I was researching what Fender used for the "clay" dot position markers for the face of rosewood fingerboards in the 50s and 60s?

I found a few sentences by John Page (started the Custom Shop with Mike Stevens back in 1987 and ran it until December of 1998, when he left to start the Fender Museum.) :

"Fred Stuart, John Suhr and John English did a lot of research on this back in the early Custom Shop days. The best they could find out was that it was a material called "Harvite", that was a fine clay impregnated phenolic resin. It also used to be used in old poker chips and hotel key fobs. I guess it's no longer manufactured, but, go to the swap meets and look for old clay colored poker chips... you can make dots out of them! Really!"

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Wow, we knew roughly what the product had to be like, but that's the very first time i have heard any mention of an actual product name.

I found this on a Bakelite site in a list of trade names for bakelite products.:

SHELLAC :

CELLULAK - Continental Diamond Fiber Co,USA
COMPLAC - Poinsetta Inc, USA
COMPO - SITE - Compo - Site Inc, USA
DURANOID - Speciality Insulation Mfg Co, USA
( same tradename also in phenolic )
ELECTROSE - Insulation Manufacturing Co, USA
HARVITE - Siemon Co, USA
KURILAC - E.I. du Pont de Nemours, USA
LACANITE - Consolidated Molded Products
Corp, USA.
MICABOND - Continental Diamond Fiber Co,USA

It seems to be a shellac and Phenolic resin based plastic product.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

Man that would be some really big inlays lol. Just kidding.

They have some old poker chips on ebay made out of harvite.

Here's a pack....and pretty cheap :

http://www.etsy.com/search_results.php? ... ry=harvite

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Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Ohh I think i might be able to get some of those old chips, if they're still where i think they are, it's not a full set, so i won't feel bad about ruining some kind of collectible to experiment. I remember playing with a set exactly like one of the ones on ebay, when I was a kid.

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I'm not an expert, but I play one on the internet.

I was able to get my hands on about two dozen of them for dirt cheap. More parts to save for a rainy day.

I do think my parts area is a little cleaner than Seymour Duncan's place though.

_________________
Being able to play and enjoy music is a gift that's often taken for granted.

Don't leave home without it!

Callaham guitar parts sells reproduction clay dots too.

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60th Anniversary AD Strat, Deluxe Nashville Tele, Player's P Bass. Mesa/Boogie Mk IV combo, Marshall JCM800, 1960A cab, Genz Benz El Diablo 60, Genz 2x12" cab, too many neat little practice amps and kit projects!