Fender MIM mystery headstock hole

I took in this Fender MIM Jazz bass some time ago. I'm not really a long-scale guy, but this one is a gem. It just plays so well compared to a lot of off-the-shelf MIMs and I love the nice woodgrain and super dark rosewood fretboard, combined with the black finish. It dates back to 2001, at which time I used to drool over these in musiciansfriend catalogs but my middle-school budget and newbie lack of skills made them out of reach then.

Anyway, being that it was mostly an impulse nostalgia acquisition I've only picked it up to play now and then, but until yesterday I never noticed that there seemed to be some kind of hole peeking out from under the back of the E string tuner. Today I popped the tuner off to see and sure enough this looks like a factory-original routed hole of some sort. It's super clean and perfectly centered. The guy I got this bass from hardly ever used it and mostly just had it sitting in a gig bag for the last 18 years, so I know it wasn't some kind of DIY mod.

Has anybody come across one of these before? Doesn't bother me at all, I'm just curious what the purpose of it may have been. Some kind of router guide?

Using the TB search didn't turn anything up, besides some posts talking about drilling a hole underneath the tuner to try and move a dead-spot, but I'm pretty positive this is factory-original.

 

Bent, yup it's only about half the depth of the headstock.

Tomd, I think that's about the same thing that I was thinking too, but I don't know enough about those machines to state it in proper terminology. That said, I've had quite a few MIM Fenders and I'm pretty nit-picky so I definitely would have noticed this before...

Does anybody know if they did this for a certain number of years or batches? Again, it doesn't bother me per se, I'm just curious to understand my instruments as thoroughly as possible

 

Indeed, the one under the pickguard has been on every MIM Fender that I've owned. I've just never had the headstock hole before.

Thanks again for any and all responses to this thread

 

I don't think I've seen pegged tuners like that on an MIM bass, plus this hole is only underneath the E string tuner

 

Cool! That right there is enough confirmation for me. Sounds like it was a CNC guide then, at least for a period of time. My first thought was some kind of mod, but it's so perfectly centered and clean. Under closer inspection, it does look like it was made before the finish was applied