Post by Tony Ravenscroft on Mar 18, 2024 20:44:33 GMT -6
The Maverick/BT series was manufactured over a handful of factories, primarily Indonesia and likely China later and maybe Korea at the very beginning. Even in its earlier years, there were all sorts of little quirks and design shifts. As a result, some component (like a control cavity cover) isn't necessarily going to fit an "identical" guitar. 
Here, we'll look at two BT-2 that appeared at Goodwill Online in the same week.
This is a BT-2Q/TSB, abandoned partway into some amateur "mod."
We'll compare it with this well=played BT-2/CBL.
First, the neckplates. Common wisdom is that Washies of this era first had the "cast" plate with stamped s/n, then the shiny stamped plate with stamped s/n, then the shiny stamped plate with paper-tab s/n, then shiny blank plate with paper tab. That would make the TSB the elder.
And that is where the whole "common wisdom' thing begins to go awry - because, of course, it's Washburn.
Any reasonable person would guess the TSB's s/n indicates 2001, likely September. Problem is, I have a paper-tab BT-3 handy, and its s/n begins I811xxxx, which I'm confident is 1998. Here's the CBL, with an I-prefix but EIGHT numeric digits, and slightly defaced just to keep us interested.
This would make odd sense if the paper tabs came EARLIER in the run, so they simply went from I8 to I9 to I00 for year 2000.
And now that I pin it down, that looks more sensible... because I also know that later runs of Maverick went from unmarked 14:1 tuners to marked 18:1 tuners, and in some cases went from the big chunky fullsize Grovers (mounting tab at bottom) to the slightly smaller mid-size Grovers (mounting tab diagonal).
And, well, what do you know.
One data point that distracted me was the headstock fonts, particularly the trussrod covers (though the "Washburn" are dissimilar too). I associate the TSB's font with the pre-Mav "BillyT" branding. (Also, note a peeve of mine: Washburn didn't give a care about hyphens or consistency.
)
So, common wisdom revised! But, one more note before I park this particular hobbyhorse. An unmentioned touch that I enjoy from the Mavericks is the ever=so-subtle angling of the neck plate. It took YEARS for Fender to get around to this, and then they chickened out!
Here, we'll look at two BT-2 that appeared at Goodwill Online in the same week.
This is a BT-2Q/TSB, abandoned partway into some amateur "mod."
We'll compare it with this well=played BT-2/CBL.
First, the neckplates. Common wisdom is that Washies of this era first had the "cast" plate with stamped s/n, then the shiny stamped plate with stamped s/n, then the shiny stamped plate with paper-tab s/n, then shiny blank plate with paper tab. That would make the TSB the elder.
And that is where the whole "common wisdom' thing begins to go awry - because, of course, it's Washburn.
Any reasonable person would guess the TSB's s/n indicates 2001, likely September. Problem is, I have a paper-tab BT-3 handy, and its s/n begins I811xxxx, which I'm confident is 1998. Here's the CBL, with an I-prefix but EIGHT numeric digits, and slightly defaced just to keep us interested.
This would make odd sense if the paper tabs came EARLIER in the run, so they simply went from I8 to I9 to I00 for year 2000.
And now that I pin it down, that looks more sensible... because I also know that later runs of Maverick went from unmarked 14:1 tuners to marked 18:1 tuners, and in some cases went from the big chunky fullsize Grovers (mounting tab at bottom) to the slightly smaller mid-size Grovers (mounting tab diagonal).
And, well, what do you know.
One data point that distracted me was the headstock fonts, particularly the trussrod covers (though the "Washburn" are dissimilar too). I associate the TSB's font with the pre-Mav "BillyT" branding. (Also, note a peeve of mine: Washburn didn't give a care about hyphens or consistency.
)So, common wisdom revised! But, one more note before I park this particular hobbyhorse. An unmentioned touch that I enjoy from the Mavericks is the ever=so-subtle angling of the neck plate. It took YEARS for Fender to get around to this, and then they chickened out!