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3-bolt
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Pawn Shop ’ 72
If there was ever a golden age of irreverent
and lawless guitar tinkering, it was the early
’70s. The holy grails of today’s vintage-guitar fetishists were still largely regarded
as just used guitars, and dudes and gals
with the fever for home craft were a lot less
reluctant to attack a ’ 62 Stratocaster with
routers and carving knives. Fender, too, was
willing to tinker with what we now regard
as perfection. And the modernist mini-malism of the Telecaster and Stratocaster
were rethought with features like f-holes,
au natural finishes, and—in a nod to
higher-octane rock of the times—big, burly
chrome humbuckers.
In keeping with that vibe, the new Pawn
Shop ’ 72 is a cool, quirky encapsulation of
the period’s style. Tele and Strat purists who
consider the subtle changes wrought during
the ’60s an affront to Leo Fender’s genius
need not apply. But if you’re feeling a bit
brash, bell bottomed, and/or funky—and
you have the GTO gassed and good to
go—the Pawn Shop ’ 72 is your axe.
Blend knob for pickups
The ’ 72 has a clear family resemblance to
the ’ 51, of course, but it’s as if the ’ 51 left
high school as a greaser in 1962, joined a
commune after a road trip to the Monterey
Pop Festival, journeyed to Woodstock,
and then stayed behind to build geodesic
domes. The ’ 72 also looks wired for loud.
The Fender Enforcer humbucker in the
neck position is inspired by the pickups
Fender put in Thinline Telecaster models
in the early ’70s. And the same humbucker
that propels the nastier persona of the ’ 51
sits in the bridge position of the ’ 72.
Fender reveals a cool eye for other peri-od-correct details on the ’ 72, too. It’s got a
3-bolt neck (the bane of so many pre-CBS
purists), a bullet truss rod, ‘F’ tuners that
were typical of Strats and Teles of the time,
and a hardtail bridge like the ’ 51’s. The
white-bound f-hole is borrowed from the
’ 69 Thinline Telecaster and, like the ’ 51,
the ’ 72’s familiar Telecaster-like controls
conceal a hidden purpose. In this case, what
would traditionally be a tone knob is a very
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