure what that says but it's all original and it's nice to have let's take a look here at the control cavity see what's going on so these knobs are 56 or earlier with the round tops like this original switch and on the back side here we've got our three-way switch original pots and then we've got this crazy esquire capacitor setup but let's take a look at these pots and see if we can find the date code all right so the dates on both matching pots are 137 6 which designates 1956 and then zero seven which is the seventh week of 56 so that puts it in february of 56 which corresponds to the neck date as well so that's good to have and inside of here you'll see the original finish again in the cavity and which is really untouched and that's always a good sign as well so now we'll move on to this bridge pickup we'll get a reading on it see what it's reading at there should be a body date and we'll see what other surprises may be in there these are really tight quarters in here the way they built these guitars so this is the original fender patent-pending bridge as you will see there and uh this pickup is uh early 56 but still it is late enough that it has the staggered pole pieces there in the middle i wish it was a flat pole pickup i think that ended in 55 but still a great sounding pickup all right so someone added a ground wire as you see here and we have a body date which is nice with the original finish so january looks like to me january of 56 on the body and that's best case scenario with these old guitars you know january body january neck february pots everything here is is really lining up now on the back of this pickup i don't think i have ever seen this before on a fender guitar but sometimes there will be a piece of tape on these pickups and they'll be dated or whatever this one has handwritten esquire on the back i have never ever seen that before on an esquire and it really begs the question why why is that because um these pickups are supposed to be exactly the same as what was in a telecaster so why would they designate this pickup for an esquire i have no idea definitely raises some questions and i have never seen it before maybe my you know vintage expert friends out there can reach out or chime in in the comment section but you can see the uh original wire original solder this pickup has never been taken apart or messed with so it's it's all legit and original to see that written on the back yeah really really cool this is what i love finding in these old guitars so let me get my multimeter here and we'll get a reading on this pickup 6.0 so it's not a super high reading you know i guess some of these pickups can be 6 to 7k range but this one reads 6k and honestly it's one of the greatest sounding esquire pickups i have ever come across so there you have it that's inside of a 1956 fender esquire and definitely definitely some surprises in there um glad to see all the dates uh that correspond with each other and original finish in there and then the bonus on top this esquire note right here never seen it before yeah if you guys have ever seen that let me know because that's that's a really cool little detail uh simple detail that you know i enjoy finding in these old guitars [Music] alright guys i just want to say thank you so much for watching today and if you want to support me and what i do here on youtube the best thing you can do is just like comment and subscribe to the youtube channel and that really helps me continue doing what i love every day which is uh playing these old guitars and trying to tell their stories through these youtube videos and hopefully making some music as well along the way but uh again thank you guys so much for all your support over the years and i'll see you guys in the next episode peace

Channel: Matthew Scott

Views: 132,673

Keywords: norman's rare guitars, fender stratocaster, stevie ray Vaughan, joe bonamassa, john mayer, philip sayce, music is win, paul Davids, jared Nichols, robert baker, Jimi hendrix, Chris stapleton, Darrell braum, Rhett schull, Rick beato, mateus asato, Marty music, Cobain, John frusciante, Eric Clapton, eric Johnson, rich robinson, trogly, tom bukovac, jimmy page, fender vibratone, 1954 Stratocaster, Gibson Les Paul Junior, Melody Maker, 1956 fender esquire, Les Paul junior

Id: dIdIZInCzf0

Length: 11min 15sec (675 seconds)

Published: Thu May 05 2022