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GALLERY: Gear of the Month 2012

See all 12 unique instruments featured as Gear of the Month in 2012.

October: 1985 Fender Performer
"The 1985 Performer has a Strat-meets-Warlock, double-cutaway body that was made with alder, basswood, or birch. (The design appears to be modeled after the flat part of the Stratуs body.) It features a maple neck with a 24-fret rosewood fretboard, a two-pivot bridge with a floating Fender System 1 vibrato made by Schaller. The pickups are two slanted humbuckersяmimicking the positioning of the bridge pickups in Teles and Stratsяand are controlled by a volume knob, a tone knob, a 3-way pickup selector switch, and a coil-tapping switch. The tone knob has stacked potsя250k and 1Mяwith a center detent, which couldуve been a predecessor to the TBX tone control used in later Fender models. The impetus of the Performer was to propel Fender forward, but the guitarуs headstock nods to the past with its arrow-like design reminiscent of the companyуs 1969 Swinger model."