The Steel Guitar Forum

I bought a fender 51 double 8 steel guitar and I was taking the tuner cup out and saw some initials and a date. Just wondering if anyone out there knows who's initials they are and maybe some history about the person. I also have some welds that are cracked on the tuners to the cup and was wondering if just a regular solder job would work to fix the problem or is it some special kind of welding material. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[/img]

That is regular 60/40 solder. You can fix it with a good heavy duty soldering iron.

The initials might be those of Tadeo Gomez, one of Fender's master craftsmen operating during that period. Most examples I've seen of his initials are block lettering rather than cursive.

Blake Hawkins wrote:That is regular 60/40 solder. You can fix it with a good heavy duty soldering iron.

It certainly looks like regular solder, but I'd think it is pretty inappropriate for structural purposes. I'd take it to a welding shop and talk to them Perhaps get them to remove the existing mess (it melts easily) and, if necessary, replace it with something a little more structural.

Thanks for all the help on identifying the initials. And thank you for all the help on the soldering cracks I'll definitely take it to someone who knows about soldering and welding. Thanks for your time and help

Preston, The identification of the solder is not idle speculation. I own one of these guitars and have repaired it and one other.
You may not agree with the way Fender did it and, yes, there are other ways such as welding, brazing, and silver solder to name a few.
If you use another method, there is the possibility of harming the plating on the pot.
So Fender used soft solder.

Don't weld or braze it. The tuners are made to be individually replaceable and won't be if you braze them. There's a good chance that the reason the solder joint broke in the first place was because the worm and gear were binding under tension. In my case, it was pretty hard to tell until I tried to tune it up. I ended up replacing two of the tuners. It's a job that even your local guitar shop may not be adept at and certainly not a welding shop. I'd just resolder them and see if those tuners have a problem tuning up. If you tighten the gear to the post too much that can cause it to bind as well. There are some threads about replacing lollipop tuners.

Here's my Tadeo Gomez...

The initials look more like JG to me. Jerry Garcia must have built it..