What is the typeface (font) used on Fender knobs?

April 30, 2009 9:16 AM

What is the typeface (font) used on Fender knobs?

Strangely harder to uncover then expected. The "1" is distinctive with absolutely no serif whatsoever. See image here.

posted by jeremias to society & culture (7 comments total)

It looks like a fairly standard font that a draftsman would use on blueprints, such as this one (in use a draftsman would shift the guide slightly so the bridges in the stencil wouldn't show up in the finished product). Googling "drafting Fonts" gets a few hits that are close.
posted by TedW at 9:41 AM on April 30 [1 favorite]

IdentiFont suggests some fonts but none are absolutely accurate. Ministry Light has a "1" with no serif for instance, but the other letters are slightly out...
posted by Petrot at 10:15 AM on April 30

Yeah, these are good leads but intriguing that there is no fit. I would have thought there some obvious template or translation . . .

Will keep looking . ..
posted by jeremias at 10:19 AM on April 30

When were the knobs designed? Not every specimen of type is associated with a font. Hand-drawn (or routed, etc.) letters and numbers are done in a certain style, but it's only been with the advent of computer-aided design that it's a given type comes from a full set of glyphs.
posted by rikschell at 11:15 AM on April 30

It's routed from a stencil or template (or these days possibly just CNC'd, but the result is the same). You can tell by the distinctive bulges where the bit stopped and started. The stencil might have been hand-made by somebody at Fender, but there are places that sell them. The Incubator Router typeface in Medium or Bold comes close, but there is a serif on the 1.
posted by indyz at 11:23 AM on April 30

Following on what TedW said, it appears to follow the standard drafting numeral forms. I was always taught in drafting class that a '1' was just a straight vertical line with no serifs.
posted by rocket88 at 12:08 PM on April 30

Yeah, that makes sense that drafting fonts would emulate this, it's just that I can't find any fonts that actually copy the "no serif" for the numeral 1.
posted by jeremias at 1:06 PM on April 30