Interesting Offering from Fender

chazmo said:

However, the closing of Tacoma and New Hartford were not done the same way. In fact, we know through all the trainwrecks that a whole bunch of unfinished / shelved material made it into the hands of MIRC when Tacoma closed. And, I know firsthand that wood was shipped to New Hartford. Not sure how much of the machinery made it, but New Hartford was very good about building/tooling their own shop; that's one of the reasons New Hartford got Guild.

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I also question the meaning of NH's being "top-to-bottom redesigns" when we already know a few changes introduced in Tacoma carried over to New Hartford: Dual action truss rod, single truss w/ graphite reinforcements in 12-string necks, adi braces/tops, and even those recent prototypes we've seen with Tacoma-style "contempory" headstocks.
Jay Pilzer's article mentions that none of the tooling from Tacoma made it to NH EXCEPT for the arch-back press, which also made it to Oxnard.
I do get Steve's general point that in many instances Fender deemed it cheaper to dispose of stuff than store it and that's probably true. Even storage has a cost, and that's why I would have been surprised if that bridge on the new bass was actually leftover US Guild stock.
But I'd be equally surprised if they ordered up a new batch to be made.
It just looks too much like that DeArmond Jetstar I posted, even the body's similar, so I smelled "recycled", that's all.

At the LMGs, mention was made of the many changes, from top radius to bracing to the precision with which the binding was mitered. There were about 130 changes made to the manufacturing process. It was stressed that NH guitars were not Tacoma builds and parts were not interchangable. That's why they ran Bill Ashton's Tacoma D55 through the bandsaw, rather than try to repair it.

Wouldn't bridges, tuners, and other hardware not be provided by some OEM supplier? They probably just picked a good design that the OEM had previously used for Guild.

Default said:

At the LMGs, mention was made of the many changes, from top radius to bracing to the precision with which the binding was mitered. There were about 130 changes made to the manufacturing process. It was stressed that NH guitars were not Tacoma builds and parts were not interchangable. That's why they ran Bill Ashton's Tacoma D55 through the bandsaw, rather than try to repair it.

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Fair enough and thanks for the explanation.
I remember hearing about top radius change on D55's for example, didn't remember anything "official" about other dimensional changes or what models were affected.
In self defense, I suspected you meant subtle design changes, and I was suggesting an evolutionary change that included Tacoma's materials innovations.
However, "you were there", and barring time to dig back into the archives, I only have my foggy memories of what I read in the threads here about 'em (the LMG's).
Any further insights you have would be welcomed.

merlin6666 said:

Wouldn't bridges, tuners, and other hardware not be provided by some OEM supplier? They probably just picked a good design that the OEM had previously used for Guild.

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True about an OEM supplier, and a reasonable proposition.

adorshki said:

True about an OEM supplier, and a reasonable proposition.

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Sometimes I wake up and it isn't a good day and on such days it actually bothers me that I went to the effort to make a post that either no one read or no one understood. Perhaps people no longer use 'catalogs' to buy parts from an OEM?

fronobulax said:

Or perhaps Fender buys their bridges and someone selected it from a catalog because keeping parts in production for 30+ years is what some factories do. I dare say that, while the harp bridge is somewhat iconic for fans of Guild vintage basses I doubt that it was ever part of Guild's intellectual property.

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fronobulax said:

Sometimes I wake up and it isn't a good day and on such days it actually bothers me that I went to the effort to make a post that either no one read or no one understood. Perhaps people no longer use 'catalogs' to buy parts from an OEM?

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Quite true of old school manufacturers still in existance. You can still order knob for Fender and Guild amps from the oem and the company that wound transformers for Fender will still build you as many as you care to order. It makes sense that you would order a run of bridges, than go through old warehouse stock, weeding out the scratched and shelf worn pieces until you got enough for production. Much more feasible for Fender, although we can pretty much accept that Guild in the old days did just the opposite.

But why would fender put this bridge on their new bass?
If its anything like the one on my Starfire, you cant move the saddle on the low e enough to intonate. Same prob with Gibson SG bass bridge but looks like Gibson wised up in their latest run and are using a hipshot type bridge.

lungimsam said:

But why would fender put this bridge on their new bass?

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It looks cool and my experience with three basses so equipped is that intonation is just fine. I suspect either your ears are more sensitive than mine or there may be something else besides the bridge contributing to your issues.

lungimsam said:

But why would fender put this bridge on their new bass?
If its anything like the one on my Starfire, you cant move the saddle on the low e enough to intonate. Same prob with Gibson SG bass bridge but looks like Gibson wised up in their latest run and are using a hipshot type bridge.

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I've had that problem on my JS_II. (In my case, could not move the saddle towards the neck enough.) If you cannot get the string short enough, grind, file or drill the track the saddle slides in. (Add length on the neck side.)

Warning - I read some horrific warning about metal grindings finding their way into pickups, so remove the bridge before taking action.