How a man electrified music without playing a note
Most profiles of Leo Fender say that despite developing some of our most iconic electric guitars and bass guitars he wasn’t a musician.
That’s not true. He played the saxophone.
What he didn’t play was guitar or bass. He just made them.
Clarence Leonidas Fender was born in a barn on his parents’ fruit farm in southern California in 1909.
When he turned 8, he developed a tumor in his left eye. Doctors removed the eye and gave him a glass one. It was an otherwise pleasant, if somewhat dull, childhood growing up on the farm.
In his elementary school’s shop class, he built his first crystal radio. That started his interest in electronics.
In November of 1920, the first nationwide radio broadcast announced the results of the presidential election, with Warren G. Harding beating James M. Cox.
Young Leo was hooked on radio and its potential.
His uncle, John West, lived in the big city of Santa Maria. Well, it was a big city compared to what Leo was used to. The two towns near the farm, Anaheim and Fullerton, each had populations of around 2,000 at the time. Santa Maria had 8,000 and Uncle John’s upscale clothes and mannerisms gave him a big city vibe.
Everyone should have a cool uncle.
Uncle John owned an auto shop and dabbled in electronics.
As a Christmas gift, he gave young Leo a box of discarded electric car parts. Leo spent hours fiddling with the pieces to figure out what he could do with them.
Leo didn’t take part in sports or other after-school activities. Instead, he rushed home to tinker with electronics. He eventually became so skilled that he began fixing his neighbors’ radios and other devices. He enjoyed it, so he didn’t charge anyone.
He never studied electrical engineering. Instead, he majored in Accounting at Fullerton Junior College. He graduated just as the Great Depression hit.
It took him a while to find work in a bad economy.
He eventually was hired and laid off by an ice company, and then by the California Highway Department.
It was through no fault of his own. That’s just what happens in an unstable economy. He was then hired by a tire company.
Through all of that, he continued experimenting with electronics.
He became known around town as the guy who can fix your broken radio or record player. At some point, he decided to start charging for these repairs, earning a little extra money on the side.
His stellar reputation and business sense made him an attractive bachelor, but not for long. At 25, he married Ester Klosky. Shortly after that, with the economy still struggling to recover, the tire company laid him off.
Getting laid off three times was enough for him, and he spread the word that he was starting his own company, Fender Radio Service.
His first big job was building six large PA systems for a Hollywood band leader.
He was soon repairing, building, selling, and renting radios, PAs, and instrument amplifiers. His accounting background no doubt helped keep the business solvent.
Since he was doing so much work on amplifiers, he stocked his shop with strings, straps, picks, and other accessories musicians need, and learned to add pickups to acoustic guitars.
He sold records and players, too, and added more square footage to the store to accommodate all this new merchandise.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. The next day, over 100,000 men tried enlisting in the military. Leo wasn’t eligible for service due to his glass eye.
There was a huge demand for electronics after the US entered the war. Most of the increase was for military communications and radar, but the general public wanted radios to stay informed. Leo’s business grew with the demand. It got to be too much for one person.
Clayton “Doc” Kauffman was one of his regular customers.
He worked for the Rickenbacker company and had invented the Vibrola, which predates the whammy bar bridges that became popular in the 50s and 60s. Leo asked Doc if he wanted to team up.
In 1943, they formed what would later become the Fender Electric Instrument Company.
Towards the end of WWII, Big Band music fell out of favor and were replaced by smaller combos playing Western Swing, Rockabilly, and Jump Jive. These bands needed instruments with volume sufficient to fill a dance hall.
Hawaiian and steel guitars were Fender’s first big sellers…
…And, after installing all those pickups in acoustic guitars, Leo saw the sales potential of electric guitars, and that building them would bring in more money than repairing them.
The company struggled under the weight of its success.
They needed to expand the factory but couldn’t due to cash flow problems. Any income was immediately spent building new instruments. In the late 40s, they also had the financial shock of having to destroy 500 lap steel guitars that were ruined by termites.
Leo hired a manager for the store as he concentrated on the new company.
The Fender team designed the Esquire as a solid body guitar with its single pickup near the bridge. It was the same pickup used on the Fender Champion lap steel and is thought to be the first pickup with individual magnets for each string.
The position near the bridge gave the guitar a twang that fit with Western Swing and Country perfectly. Even today, most Country players prefer that pickup position.
The first production run was in 1950. They added a two pickup model that was initially called the Broadcaster, but the Gretsch company had trademarked that name for their “Broadkaster” line of banjos and drums. Gretsch objected and Fender removed the name from the instruments they hadn’t sold yet.
For a brief period, the two- pickup model was sold with the Fender logo, but no name.
They’re now referred to as the “Nocaster” and are extremely valuable due to the small number produced. In August 1951, Fender renamed it the Telecaster.
Fender manager Don Randall not only came up with the name, he brought the prototype — or maybe just photos, the record is unclear — to the NAMM show in New York in 1949, and he got people excited. The idea of a bolt-on neck with a truss rod on a solid body with two pickups is exactly what the market wanted. Orders came in before the factory was ready.
Due to a contract with a distributor, Fender couldn’t sell instruments directly to stores. The company needed cash for machinery, however, and sold guitars as “samples” without going through the distributor. The distributor could have sued but they knew the position Fender was in, and looked the other way.
What made the Telecaster so successful:
- The solid body design allowed for louder volume without feedback
- The bolt-on neck which gave the instrument a brighter sound
- And a fully adjustable bridge to allow each string to be its own distance from the neck.
The Telecaster’s simple construction would stand up to heavy touring and varied environmental conditions.
Some musicians resisted the Telecaster’s bolt-on neck, thinking it would be weak.
But Fender released a photo of an employee standing on a neck suspended between two chairs.
It changed some minds.
The adjustable bridge was a leap forward, too.
Previously, the strings’ length could be changed only by moving the entire bridge. This new bridge let each string have its own length which gave the guitar better intonation across all its strings.
The bolt-on neck, along with its internal truss rod and the adjustable bridge, allowed the guitarist to change the guitar’s “action.”
This is the term for the distance from the string to the fretboard. Some people like the string low, close to the neck, and others prefer it higher.
Everyone has their own sweet spot. Having all these adjustments handy let the players set the instrument perfectly just before a show, no matter how the wood swelled due to humidity.
The bolt-on neck idea made production easier, but Fender thought if a neck ever needed repair, it could be removed and sent to the factory.
He also thought that the bolt-on neck would allow guitarists to remove the neck for easier transportation.
Few people actually did either of those things.
As expected, Country and Western players loved the Telecaster, but so did early Rockabilly and Electric Blues guitarists.
It became a big hit with early Rock & Roll and even some Jazz players. It was the first commercially successful mass-produced solid-body electric guitar and is still one of the most popular guitar models today.
Fender often talked with musicians to figure out what they needed. As bands got smaller, guitarists were concerned about losing work and some considered doubling on bass.
But upright bass is a completely different animal. It’s huge and doesn’t have frets.
So in 1951, Fender introduced the Precision Bass.
Like the Telecaster, it had a slab ash body and a bolt-on neck. Fender got nearly everything right with the Precision.
The 34 inch length of the strings, the adjustable bridge, and the volume and tone controls are still the industry standards.
Fender recognized that the Precision wouldn’t work well with guitar amplifiers, and might even ruin them, so they introduced the Bassman amplifier.
With a 15 inch speaker and 26 watts of power, the bass was louder and more present than any upright.
While Paul Tutmarc invented the bass guitar, the Precision was the first commercially successful bass, but not at first. People are sometimes slow to adopt new ideas. Leo had hoped Country bassists would like it – but the first real success came from the Jazz world. Leo gave a Precision to Lionel Hampton’s bass player Roy Johnson.
Downbeat magazine wrote in July 1952 about how his bass was revolutionary.
The Precision eventually became so popular that some people took to calling the electric bass guitar the “Fender bass” even if the bassist was playing an instrument from some other manufacturer.
The factory had trouble keeping up with demand, and the same thing happened with Fender’s next model, the Stratocaster. It wasn’t a big seller at first, but eventually became one of the two best loved guitars in the world, along with the Gibson Les Paul.
Like the Broadcaster and Telecaster being named after the popularity of television, the Stratocaster was named after the new interest in outer space. Its three pickup design was initially seen as a gimmick.
But the vibrato bridge was an update everyone understood.
Existing vibratos loosened the strings before they passed over a stationary bridge.
If friction kept the strings from sliding all the way back, they’d be out of tune. Fender’s new design moved the entire bridge, including the saddles, thereby returning to the same pitch.
Leo had taken advice from musicians who said the square edges of the Telecaster were irritating on their forearms. The Stratocaster had a contoured body with rounded edges and cuts for the arm and belly. The contours were also added to the Precision in 1956, and it was given an improved split pickup.
Both the Stratocaster and the Precision have remained roughly the same ever since.
As the Downbeat article had done for the Precision, the Stratocaster was boosted into the limelight when Buddy Holly played one on The Ed Sullivan Show, and again when Jimi Hendrix made it do things no guitar had done before.
More models were added — the Jazzmaster, Jaguar, Mustang, the revolutionary two-pickup Jazz Bass — through the mid 1960s.
They all emphasized functionality, ease of manufacture, and repiarability. They always had bolt-on necks, modular electronics, and mass-production techniques.
The factory had been streamlined and they were making instruments in record numbers.
Unlike Gibson and Rickenbacker, Fender didn’t sell guitars and amps as packages. They sold instruments and amplifiers separately so musicians could mix and match.
The amps themselves had great tone control and offered reverb and vibrato.
They were built to take the rigors of touring, and used parts that could be found in almost any electronics store. Fender concentrated on reliability but if your amp broke in Modesto, you could fix it before the next show in Stockton.
Leo developed a persistent streptococcal sinus infection. He was misdiagnosed but he was convinced he was dying and needed to get his affairs in order. That meant selling the company. He first offered it to Don Randall for $1.5 million. Randall didn’t have that much but he offered to find a buyer.
CBS, the television network, bought Fender in 1965 for $13.5 million.
The quality of the instruments almost immediately went downhill.
Leo didn’t die, obviously. He switched doctors and recovered from everything, except the itch to innovate.
Though he was constrained by a ten year non-disclosure agreement with CBS, he helped finance the Music Man amplifier company.
He became the company’s president in 1975 and designed the StingRay bass, the first production bass guitar with active (meaning battery powered) electronics.
Bassists loved the StingRay’s strong, clear tone and it became Leo’s third hugely successful bass guitar.
He left Music Man in 1979 and started another company with George Fullerton.
Called G&L, for George and Leo, they made guitars and basses that looked and played like early Fenders, but used updated electronics and hardware.
In his later years, he had several minor strokes and developed Parkinson’s disease. He worked until he couldn’t anymore, dying in March 1991.
This is just a thumbnail sketch of a long, full life.
The music of the past 80 years would not have been possible without him, and we might have not had him if he had gone off to war.
It’s impossible to know what other innovations we’ve lost through violence, sanctioned or otherwise. So we should celebrate the geniuses who brought us joy.
The masterful Leo Fender is high on that list.
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Over the past few days, there’s been a cat hanging around our house and eating our cats’ food. He seems healthy but is missing an eye. I hope to befriend him, get him neutered, and have the vet make sure his eye is OK.
Not that we want another cat but if he becomes ours, we’re going to name him Leo.
“12 cats live across the road…”
This is the beginning of the best press conference ever. Coastal Carolina football head coach Bennett Presser. I’ll watch this about 3-5 times a year. Also, Mia the beagle running the agility course at Westminster.
Good stuff as always Bill. Leo comes across as refreshingly down to earth, all round good guy and without any business / personal life disasters that often crop up. Ok so he did sell out to CBS but that was understandable in the circumstances and sounds like he just got on with starting over again once he realised he wasnt living with a death sentence.
As a non musician Fender has always come across as a cool brand, a reputation to be respected. Given what you said about the downturn in quality after the CBS takeover did they turn it back round?
Yes. Fender’s employees got together and bought the company from CBS in 1985. It took a while but the quality eventually got better and now it really depends on which model you get. Fender has factories all over the world and a Stratocaster made in Indonesia isn’t the same as a Stratocaster made in Mexico.
Their low end guitars made in China aren’t bad, but the expensive American ones are really, really good, and there are all sorts of variations in-between. Personally, I like the Squier (their budget brand) basses made in Indonesia since 2011. That factory is doing things right.
Great read!
I assume you have read this, but if not, this was a fantastic book about Fender and Les Paul:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Loud
Yup, it’s on the shelf in the next room. Good stuff.
Great work, Bill. It might not have made me cry in a building supply store, but this Fender history is definitely a 10.
My son the musician swears by his Tele. He has a B-bender, of all things, but he removed all of the mechanical stuff because it made the thing even heavier. He also had a Strat, but it never felt right for him. I think he thought it was a poser guitar.