Next up... how to date your pot(s)... This is a 1958 Telecaster Potentiometer (Pot) from my Esquire, which reads (clockwise) '250K...AUDIO...137...947...3596. After 1952, ALL Fender Pots have '250k' on them... if they don't, they have come from another brand of guitar. Here are a couple examples of how to read the numbers on your Pot: If the code says '304 521'... you ignore the 304 portion (which is the manufacturer's code... 304 was for Stackpole, and 137 was for CTS... 140 would be a Clarisat pot), and use the 521... in this case... the '5' means from 1955, and the '21' means the 21st week of 1955. What if there are a total of 7 numbers... for instance; '304 5913'... once again, ignore the 304 portion, and date using the '5913'... in this case it would mean... the 13th week of 1959. Either of these 'code schemes' are genuine. In the case of my Pot, we read the '947'... which would mean the 47th week of 1959, for the manufacture date. Remember, Leo (at Fender) probably had these delivered pretty quickly to his shop, where they were immediately made available to be assembled into guitars. I hear Leo was 'tight'... so it is possible he would order a week or two supply at one time... and then go through them making guitars (this is just conjecture on my part, after reading a lot about the early Fender manufaturing process).
