The museum show opened on December 10,
1993 and closed April 2, 1994. The exhibit, made possible
in part by a generous contribution by Fender Musical
Instruments, broke all attendance records for the
Fullerton Museum Center, topping an earlier show
featuring relics of the Titanic. It included over 70
guitars and amplifiers that Leo designed for the pre-CBS
and CBS-era Fender company, Music Man and G&L.
Visitors saw the first Radio Shop guitar and the six-string
bass that Leo worked on the day before he died in 1991.
George Fullerton loaned his Fiesta Red Jazzmaster to the
exhibit. Lab assistant Freddie Tavarez' Jazz Bass, which
came with an unusual ebony fingerboard like Fullerton's
Jazzmaster, was hung in the museum's '60s section along
with Forrest White's prototype King acoustic model.
Exhibit highlights included early K&F guitars and
amps from John Sprung's collection, the original telegram
that Gretsch sent to Fender to cease the use of the name
"Broadcaster", a special section dedicated to
the Stratocaster's 40th anniversary, the first Fender
violin a one-of-a-kind Stringmaster steel, a prototype
mandolin, a dozen G&L guitars (including the popular
Broadcaster and L-2000 Bass), and a James Burton
signature model and the prototype Stevie Ray Vaughan
signature guitar from Fender's current custom shop.
Fender amps were sprinkled throughout the show. A special
section explained their significance to modern sound
reproduction and displayed the evolution of the Princeton
amplifier from 1946 to 1964. A large photo mural of surf-guitar
legend Dick Dale depicted him playing Showman amps in
1963 to a throng of young people, and pointed out the
importance of the teenage guitar market in Fender's early
days. The show also featured a comprehensive collection
of important Fender-related letters, catalogs, and
memorabilia. Video monitors displayed rare TV clips and
videos featuring performers with their Fenders, including
Buddy Merill on Lawrence Welk's show, James Burton with
the Shindogs, and Jimmy Bryant with Speedy West. A large
monitor in a side room played a previously unseen mid-'80s
video interview with Leo. At least 18 individuals, the
Fender company' and G&L graciously provided pieces
from their collections and inventory to make the
multimedia exhibit possible.
The Fender revolution sprang from a quasi-partnership
called K&F (Kauffman and Fender) Manufacturing. Doc
Kauffman, who Leo had first hired to repair phonographs,
accelerated Leo's interest in musical instruments, as
Fender would later acknowledge. Kauffman, more to the
point about those early days, once quipped, "Yeah, I
helped Leo start a thirteen million dollar business!"
Buoyed by the success of K&F's early lap steels and
amps, Fender saw his chance to fill the void left by
guitar companies put out of the music business by World
War II. Kauffman, leery of risk with the Depression still
fresh in his mind, left Leo in early '46.
In 1947 the Fender Blectric Instrument Co. line included
the fabled wooden cabinet amplifiers and hardwood steel
guitars. Fender's exclusive distributor was Santa Ana's
Radio & Television Equipment Company (Radlo-Tel),
owned by EC. Hall and managed by Donald D. Randall. Hall
provided the necessary cash to save Fender when the
business floundered that year. Then Leo caught the wave
of postwar prosperity As the '40s drew to a close, many
players considered Fender the leading innovator in
instrumentdesign. But endorsements from western swing
bands and steel guitarists - Leo's biggest promoters-carried
little weight on the East Coast. in 1950 Randall's East-Coast
salesman, Mike Cole, wrote to his boss, "The people
here in New York don't know who [steel player] Leon
McAuliffe is." Leo's guitars had few advocates,
except for radio star Alvino Rey, with nationwide stature.
Fender started work on the most obvious addition tohis
catalog - a standard guitar. He borrowed design ideas
from '30s Rickenbackers and the Merle Travis/Paul Bigsby
solidbody made in 1948. Fender and George Fullerton, the
factory's production foreman, made a single-pickup
prototype.Though Fullerton remembers working on this
guitar in1948, records, including letters written by Don
Randall in 1949,indicate that the instrument was still
incomplete by the summer of 1949. Potentiometers inside
the guitar date from the 31st week of 1949. After making
a second prototype with the more familiar Telecaster-shaped
headstock, Fender felt that he was ready to build guitars.
Radio-Tel introduced the single-pickup Esquire model in
April 1950, and a two-pickup version in May Leo
fashionedthe body from laminated pine; the guitar's
hardrock maple neck had no truss rod. Meanwhile, Don
Randall dealt with damage control as unfilled orders
stacked up - Leo was not ready to start production.
Fender added a cement-block building to his factory in
May 1950, and acquired tooling to produce the new guitars.
The black, dual-pickup, non-truss rod Esquire that
appeared at the museum dispels any lingering notion that
Fender had introduced a Broadcaster in 1948. (Leo and
George's mistaken memories had perpetuated this error for
years.) Fender's long-forgotten records show that he
purchased the dies for making the Esquire's second pickup
on June22, 1950. Race & Olmsted, a tool company,
billed Leo for the rhythm pickup cover form and blank
dies on July26 and August 21, respectively. Production of
non-truss rod single- and double-pickup Esquires was
limited to less than two dozen instruments, perhaps fewer.
After showing two at the summer trade shows, Don Randall
feared that the unreinforced necks would bow, and
implored Leo to stop production and fix the problem.
Leo designed a truss rod, and the dual-pickup guitar went
into full production as the Broadcaster model by November.
It first appeared on a December 1950 price sheet. The
factory produced the model through the third week of
February 1951, when Randall dropped the Broadcaster's
name at the request of Gretsch, who was manufacturing a
line of drums with that name. The single-pickup Esquire
went into full production with a truss rod in January
1951.
After Fender introduced his standard guitars, he invented
the Precision Bass, another true milestone in musical
instrument design. More than just a new model or a new
brand, Leo's bass embodied a new class of musical
instrument: a fully electric, fretted bass that was held
and played like a guitar. The term "Fender bass"
subsequently became generic for all electric basses,
regardless of the manufacturer. Though other
manufacturers seized Leo's idea, the Fender Precision
Bass and the Jazz Bass, in various incarnations, became
the most popular electric basses ever made. The
excitement that the Precision Bass created among serious
players-including jazz great Monk Montgomery-helped the
Fender company make further inroads into the realms
ofjazz and popular music and dispelled the cowboy age
that stuck like gum to a boot heel.
To meet the growing demand, Fender, Randall, Hall, and
salesman Charlie Hayes formed a streamlined organization,
Fender Sales, Inc., that replaced Radio-Tel for marketing
Fender instruments in 1953. Fender moved his factory to
three new industrial buildings at 500 5. Raymond Avenue
in Fullerton where he introduced the Stra-tocaster, a
fancier model that was designed to compete with Gibson,
Epiphone, and Gretsch. Though Leo might have scoffed at
the notion, the Stratocaster represented the high point
of his life as an inventor.
The Stratocaster was the first guitar designed with both
the player's comfort and playing ease in mind. Its built-in
vibrato was Leo's attempt to top earlier efforts by Doc
Kauffman and Paul Bigsby at putting shimmering sound
effects at the player's fingertips. Unfortunately Leo's
first design was a disaster. He desperately spent at
least six months in 1953 trying to perfect it and lost
several thousand dollars on useless equipment and tooling.
Finally glving up the original design, he quickly re-thought
the problem and finished what he called the new "hurry-up
design" by the end of 1953. In a letter written in
April 1954, Randall promised to ship the first
Stratocasters on May 15. Several examples-which Forrest
White calls prototypes or "guinea pig" test
models rather than true production models - that were
made during these weeks exist, including #0100, which was
shown at the Fullerton museum.
White, who started working at the Fender plant on May 20,
1954, was just the industrial engineer and plant manager
that Fender needed to make the company world class.
According to Don Randall, "Leo was not a production
man in the beginning. He was a thinker and a tinkerer. It
took somebody [Forrest White] to go in there and organize
things to make it go because it was kind of running by
itself." White, Leo Fender's only plant manager,
handled day-to-day operations, including factory
expansion during Fender's fastest period of growth. By
1958 the company had nine buildings; by 1964 the number
of buildings grew to 29. Despite a rough-and-tumble start,
Fender's factory emerged as a model for the industry by
the late '50s.
Fender developed several successful instruments alter the
Stratocaster. Although the Jazzmaster, which was
introduced in 1958, changed few minds in jazz circles, it
found its way into the fabric of a teenage musical
subculture, making a big splash with instrumental rock
bands that emulated Dick Dale, the Ventures, and other
bands. Other guitars and basses that Leo designed include
the Jaguar, Mustang, electric 12-string, Bass Vi, Jazz
Bass, and several acoustic guitars. Each instrument that
Fender introduced represented a building block towards a
complete line of instruments. He wanted to meet musicians'
and music dealers' needs, even if that meant making some
guitars with limited appeal.
Fender was by far the most important trendsetter in the
early-'60s musical instrument industry. But being self-taught
in electronics, he worried that the new transistor
technology would put him out of business He also suffered
a lingering strep infection that sapped his energy.
Sometime in the early '60s, the inventor decided to sell
his company. Randall and Fender - who had been sole
partners in Fender Sales since 1955 - discussed selling
Fender to the Baldwin piano company or becoming a
publiccorporation. Finally, they sold the company to CBS
for $13 million, effective on January 5,1965.
Retained by CBS as a consultant, Leo moved his lab to
1013 East Elm Street in Fullerton, starting his new
company, CLF Research. He developed the Mustang Bass and
patented a 12-string bridge, an acoustic guitar bridge,
and a vibrato tailpiece for acoustic-electrics. Fender
also designed his own advanced B-string bender, a pull-string
gadget for playing steel guitar licks. Yet CBS protected
its investment by using ideas that seemed commercially
viable. Predictably, Fender felt unappreciated and shut
out of decision making. White has sald that this was the
saddest period in Leo's professional life.
Leo's contract with CBS expired in 1970. In 1972 Leo,
White, and Tom Walker, a former Fender salesman and an
amp designer, formed Music Man. Leo moved CLF Research to
an 18-acre industrial park on Fender Avenue in Fullerton
and tooled up to make Music Man's novel Sting Ray guitar.
To Leo's chagrin, most '70s rock musicians wanted
Telecasters, Stratocasters, and Gibson Les Pauls. Leo's
Music Man guitars never found a niche. However, Music Man's
Sting Ray and Sabre basses - with the trademark peghead
designed by White- did receive the praises of many
musicians in the late '70s.
By 1979, CBS-Fender was selling over 40,000 instru-ments
a year - more a testimony to Leo's name than corporate
competence, manufacturing skill, or quality control.Sloppy
workmanship on the so-called three-bolt Stratocasters
allowed necks to move back and forth laterally, thus
changing the guitars' pitch. One former employee
explained that Leo's prized factory tools had become too
old and dull to make precision cuts. Throughout the '70s,
CBS falled to reinvest in modern factory equipment. The
painters replaced lacquer finishes with durable yet
unmusical, almost sticky polyester finishes. in the '70s,
a new Telecaster that was hanging in Fullerton Music had
pencil marks and the word flaw visible under the finish.
In the old days, the guitar would have received a
stunning custom color. But CBS's managers lacked Leo's
alchemist skills at turning lead into gold.
The company had additional problems. Other companies had
always emulated Fender designs. In the '70s, some copies,
especially the much-improved Japanese imports, were
better and less expensive than CBS-Fender guitars.
Moreover, the U.S. entered a deep economic recession and
interest in guitars dropped; teenagers bought computer
games instead of music gear. One of the few bright
examples from the '70s Fender company was the 25th
Anniversary Stratocaster.
Leo considered it regression to copy his old guitars,
even though it may have been an easy path to success.
Paradoxically whlle he designed new models with unproven
features, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, and many others
burned the old-Fender snarl even deeper into the
collective consciousness. The fusion of jazz, country,
rock, and blues reached new levels and found common
ground in the sound of Leo's vintage guitars. Collectors
appreciated even more how Leo Fender had changed music
history and how Fenders had become cultural icons -
symbols of American ingenuity and the spirit of freedom.
Admired and played worldwide, Fender guitars contributed
to the globalization of Western democratic values and
culture, especially in Communist Eastern Europe. Writer
Jim Washburn suggests that Leo Fender did more to bring
down the iron curtain than Ronald Reagan.
Surprisingly, Leo Fender did not realize how important
and popular his early guitars had become when he founded
G&L in 1980. (G&L first stood for George
Fullerton and Leo Fender and later, Guitars by Leo.) His
new models sported novel bodies, bridges, vibrato units,
neck construction, and pickups. Leo thought that his new
guitars were the best he had ever made. But during the 'BOs,
Leo supported G&L out of his pocket. Despite Dale
Hyatt's tireless devotion to sales efforts, the rise in
imports and the historic down-turn in guitar sales
continued. (The Los Angeles Times reported that the music
industry sold 1.4 million guitars and fretted instruments
in 1989, a littie more than half the 1972 total. Only 135,000
of these instruments had Made In USA labels.)
CBS finally saw that Fender needed fixing and recruited a
new management team headed by John McLaren from Yamahas
American division. (After Leo's death, McLaren would head
G&L.) William Schultz became Fender's president. By
1982, Fender returned to Leo's original pre-CBS headstock
shapes and began making vintage reissues based on the
original specifications. Schultz embarked on a much
needed but belated factory modernization program.
Unfortunateiy it disrupted and delayed production while
copies produced in Japan further wore away the company's
worldwide profits. Work continued at the Fullerton
factory, where employment had dropped from an historic
high of about 1,100 employees to 90. By 1984 CBS decided
to sell the company. A group of investors headed by
Schultz bought Fender's name and distribution for $12.5
mIllIon in March1985. CBS reportedly lost $38 million.
Until Fender's new owners could establish a new factory,
the company sold imports and old stock.
The Fender company soon set up shop in Corona and focused
on quality rather than quantity. It introduced the
American Standard models: first a Stratocaster and then a
Telecaster. Fender's image, tarnished by CBS, started to
shine again. As the new plant increased its capacity,
foreign exchange rates moved to favor American-made
exports. In a remarkable turn-around, the business
thrived. What started as a 14,000 square-foot area
devoted to guitars in 1985 became an 80,000 square-foot
facility by 1990. Furthermore, the new Fender Custom Shop
headed by John Page started setting new standards of
excellence.
When Leo applied for the patent on his first guitar 50
years ago, he had little idea of where his work would
lead. Rock and roll music, long-playing records, much
less digital CDs, did not exist. Bands all had horns, and
no one wore earplugs at concerts. The unforeseen,
unpredictable consequences of electric guitars reached
beyond anyone's prior experience. Today, few people doubt
the influence Fender had on the progress of electric
guitars, modern music, and culture. While the Fender show
was perhaps the first and last time many of these
important Fender-designed guitars would be to gether on
display, Leo's legacy lives in instruments enjoyed by
millions of players and listeners. He designed and
created high quality, affordable guitars, that are, as he
used to say, "tools for musicians." Helping
define the music of all generations born alter World War
II, Fender guitars will influence musicians for many
years to come. |
