70's Era Teles - Nylon shaft pots?

[KingOfTheRoad]

Hey All,

Did Fender use nylon shaft pots in the 1970's?

Cheers, Mike

 

[dsutton24]

I don't think so.

 

[KATT]

I've only had a small sample of three 70s Fenders ('73, ' 74, '75) and my friend has one (' 78) and none had nylon shafts pots.

However, I don't know what you mean by an Ear Tele and whether that would be any different.

 

[msalama]

Ear Tele

A typo, I think he meant "'70s era teles". Anyway, I don't think Fender used nylon shaft pots in the '70s.

 

[Matthias]

Yes, they did. My Tele Deluxe has nylon-shaft, ‘73-dated 1-meg pots and you’ll find examples of 250k ones taken from 70s Fenders on Reverb. I don’t think they were universal…

 

[msalama]

Deluxe has nylon-shaft, ‘73-dated

Cool! I've never seen them myself on any kind of Teles yet, but that's indeed valid evidence. There're also reports of a batch of Mexican-made pots having been used at some point during the '70s, so we'll again have to note that with Fender, there're lots of exceptions to almost all the rules people think are iron-clad. Not so!

FWIW, the funniest oddball I've ever heard of was a late '70s Strat with a four-bolt neck and no microtilt, and the guy was adamant about it being 100% original. It was on some discussion board a while ago and he did present pictures as proof, and as I remember it, the body internals did indeed look quite convincing with typical late '70s to early '80s CBS QC stamps and markings. A batch of lelfover Anniversary necks being put to good use in '81 perhaps?

 

[Matthias]

Cool! I've never seen them myself on any kind of Teles yet, but that's indeed valid evidence. There're also reports of a batch of Mexican-made pots having been used at some point during the '70s, so we'll again have to note that with Fender, there're lots of exceptions to almost all the rules people think are iron-clad. Not so!

FWIW, the funniest oddball I've ever heard of was a '70s Strat with a four-bolt neck and no microtilt, and the guy was adamant about it being 100% original. It was on some discussion board a while ago and he did present pictures as proof, and as I remember it, the body internals did indeed look quite convincing with typical late '70s to early '80s CBS QC stamps and markings. A batch of lelfover Anniversary necks being put to good use in '81 perhaps?

Yeah, Fender even appeared to mix and match makes of pots in the same guitar in the 70s.

4-bolt late 70s screams a good refin on an Anniversary model to me, or an anniversary neck on a pre-72 body. But if the finish looked original and it had the late 70s routes (ledge for the cavity ground lug and dime-sized router registration) that is curious… But what gets missed is Fender offered custom colors again on Strats, Teles and basses in the early 80s. Page 41 of the 1982 catalog offers, at extra cost, Ruby Red, Sapphire Blue (a transparent finish), Emerald Green (also transparent), Pewter, Candy Apple Green, Mocha Brown and Aztec Gold. Now, how many people have seen those and written them off as refins when they’re rare custom factory finishes?! The transparent blue and green were around in the 70s… Allegedly Arbiter in Europe ordered some in for stockists and they pop up occasionally on the used market. I don’t have a 79-81 catalog to check when they started offering that service but it’s a small leap to presume they’d sort someone out with the anniversary spec but a custom color.

 

[Matthias]

Ahhh…. Some digging and it looks like the custom colors were in the price list by ‘81. There is also a “Gold Stratocaster” that I hadn’t heard of… This was a four-bolt Strat with gold finish and hardware that seems to have run from 1980-1983… Sort of replacing the Anniversary model. So Fender were offering both four bolt Strats and custom colors in the early 80s.

Gold Stratocaster

Its body had a Deluxe Gold Metallic finish and the tuning machines were of 100 micron gold plated brass, the same used in jewelry, which is why the sale of this guitar did not benefit the company and its production was interrupted in 1984.

www.fuzzfaced.net

(edit - small headstock though… from 1980!!!)

Sorry, very off topic!

 

[msalama]

small headstock though… from 1980

They didn't get the shape quite right, though.

Anyway, and FWIW, I think a genuine post-'71 four-bolt Strat neck is probably a factory replacement on an older guitar. To my knowledge, Fender offered this service all through the '70s, and if your original neck warped or snapped, you could send the guitar in and they'd manufacture and install a new neck for you.

Sorry, very much off topic indeed, shall stop now!

 

[Velorex]

My 78 has two nylon shaft 1 meg pots.

velorex

 

[msalama]

Right. OK, I wouldn't wonder if some of the constructs thought unoriginal or nonexistent actually turn out to be both existing and factory assembled after all, since they probably sourced and used whatever they could get the cheapest at any given time. Of course there were basic technical restrictions to the supplies that could be purchased as refills, but maybe the guidelines weren't quite as tight as some have thought, and maybe they also had a more varied supplier base than is known today?

 

[Peegoo]

It was a cost-cutting measure. They're not necessarily bad sounding, but they're not as robust as pots with metal shafts.

 

[msalama]

cost-cutting measure

The more we examine these, the more we may yet identify. There's not even a comprehensive study with a timeline about the exact finish processes and compositions they used during the '70s yet, or maybe they just used whatever was cheaply available at any given time and nothing indeed was that exact ever?

A commonly cited claim is that CBS got completely rid of nitro topcoats by the late '70s, for example. Not true. They got pretty rare by that time, yes, but were still applied willy-nilly on various guitars even then, and e.g. some Walnut-painted Telecaster Deluxes still had thin nitro finishes very late in the decade. Why?

 

[msalama]

PS. I notice I'm constantly veering off topic here, so maybe it's time for me to get my coat? This is perhaps not an appropriate time and place for my blethering...

 

[Boreas]

Bean counters... It was their ear. [Insert wink emoji here] Having trouble with emojis again - crimpin' my style. UGH!!

 

[KATT]

A typo, I think he meant "'70s era teles". Anyway, I don't think Fender used nylon shaft pots in the '70s.

Ah yes, that makes sense now! I thought it may have been an acronym or abbreviation I wasn't familiar with.

 

[pbenn]

Late '70s Champ Amps had plastic or nylon Japanese pots, according to L&M Toronto.

 

[msalama]

plastic or nylon Japanese pots

And I've also heard that Norlin used a batch of Japanese Burny or ALPS pots for certain Les Paul models during the first part of the '70s, too. Never seen any evidence supporting this, though, but this has been claimed still.