Where do you get white Fender "Witch Hat" control knobs?
On the American Vintage '65 Fender Jazzmaster, the control knobs are the "witch hat" white style (or close-to-white as they may be parchment colored), and look like this:
The Squier Vintage Modified Jazzmaster does not come with these. Instead, you get regular "skirted" knobs as seen on Stratocasters:
I've been wanting the witch hat knobs ever since I bought my Jazzmaster.
I looked on the Fender Store web site. No white witch hat knobs. So I emailed Fender Consumer Relations and asked where I could buy a set, as I was willing to spend the money. A canned reply arrived in my email saying my message was received and that they would get back to me.
That was 58 days ago. No reply from Fender whatsoever. I was puzzled by this as I have emailed them before about a different matter and got a quick reply. But I guess whoever is monitoring the Consumer Relations inbox these days either missed the email completely, or just completely ignored me. Bummer.
Well, I found some witch hat style white knobs...
...made for a Gibson. But I'm pretty sure they will fit the potentiometer posts on the Squier Jazzmaster, and I'll explain why in a moment.
For the eagle-eyed out there, yes the numbers are flipped. On Fender instruments, the number faces "out" while on Gibsons the number faces "in". Also, the font used for VOL and TONE are different. The Gibson knobs use a skinny font while the Fender knobs use wider. Also, the numbers are much more curvy on the Gibson knobs compared to Fender.
I bought 'em anyway. They should arrive before the end of the week.
Where did I get these? eBay, of course.
Why do I think these will fit right? Because they're made for split-shaft potentiometer posts, which the Squier Jazzmaster has. That, and I saw an instance on a forum where someone installed them and they seemed to fit well.
The only issue is that the knobs are stark white. However, I could darken them using coffee. All it would take to darken the knobs to parchment color is to drop them in cold coffee for somewhere between 15 seconds and a minute, and they will stain to the proper parchment color.
[Update 4/7]
Got an email from someone pointing to a link on the Fender Store where the knobs are sold where they now magically seemed to appear. Black/Silver and Black/Gold ones are on Amazon now, and I'm sure the White/Silver ones will appear soon enough. Hopefully.
But they're nothing like the Vintage '65 knobs. At all.
This is what Fender sells at the time I write this:
...and this is what American '65 knobs are supposed to look like. Mostly.
Night-and-day difference. What Fender is selling as replacement American Vintage Jazzmaster knobs don't match what's on the '65 American Vintage Jazzmaster at all. The font is wrong, the color is wrong, and and even the font size changes (why?) from VOL to TONE.
Why did I say "mostly"? Because on the example proper-look set above, the numbers are facing "in". But even so, they are way more accurate as far as the overall look is concerned.
Yeah, I am that particular when it comes to this stuff. What Fender is selling is absolutely not a proper Vintage '65 replacement Jazzmaster knob set.
I'll stick with my Gibson knobs because at least the set has a consistent look between the two. That and I already bought 'em, so... whatever, I guess. 😛
Published 2014 Apr 6
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