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How Is Fender USA Quality Control Soooo Horrible?

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This is gonna get locked I can feel it

lol

yeah they’re a little touch and go on pickguard fitment. Here’s some jazzes I’ve had over the years, some of em were a perfect fit some weren’t. All sounded and played pretty darn good though, for what that’s worth.


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So your whole melt down about quality control is because the stamped metal control plate and the layered plastic pick guard are 1mm different width?

I think the first thing to do after taking a deep breath is acknowledge that Fender is not a boutique brand and Leo Fender never intended it to become one.

If that doesn’t give you some comfort just think about the reason you wanted a Fender in the first place, because it’s the sound and look and feel of rock’n’roll.

You don’t have to play a Fender. But you do have to admit to yourself that Fender is at least indirectly why you play at all. Roll with it.
 
Over the last 40+ years I've owned dozens upon dozens of USA, Mexican, Chinese, Korean, and Indonesian Fenders and Squiers. Some amazing, some perfect, some ok, some kinda bad. Some of the Chinese Squiers, alarmingly, have been absolutely perfect. Every now and then, a USA Fender is as well.

However.

I have never seen such non-existent quality control and pisspoor attention to detail in 40+ years as this latest purchase, a new $1900 (before tax) American Professional II Jazz Bass in Miami Blue that no less than FIVE people signed off on.

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$2097.60 with tax.

$2100!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Wow!

I can't believe they forgot to put strings on it :banghead:
 
Those are clearly stamped, you wouldn’t machine a flat control plate.

Well, is a waterjet a ‘machine?’ It is certainly CNC controlled. And it would likely be cheaper to lay one big sheet over the table and cut, say, 100 Jazz plates at a time than to invest in the tool and die to stamp them from a blank one at a time.

Plus, you could just change the program when you had enough on hand and make any other flat component you needed (Telecaster plates, for example).

Worth considering
 
I sent a Telecaster back to Sweetwater because the pickguard and bridge were misaligned. So, little things like this do bother me, too.

That said, this thread is typical TB hyperbole. "Non-existent quality control". I appreciate the high standards you have, but...really?

When I sold pianos years ago, a customer custom ordered a >$200k grand piano from Steinway and they shipped it out with the huge engraved "Steinway & Sons" lettering *very* crooked on the fallboard. It could not have been missed. Probably 20 people signed off on that. All of our sales staff were baffled. It still baffles me to this day.

That to me is an unforgivable manufacturing error. I would not tolerate that on even the cheapest new piano.
 
it’s funny, you can do a simple search and every image you see they are not exact.
even on Fender website this is just how they are. Been like this for centuries.
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The original celluloid guards were gonna shrink anyway, so there was no point in making them match the control plate. Now, they could make them match perfectly, but choose not to. It doesn't bother most people, but if it does there are plenty of FSO builders who have a higher standard of QC and not just in fitting pick guards.
 
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