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1953 Valco El Grande Steel Guitar Customer's Work Progress Reports ~ Page 7; Electronics and Pickup Repair Details ~ |
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VOLUME POT: Pot code 304206 is 304 = Stackpole Company; 2 = 1952, 62, 72, 82, 92 or 2002; 06 = 6th week of the year manufactured. 250K is marked on the side of the pot casing. |
TONE POT: The tone pot is a replacement 500K pot. All that is stamped into the side of the casing as "code" is '500K DIMARZIO'. Now Dimarzio has never made pots, so it is obviously a pot made for Dimarzio. The pot is the same or similar to Dimarzio's current part number EP1201 custom taper 500K pot. The 'DIMARZIO' stamping on this Steel's pot even looks like it was probably stamped by Dimarzio themself, as it is quite "archaic" in being stamped with individual dies whose individual letter stampings are not aligned and all have different impact depths, obviously done by hand, ....while the 500K is nice and neat from the unknown factory that made them. It looks like a StackpoleTM jobber pot, ...and the custom taper Dimarzio ordered in the pots might be why the manufacturer declined to put their company code on the pots (didn't conform to any of their product specs); And the Stackpole part number for the volume control, 220-1 is remarkably simiar to Dimarzio's part number EP1201 for their current 500K pot. By the construction natures of the pot, and the archaic stamping of / by Dimarzio; I am guessing that the pot is late1970's or 1980's vintage when Dimarzio pickups started gaining popularity and expanded into other guitar parts. ------- All just meaningless trivia; The pot works just fine. |
I will compare this Steel's wiring with other Valco Steels I have, to make sure they coincide. |
