I bought this bass when I was a junior in college (circa 1967). I took it to the Monterey Pop Festival and jammed out with Pete Townshend. He was really impressed. After the set, he ripped the bass from my hands and threw it at his amplifiers as Keith Moon played his drums so hard he put a hole in them. I’m not sure if Pete did that to my bass because he was so impressed or because he wanted to destroy my bass. Either way, I noticed it started experiencing a minor problem.

Above, you will see the headstock of the bass and its four tuning keys. None of them are original. When I got the bass, only one of them was original (had “Fender” etched into the back) - the other three had been replaced sometime before I bought it. The only tuning key that had any problems, ironically, was the original one. It was really hard to turn part of the way and really easy the rest of the way. What this basically means is that the shaft was bent. Pete must have bent my shaft when he threw it against the amplifiers.

This is a family site, you perv. Quit laughing.

Anyway, I was too lazy to replace the injured tuning key because it still worked, albeit poorly, and I figured it wasn’t worth buying a whole new set of four tuning keys. Well, yesterday, 38 years later, I finally caved in. I went to Rockin’ Robin Guitars and showed the repair guy the stubborn tuning key. He went to the back of the shop and rummaged around in what must have been his bin-o-parts and emerged with tuning key in hand. I inspected it and noted it look a lot like the tuning keys from Fender’s 1960s era basses. The stars must have been aligned yesterday, because a proper tuning key found its way back to my bass. The repair guy was even kind enough to install the new tuning key, which took some drilling because the holes didn’t line up for the new tuning key.

Nevermind that I wasn’t around in 1967 and that the bass was made in 1989 and acquired by me some 12 years later. What really matters is that when I asked the repair guy how much I owed him, he said, “Nothing man, equal trade. I got your tuner, you got this one. I can always use parts.” When I got home though, I noticed the new tuner wasn’t exactly perfect either. It turned just fine, but the metal plate was slightly concave, so that it rises up of the wood just a little bit.

In closing, some of the facts in this post are obviously pure fabrication, but you can’t exactly complain because this site is brought to you free of charge, and free is a pretty damn good deal as I found out yesterday, even if it means you trade a defective tuning key for another defective tuning key. In the end, it all evens out, because the new defective tuning key is defective in a way that doesn’t really matter. And, I think, that is probably the best kind of defection there is.