Capt Brad
Member
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2016
- Messages
- 129
Anyhow, after a long time of trying to nail it down, I finally spoke with Tim Shaw last year (yes, that Tim Shaw - he's now with Fender). He spoke with Bruce Bolen, who is retired and was head of R&D at the time, and they pooled their collective memories. The normal Norlin top carve machine at that time looked like a phone booth and would carve four tops simultaneously - that was the typical sloped top carve that most non-Norlin lovers have come to hate. He seemed to indicate that because of the machine configuration, it couldn't do the recurve that was typical of the vintage carves - and that's the reason for the Norlin carve. Anyhow, the machine that carved the H80 tops was horizontal, took up more floor space, and only carved two at a time. From what Tim said, it was located in Kalamazoo (I have to guess that the tops were sent to Nashville for assembly, because I've yet to see an H80 with a KZ serial number). Anyhow, after the H80 run was finished, the CNC machine and the carve templates were transferred to Nashville, in preparation for the shut down of the Kalamazoo factory. And the reason for the limited edition status of these metallic red guitars was that they were the first production guitars made with the vintage top carve (i.e., using the H80 templates and the CNC machine that carved the tops).
Just a post from 09 these are not necessarily the view or opinion of the author!
Just a post from 09 these are not necessarily the view or opinion of the author!