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Post subject: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 9:58 am
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I'm curious about what new guitars Fender is working on and what there design process is like for designing new guitars. I can only imagine how exciting the Stratocaster was when it was first released. Is Fender trying to design new models? I'm really curious to know what Fenders take is on this and what their plans are. I'd love to see some exciting new guitars soon.


Last edited by emeunier on Fri Aug 26, 2011 3:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 10:55 am
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Virtually every all-new electric guitar designed and marketed in the post-1964 era has fallen flat on its face, regardless if it came from Fender, Gibson, or any other major manufacturer. The closest that could be regarded as a commercial success would be the PRS line, but they themselves are variations of the Gibson Les Paul paradigm. The guitar market is a tough nut to crack since so many players have been weaned on the traditional Strat/Tele/LP/SG/ES types.

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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 11:20 am
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I think there are really only solid body two electric guitar designs, a Strat and a Les Paul. Everything else is a variation.

Just my opinion.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 12:12 pm
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nopedal wrote:
I think there are really only solid body two electric guitar designs, a Strat and a Les Paul. Everything else is a variation.

Just my opinion.


I sort of agree - although I would also add the Tele and the Gibson thinline ES models (335/345/355) to that list of really enduring designs. The others might have had a run like the Jazzmaster/Jaguar, the Gibson SG, Gretsch hollowbodies, or Rickenbackers, but they haven't necessarily been copied to the extent that the Strat, Tele, Les Paul, and ES have by other manufacturers. Even Fender had a couple of designs that were either essentially copies of the ES thinlines (the Coronados) or were the result of some kind of science experiment that crossed an ES 335 with a Jazzmaster (the Starcaster).


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2011 3:39 pm
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John C, good points. The reason I didn't include the tele (that I own and like )is because it is a little like the Paul, but the strat has a comfotable body, whammy bar, and 3 pickups that must have been thought of in the 50's as way out of the box.

As far as hollow body, I only give credit to the ES Gibson.

The Gretch, Rick, Guild, PRS ect. are very good guitars but are only variations of the three I mentioned.

Stressing this is only my opinion.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2011 12:01 am
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Telecaster - huge success
Telecaster Mk II (Strat) - even bigger success

Since then everything has been met with a fairly tepid response. So from a business point of view Fender have 60 years of experience that say stick with what works. In that time they've produced countless new guitars that were perfectly good guitars but had no or little market. Guitars like the Coronado and Starcaster, even though the guy who designed the Coronado (and presumably the Starcaster too but not sure) Roger Rossmeisl had previously worked for Gibson and Rickenbacker and knew semi-hollow guitars like the back of his hand. The problem was guitarists that wanted a semi hollow got Gibson so why take a risk on a Coronado or a Starcaster. And yet some collectors still buy them today because they were great guitars, the problem wasn't the guitar it was the market.

The same is true today, they take risks once in a while but nothing ever catches on (case in point: Katana, Cyclone) so they have no incentive to invest in new models.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2011 8:26 am
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I've often felt the same way about the American automotive industry and don't understand why we are not able to buy a brand new Ford Mustang (reissue?) that is built to the specifications of say the 1965 mustang.... Just as Fender has done with its line. Maybe even a Road Worn.....literally.

At the same time, as an industrial designer with a particular interest in musical instruments, I refuse to believe that we can't design better guitars or at least guitars on the same level. I also believe design can be a way out of tough economic times and would love to see companies like Fender take more risks, like they did on the Stratocaster, and continue to develop the instrument. I feel like the possibilities are limitless. The Stratocasters' success was not from luck or timing. It was revolutionary design work that I feel is not valued enough in our culture today and that needs to come back.

"Playing it safe" has close to nothing to do with Rock N' Roll...... or the American Dream. This said, Fender remains one of the product lines I am the most proud of as an American.


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:09 am
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Point is though it's nothing to do with design it's to do with markets. Fender have and so design new guitars all the time but they never catch on in such a way that they can continue to produce them long term. That does NOT mean that a. Fender are incapable of designing new guitars b. The new guitars Fender DO design a rubbish. If that was the case then it wouldn't be so hard to pick-up a 70s Starcaster, or a 60s Coronado, or a Fender XII, or any one other of just about any guitar Fender produced but didn't continue to manufacture beyond a few years. They're hard to pick-up because the people that have them love them.

Also as a note Emeunier you say that Fender took a risk on the Strat? Well to my thinking they almost did the opposte. The Strat (and why I call it the Tele MkII) was Leos attempt to completely supersede the Tele and he did that by talking to artists about what they had do/would do to their teles to make them more playable. The most common modification pros had made to the tele was to sand or saw off contours, so goodbye slab body and you're halfway to a Strat.

At Music Man Leo was determined to beter his early designs and a few met with some degree of success but not on the same planet as the Strat and Tele.

So point of long post is that it's nothing to do with the designing of guitars it's to do with the markets that buy the guitars. As long as all the market wants is Strats and Teles then thats all it gets (or at least most of what it gets)


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:05 am
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Skirt So Plain wrote:
Pawn Shop Mustang has been invented. Perfection achieved. Nothing left to accomplish.


Short scale with (non vintage) humbuckers??! Go buy a LP :p

In all seriousness though the Pawn Shop Stuff has been very interesting and you're right the Mustang most so (could of at least put the wide-range reissues on though)


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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Wed Apr 04, 2012 2:18 pm
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oh, i dunno about wide-range reissues... i like the sound of the wide range enforcers a LOT more. but i've also got almost no frame of comparison; the last time i heard wide-range was my dad's old 1970-something tele, and that's definitely a different beast than a mustang. i'm just struggling with balancing gain+volume knobs to actually pull a *clean* tone out of the humbuckers. but when that fails, flip the pickup switches, oops! now it's clean and sparkly and single-coil. not sure if i've ever owned or even played a guitar that's able to do so much, there's usually the feeling of "does a little bit of everything, but does none of it well". not gettin that feeling with the mustang special...

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Post subject: Re: Fender Design Team Designing New Guitars
Posted: Sat Apr 07, 2012 6:54 pm
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i wanna see them re-release the cyclone range and they could make swingers and the coronado again. id give my left nut for that to happen


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