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Post subject: External Grounding Strip
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 7:19 am
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I wonder if anyone would mind answering a question or two myself and a friend of mine have about our USA Fender Jazz '62 re-issue (stack-pot) basses.

Mine is around 8 years old and has an external copper strip (grounding strip) between the bridge pickup and the bridge. My friends bass is more recent, and doesn't havn't an external grounding strip, but presumably has an internal one.

Our questions are these:

1) Why are the 2 basses different? Why/When was the change made?

2) Did all the original stack-pot Jazz basses have an external grounding strip? If not when did that change?

3) In general, when did the Fender Jazz bass switch from an external grounding strip to an internal one?

Many Thanks,


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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:10 am
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Welcome to the forum.

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Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:36 am
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Well according to The Fender Bass book written by J.W.Black and Albert Molinaro , the change from concentric pots was around 62-63 and as he says in the book , it is possible to have both designs at the same time (and that applies to other changes like Fender logos and pickguards , necks , binding , tuning pegs , etc... Regarding to the grounding strip it doesnt mention it but I believe it was a production change and if you have a long drill bit you can change from the external strip to internal grounding which is removing the bridge and drilling from under its position in the body all the way to the control cavity and soldering a wire (ground) at any pot casing and simply pinching the other end with the bridge . This ground is very important you can not eliminate it .

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Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 6:45 am
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Many thanks for those answers ...We're not intending to change our basses in any way really. Just curious as to why I have the external grounding strip and my friend doesn't (seeing as they are both the same model basses).

Have received an interesting answer from Fender themselves about this.

We haven’t really made any changes to the ’62 Jazz over the years. We did call the bass the U.S. Vintage ’62 Jazz Bass from 1981 to 1998. Now it’s called the American Vintage ’62 Jazz Bass. All that changed was the name.

The original Jazz basses did have that external grounding strip and that was because it was not possible to drill horizontally through the body back then to put a hole underneath the bridge where the internal ground wire now goes. We include a copper strip now in the accessories just in case someone wants to add it for cosmetic purposes, but it will have no function. I believe that we stopped using those external wire in the late ‘60’s, early ‘70’s.


This explains a lot of my questions...but there's still a little mystery as to why our basses have this difference. I suppose the logical thing to assume is that the extra grounding strip was installed on my bass at the time of manufacture...whereas later re-issues leave this for the customer.


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Posted: Thu Jul 31, 2008 11:40 am
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Yeah, same thing with my new US made 62 reissue. It came with a copper strip, but its more for aesthetic reasons, no functionality. Also, sort of leading to another question, when did Fender STOP putting in the paper certificate for the American Vintage reissues since mine didn't come with one and I assume mine is a 2007 or 2008 since bought this year.


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Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2008 10:55 am
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Don't quote me on this but I believe that Jaco Pastorius's bass was a 62. As you can see it has an external grounding strip.

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