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Question For Fender Regarding Their '62' Reissue
- Thread starter Fenderbassfan
- Start date
I remember when the re-issue series started in the 80s and here is my guess. I could be way off, so please don't player hate if I am wrong. Here goes... There was a lot of "interpretation" when these re-issues first came out, and many of the details were not exactly accurate. The Stratocaster head stock shape was not exactly correct, the Jazz Bass decal was not exactly correct, etc. At the time the Japanese were fanatical about vintage re-creation, but it took a while for Fender USA to catch up. So, calling it a 62 re-issue when it should have been a 60 or 61 re-issue may have just been an oversight.
The Japanese have not been all that fanatical with the polyurethane finishes, wrong pickup locations, wrong body woods, wrong tuners, etc...
Regarding the reissue dates, I have read that Fender picked dates close to what they wanted that did not have bad things associated with them -- e.g., Bay of Pigs in 1961 and Kennedy assignation in 1963.
There were stack-knobs made in 62. In fact, there have been a few instances of 63 jazz basses leaving the factory with stack knobs. After 61, when the 3 knobs were introduced, there was a lot of overlap as far as stack vs. v/v/t. John Paul Jones' Jazz was a 61 that was stock with v/v/t. So why did Fender choose 62 as the year for the reissue? James Jamerson had a 62 Precision Bass, so they decided to reissue a 62 Precision Bass, and just for convenience and marketing, made the Jazz a 62 too? Just a hypothesis.......
,and they STILL !!! haven't gotten it right because I have a 2009 CS 64 Relic and it's not to specs at all,however it's a good bass,but nothing that's knocking me over.Personally I think the Japanese and AV Series P and Jazz Basses are better than the CS basses
Fender came out with four reissue models and wanted details of them to be fairly close to all one year:
62 Telecaster
62 Stratocaster
62 Precision
62 Jazz Bass
Really rare, but yes there were some stack knobs built in early 62. Bill Bolton has one.
62 Telecaster
62 Stratocaster
62 Precision
62 Jazz Bass
Really rare, but yes there were some stack knobs built in early 62. Bill Bolton has one.
Ah... so much conjecture and misinformation... It's simply NOT true that the stack knob disappeared on January 1, 1962.
Fender started the Vintage Series to show people they COULD make them like they used to. They went out and bought a bunch of instruments from the era to use as models (as well as the original factory drawings and what supplier lists they still had). A friend's '61 white stack-knob was one of the Jazzes they bought. A critical factor in the decision of which year they'd call it (frequently overlooked here by bass-centric people) is that the Vintage Series also had to include guitars. Fender didn't have any old Fender instruments in 1980 when the Vintage Series idea came about. So they went out and started collecting them. They didn't ever use a single instrument as "the model" for any particular year, but rather an amalgamation of all the instruments they collected and borrowed, as well as discussions with some vintage guitar dealers. The idea was to come up with a representative example of what a typical early '60s or late '50s instrument would have been like new.
The original Vintage Series was the '52 Telecaster. It proved very successful so they immediately went ahead with plans to expand the line with the Strat, the Precision, and the Jazz bass. They chose '57 for the maple neck Strat and P bass because that's the year that was the first split-coil Precision, still had the one-piece maple necks, and the plastic pickguard on the Strat.
They chose '62 because the stack-knob was still being made in '62 and because in mid-1962 they switched from the slab rosewood boards to the round-lam fingerboard. They were concerned that if they encountered the same issues with the slab board that Fender had in the early '60s (neck warping due to the different coefficients of expansion between the rosewood and maple) or if the public resisted the stack-knobs, they could go to a round-lam neck or change to V/V/T and still be correct for the year 1962.
BTW, there were other differences, based on manufacturing capabilities at the Fullerton plant. Notably, the 12th fret position markers on the fingerboard on the Vintage Series were the same as standard production guitars had been for a long time. It was simply too expensive to make them differently. I believe that was corrected when they closed Fullerton and moved to Corona.
John
Fender started the Vintage Series to show people they COULD make them like they used to. They went out and bought a bunch of instruments from the era to use as models (as well as the original factory drawings and what supplier lists they still had). A friend's '61 white stack-knob was one of the Jazzes they bought. A critical factor in the decision of which year they'd call it (frequently overlooked here by bass-centric people) is that the Vintage Series also had to include guitars. Fender didn't have any old Fender instruments in 1980 when the Vintage Series idea came about. So they went out and started collecting them. They didn't ever use a single instrument as "the model" for any particular year, but rather an amalgamation of all the instruments they collected and borrowed, as well as discussions with some vintage guitar dealers. The idea was to come up with a representative example of what a typical early '60s or late '50s instrument would have been like new.
The original Vintage Series was the '52 Telecaster. It proved very successful so they immediately went ahead with plans to expand the line with the Strat, the Precision, and the Jazz bass. They chose '57 for the maple neck Strat and P bass because that's the year that was the first split-coil Precision, still had the one-piece maple necks, and the plastic pickguard on the Strat.
They chose '62 because the stack-knob was still being made in '62 and because in mid-1962 they switched from the slab rosewood boards to the round-lam fingerboard. They were concerned that if they encountered the same issues with the slab board that Fender had in the early '60s (neck warping due to the different coefficients of expansion between the rosewood and maple) or if the public resisted the stack-knobs, they could go to a round-lam neck or change to V/V/T and still be correct for the year 1962.
BTW, there were other differences, based on manufacturing capabilities at the Fullerton plant. Notably, the 12th fret position markers on the fingerboard on the Vintage Series were the same as standard production guitars had been for a long time. It was simply too expensive to make them differently. I believe that was corrected when they closed Fullerton and moved to Corona.
John
Well, no. The first was the '52 Tele, then they introduced (about a year later) the '57 Strat and P and the '62 Strat, P, and J. The '62 Tele Custom ('burst, bound body with rosewood fingerboard) came a year or two later.
John
JTE said:
Yes, I know what came out then, but that's not exactly what I was talking about. I'm simply and generally describing what's available as 62 models.
That's why I didn't even mention the 52 Tele and 57 Strat and Precision, the topic didn't seem to be about the 50's designations.
But you know, it seems Fender should have just switched to the round laminated board on the Jazz. Obviously they had lots of them end up twisting or warping over the years. As much as I love the 62 RI Jazz, it's a reality.
It may only apply to the guitars. From '82 until '98 the dots on the fingerboard at the 12th fret were closer together than they were on the original real '60s guitars. More info here...
Invalid Link Removed
John
In the book the 'Stratocaster Chronicles' Dan Smith is quoted as saying "when I picked 57 and 62 it had nothing to do with those being the greatest years ... it was just a good year in general ... people had good memories of it." I have read an elaboration of this too (though I can't remember where right now) where it was stated that those dates (57 and 62) didn't have bad things associated with them like the Kennedy assassination.
That's a good point, Mike. I remember that Dan Smith stated that one of the reasons for the unstable slab necks was that Leo was using a swing arm saw so that the frets slots were cut along the radius of the fretboard -- in other words, the fretboard was cut through to the neck on the ends, but not in the middle. That solid strip of rosewood running down the middle was the problem. I wonder how the current slab reissue fret slots are cut?
