This Jazz Bass was made in February 1964 and it features a Tangerine Sparkle metal flake finish sunburst with a matching headstock. Besides that, it has a maple neck, an alder body, a green nitrate pickguard and a nicely figured rosewood fretboard with clay knots. In other words, all the earlier desirable pre-CBS features are included, plus a one-of-a-kind finish.
It has a very thin ‘A’ neck, and everything on the inside is perfect. We had to do a refret when we got it because it did not play particularly well with the frets that were on there. They were not the originals, so we redid it properly and it plays wonderfully now. In fact, I would say it’s one of the best basses of any kind we’ve ever had in the shop – and whenever a really good bassist comes in, it’s the one we give [customers] for testing bass amplifiers.
The neck plays really evenly all the way down, and there are some particularly good pickups on this one. They’re very well balanced and they have a true ring to them. The neck pickup cover is a vintage-style replacement, but when I find an original, I’ll put it on.
I don’t really have much history on this bass. I didn’t get it from anybody famous and I acquired it when stuff like this was very inexpensive. I bought it out on the West Coast from a friend of mine maybe 15 years ago and it came in its original white case.
The playability is amazing. I mean, sometimes you just know when an instrument is ‘The One’ the second you pick it up. You can often tell from the weight or the balance, and every aspect of this bass has that quality. Judging by the condition of the paintwork, whoever owned it obviously felt the same way because it has been played and played and played. The finish is especially worn on the back and a lot of wood has been exposed.
Popular folklore says that Fender used hot-rod and car body shops for sparkle finishes, and I’m sure they did. I think Fender just asked sprayers for a rate for painting bodies and if one said they’d be able to do it for $20 and somebody else was $18, they would give the job to the cheaper guy.
Fender was using a Binks Model 7 spray gun with a suction cup, but the pressure was insufficient to pull up larger metal flakes. The hot-rod shops used gravity-fed paint guns and Fender didn’t get those until 1966.
If forced to guess, I would say Dennis Swiden sprayed this finish because he had access to paint with very heavy and large metal flakes and he also owned the specialist equipment needed to spray it. Dennis did spray cars, but he was more of a furniture painter who worked out of his parents’ shop.
He was friends with some people at Fender and he used to come to the factory – often parking in George Fullerton’s spot – and load up the trunk of his car with bodies.
After he had sprayed them with sparkle finishes, Dennis would then bring the bodies back to Fender for assembly. Dennis’s style was different and he had a very definite way of doing things that became very popular among surf-rockers and Bakersfield country players.
The sunburst on the headstock is particularly unusual, and that provides another clue that this is a Dennis paint job. I had an Aqua Mist Jazzmaster from ’59 that had a matching headstock just like it but in aqua and green. Back then, Dennis was the only one who was doing anything like that because matching headstocks weren’t even a thing on Fenders until early 1962. The headstocks on this bass and the Jazzmaster were painted in exactly the same way.
In pictures it looks like there’s a grey primer coat, but it’s actually silver metallic. The middle is gold, but I have a feeling it could have been silver and turned gold as the clear lacquer aged. And the sunburst was created with red sprayed around the edges.
The red could have been transparent or metallic and it looks amazing. Either way, I’ve never seen anything quite like that. I’ve kept this bass for a long time and I’m probably asking too much for it. Maybe I’ll come down eventually, but it’s the only one there is, so I’m not rushing to sell it.
- Vintage guitar veteran David Davidson owns Well Strung Guitars in Farmingdale, New York / 001 (516) 221-0563
- This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.
