1946 - Leo renamed his business to the Fender Electric Instruments Company. He turned his radio shop over to Dale Hyatt so he could concentrate on building instruments. By 1949 Fenderguitars and amps were firmly established in the music industry.
1950 - During the spring of this year, the Fender Electric Instruments Company introduced a single and dual pickup solid body electric guitar. It was named the Esquire, about 50 were made, and were not fitted with a truss rod. Orders were being placed, though before production started, the instrument had been modified with an adjustable neck and renamed the Broadcaster. It was renamed again a year later to the Telecaster. The rename was done due to a conflict with Gretch Broadkaster drums.
1951 - Leo closed his repair shop to focus entirely on building solid body instruments, which by late 1951 included the first electric bass. The Precision bass is one of the most popular bass designs to this day. Leo needed an amp to run it through though, so he built the Bassman amp.
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1954 - This was the year the Stratocaster was introduced. The most popular guitar ever made and copied. It made the Fender company worth millions and made Leo an icon in the music world.
From it’s release in 1954, the strat had many changes made from year to year, including varying amounts of contouring on the body, materials used for the control knobs, pickguard, headstock shape, serial number placement, etc.
1964 - Fender begin production of their acoustic guitars. Fender at this point now had over 600 employees, 500 of them in manufacturing. At age 55, Leo suffered health problems and offered to sell Fender Electric Instruments to his parter in Fender Sales, Donald Randall, for $1.5 million. Randoll not having the resources to purchase the company himself, agreed to find another buyer. In August the Fender Mustang was introduced
Fender 70th Anniversary Esquire Maple
1965 - On January 5th 1965, Fender was sold to a subsidiary of CBS (Columbia Broadcasting Systems) called Columbia Records Distribution Corp. for $13 million. CBS began making changes almost immediately.
1966 - Forest White was demoted from vice-president to plantmanager after the takeover. He quit less than two years later over a dispute regarding the quality of an amplifier CBS planned on producing.
1969 - Donald Randall, now vice-president and general manager under CBS also left the company. His departure was due to corporate politics and concerns over quality. Many other long term employees felt quality was taking a back seat since CBS took over.
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It was strange. By the start of 1975, the Stratocaster was at its most popular—more and more artists were playing them and more people than ever were buying them, yet the new ones weren’t nearly as good as the older ones. Plenty were decent enough instruments, but few were great instruments. Fender couldn’t make Stratocasters fast enough in the mid ’70s, and that was undoubtedly the problem, because in the rush to produce more and more of them under the corporate bureaucracy of CBS, corners were cut and ill-advised design decisions were made.
1980 - The larger headstock design introduced by CBS is abandoned, and the original smaller shape returns. The same year, Leo Fender and George Fullerton (a long term employee at Fender) form G&L guitars (George and Leo).
During the early 80’s CBS also recruited three top executives from Yamaha Musical Instruments. John McLaren, William Schultz and Dan Smith. In The Fender Book, Tony Bacon and Paul Day, quote Smith:
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We were brought in to kind of turn the reputation of Fender around, and to get it so it was making money again. It was starting to lose money, and at that point in time everybody hated Fender. We thought we knew how bad it was. We took for granted that they could make Stratocasters and Telecasters the way they used to make them, but we were wrong. So many things had changed in the plant. — Dan Smith
1982 - William Schultz practically shut down U.S production of Fender guitars. Focussing on reissuing limited edition high end “classic” pre CBS Fenders.
1985 - On the 5th of March, CBS sells up to the management group run by William Schultz for $12.5 million. The company name was changed to Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. However, the sale did not include many Fender patents, machinery and nor the Fullerton facility, which was sold separately. As a result, no U.S production was taking place. Only Japanese models appeared in the 1985 catalogue. At this point after the sale. Fender Musical Instruments Corp. were roughly $11 million in debt.
Fender's “first Gen” Strat
Fender’s first modern-era CEO, William Schultz, served as the company’s president during its final years under CBS in the early 1980s. He and a small group of investors bought Fender from CBS in 1985, whereupon he engineered the creation of the modern Fender corporation.
1987 - Two years after U.S production was shut down, Fender open their custom shop in Corona California. This same year the American Standard Strat is released.
1991 - Fender move their headquarters in Corona to Arizona. Over seeing all their facilities, now on a global scale. Including, the U.S, Mexico, Japan, France, Korea, Chine, the UK and Germany.
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Leo Fender passed away on a rainy day in March 1991. His private workshop at G&L remains largely untouched to this day.
1996 - Production of Fender guitars is estimated at 50, 000 guitars a year. The company at this point is worth approximately $250 million.
1998 - A new state of the art 177, 000 square foot facility is built in Corona, California. Built on a nineteen acre site, which at this time can manufacture 350 guitars per day.
Fender 70th Anniversary Esquire
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After graduating from Fullerton High School, Leo attended Fullerton Junior College where he studied to be an accountant. He continued to teach himself electronics, and tinker with radios and other electrical items. Leo never took any kind of formal electronics training. He later became a bookkeeper and learned a bit about running a business. While working as an accountant, a local band leader asked Leo if he could build a public address system for use by the band at dances in Hollywood. You could not drive over to Guitar Center or Sam Ash in those days. These were not “off-the-shelf” items. Fender was eventually contracted to build six of these PA systems.
Leo married his fist wife, Esther Klosky in 1934 and took a responsible job with California Highway Department in San Luis Obispo. However, his government job was eliminated due to cut backs. After losing another job as an accountant at a Tire company due to downsizing after only six months, Leo had enough with balancing numbers.
The Origin Of The Electric Guitar
In 1938, with a borrowed $600, Leo and Esther returned to Fullerton, and Leo started his own radio repair shop, “Fender Radio Service.” This is where the Fender story begins. He opened up his small shop to repair radios, phonograph players, home audio amplifiers, public address systems and musical instrument amplifiers. In the late 1930’s they were all based on vacuum tubes with the original designs based on research developed and released to the public domain by Western Electric which made telephone company equipment.
Leo’s store front business also carried records for sale and the rented self-designed PA systems. Leo began building amplifiers based on his own designs or modifications to designs, that he felt improved their quality and usefulness. The Fender Radio Service was one of the few places around Fullerton to buy records or get a radio repaired. Leo was a smart businessman and provided whatever items or devices out of his little business that could possibly make a profit. Local musicians and band leaders began coming to Leo for PA systems, which he built, rented, and sold. They also visited his store for amplification for acoustic guitars that were beginning to be seen used in big band and jazz music, and for the electric “Hawaiian” or “lap steel” guitars that were becoming quite popular.
During WWII, in the early 1940’s Leo Fender met Clayton Orr “Doc” Kauffman who was a musician and formally the chief designer of electric guitars for Rickenbacker, which had been building and selling lap steel guitars for a decade. Doc Kauffman invented and patented one of the first mechanical vibrato units, Vibrola (sometimes called “Kauffman Vibrola” or “Kaufman vibrato”) in 1935. He soon became Leo Fender’s business partner and they founded the K & F Manufacturing Corp to design, manufacture, and market electric instruments and amplifiers.
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