Again though folks, you have a tough time generalizing from information from that and other sources..
Also folks remember that the names for the muskets are really a modern attempt at grouping the King's Musket into three basic types, Long, Short, and East Indian/3rd. When you really look at them though, you find variations between where they were made, and improvements as they went along, PLUS you find older models retrofitted.
Shipping muskets to the colonies is not the same as issuing out muskets to colonials. For example, Maryland maintained a large number of Bess muskets in arsenals, and the returns for the inspections at the beginning of the F&I War show that they were clearly not the "improved" version of the King's Musket. So militia from Maryland probably would not have had the improved version of the Bess at the beginning of the F&I.
So you probably would find the newer versions of the Bess in the hands of British regulars or British Equipped Provincials (such as the 60th "Royal Americans" or the 80th "Gage's Light Infantry") and the muskets themselves entering the colonies in places like New York City, and Philadelphia, but not throughout the entire 13 colonies.
Remember too that PA was especially a problem as they had no established militia system such as that of Maryland or Virginia, which existed for more than a century by the time the F&I began. So troops from colonies bereft of muskets might get the freshly imported model.
Militia in colonies that didn't really have a problem with the French and their Indian allies would not have seen any of the newer muskets. So South Carolina and Georgia may not have encountered the improved muskets until say the 1760's.
When Bouquet goes against Pontiac in the 1760's, he is by then probably arming his provincials (that aren't already armed with older muskets) with the "1742 version" of the Bess. First as he had to raise men for the expedition, and second Philly was his major storage area for arms and other supplies for his expedition.
Now by the AWI the Bess and it's variations are three decades old, or nearly that, and the improved Long-Land Bess was by far the most produced British musket pattern of its time. So numerous in fact, that as the new "short land" pattern muskets began to be produced, they were stored and not issued and a policy was set to deplete the older muskets from storage first before the new muskets would be used.
Plus a lot of the older muskets were later changed to be closer to the newer models. So you could've probably found a 1728 version Bess with a shortened barrel, a metal rammer, and perhaps some sort of metal reinforcement of the nose of the stock, even a "nose cap", yet the frizzen would still be unsupported by a bridle.
As for repro muskets...,one company calls theirs the "1748", another calls theirs the "improved 1728", another calls it the "1756 pattern", and another the "1742 version". Of these, one company offers a "1740" version with the improved lock with a wooden rammer, or a later version with a steel rammer and a metal nosecap, and another offers offers a "1742" with "steel rammer conversion" and no metal nosecap, and proclaims that the version with the nose cap and straighter lock (what some call a 1756) is not correct for the F&I.
Tough to tell what is based on scholarship and what is based on marketing.
Bottom line, if you obtained a copy of a "long land" pattern musket with a metal rammer, and a bridled frizzen, you should be fine for F&I era events onward even if it has a metal nosecap.
LD
