One of the many peculiar details of the Iconic 1954 Fender Stratocaster guitars was the Knobs design, named by collectors as "short skirt”. These had a brief life since they were mounted on the “solid shafts” pots used for lap steel and guitars, but when they pressed-them-in they could break even during the very first installation, or shortly after. Very few made it to these days. For this reason Fender had to redesign the Knobs (and also the pickups covers and switch tip) completely, and starting by September 1954 they used “split shafts” pots altogether with the newer redesigned knobs.
Why I’m telling you this story? Because a few friends contacted me regarding the possibility to restore some of these early and rare original knobs that were either in pieces or with missing parts, so I started a crazy project in order to be able to restore their originals and provide them with correct replacements if needed, (all those replacements around are just plain wrong both in material and detail). In partnership with my friends italymaker , I had them 3D scanning my originals short skirt knobs, and we carefully rebuilt (after months of research) a perfect model of the originals, discovering the craziest minimal details and features of that amazing first run of guitars.
Then we started a long journey to refine the models to be able to have them 3D-printed, with the correct feeling and looking material and you know what? We made it! The material is as fragile and as brittle as the original, so these must be installed with the same care, but they finally do justice to all those original guitars who lost them.
Why 3D? Because with this fine technology we will be able to rebuild even the missing parts of original broken knobs, as is the case for one of the two knobs that was sent here to be restored.
Important: cescoscornerguitars will gladly provide these to original 1954 Fender Stratocaster owners, but I’ll require to be sent pictures of the guitars and serial number, in order to keep track of how many of these accurate replicas will be around.
Today is a happy day for a 1954 Fender Stratocaster Lover! For infos contact us. You can see many pics of some of our products by following these tags on Instagram: #cescoscorner #shortskirtproject
Each set is unique, and made to order, and each part of the set is hand refined, colored, aged, as they did back in the day. Satisfaction guaranteed. The suggested price here is for the complete set, 3 covers (first style, first mold), 3 short skirt knobs and 1 switch tip.
