Fender Musical Instruments Corp files for IPO

it is a first act! i have one and played a couple shows with it actually. switched out the pickups and it became something moderately cool.

http://blogs.cars.com/photos/uncategorized/vwguitar2.jpg

the garagemaster iirc

it wasnt super amazing abt staying in tune but i didn't have intonation or playability problems. also it had an onboard preamp which was kind of funny.

is there some study out there that shows that making these things in mexico really makes them worse, otherwise there seems to be some weird nationalist side to this

xp yeah! i put humbucker-sized p90s in it

actually the whole consumer audio thing is a v v likely component of this decision, i think fender is guessing that a bunch of rebranded import audio with fender logos on it could get loaded into every target/best buy/etc in the nation, and they already sell gtrs to best buy (in the pretty much doomed to fail music store in a store concept) and cheap guitars to target so the pipeline is already there.

xpost considering the guitars i am recommending are largely from korea and indonesia, i am def not on the nationalist tip

what makes the mexican guitars "worse" has nothing to do with the people that are building them, but has everything to do with the pickups/hardware that fender chooses to use in their budget line and a certain laxness re: usa side quality control checking.

like i am pretty confident in my statement that yugos suck, but it has nothing to do with yugoslavians being bad at making stuff and everything to do with parts and materials. well and in that case design which is less of a factor here.

are you defending yourself to iatee

http://www.geekalerts.com/u/marshall-dab-radio.jpg
;_;

what is that - a microwave?

a digital radio

lol

I really loved the super-mini Marshall amps that came out awhile ago, those are fun

xpost considering the guitars i am recommending are largely from korea and indonesia, i am def not on the nationalist tip

okay fair nuff, I misread your tone

wasn't there a point in Fender history when the Mexican Fenders were absolutely the business? the issue now with Chinese etc guitars is shoddy workmanship - I have a Chinese Guild, nice lookin tobacco sunburst on a guitar that plays like total garbage compared to old Guilds

I really loved the super-mini Marshall amps that came out awhile ago, those are fun

― the sir edmund hillary of sitting through pauly shore films (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, March 8, 2012 7:51 PM (4 minutes ago)

I have an MS-2 and it's a tonne of fun.

Also has the advantage of sounding fairly Marshall'y, which a DAB radio with a Marshall logo slapped on it doesn't.

well 2 things wrt that - one of the biggest and worst moves ever wrt fender purchases was when they decided to "retool" the guild brand to appeal more to the taylor customer (who they saw as the real competition) by thinning out the tops and basically nullifying all of the stuff that made guild guild, and alienated lotsa old school guild dudes in the process. it was a terrible misstep and prompted us to drop guild around that time after selling out our current stock (this was before the chinese stuff came around, but fender moved production in house and fired all the old guild dudes. lame.)

the second thing is that there are gradations of chinese factories when it comes to building guitars, and you pay for the factory level you want - ie if you use a budget factory, its not going to be a dedicated guitar builder, its just going to be a job lot so skillsets and consistency go pretty much out the window. if you use one of the high line chinese factories, you are going to pay a ton more for the guitar, but the quality is better because they have skilled luthiers building the thing. i have a chinese guitar hanging in the shop that is about 1K right now and it is the business, easily comparable to a 3K martin any day of the week. but theres still resilience against overseas stuff because the crap stuff is 80% of whats out there and creates a perception of what quality can be achieved.

xpost to aero

jj - been thinking about upgrading from my old Aria late 80s korean acoustic to something good/solid/midline priced

heard good things in the internets about Art & Lutherie/Seagull a Canadian company that apparently make pretty good value price 4-600-ish priced acoustics...you familiar?

or any other advice on a less than 1K acoustic

I can't speak for their six-strings, but I have an acoustic bass made by these guys that is like the best anything I have played, ever. The neck plays like a dream and the tone is super warm and rich. Good, solid, handmade instrument. Their stuff is in the sub-$1,000 range.

ha meeting of the minds, the company i was going to mention owns breedlove - its called bedell guitars and they start at $300. ive got a bunch in stock actually. the seagull/art &lutherie stuff is good too. also i will hook a brother up obv.

also re: the acquisition stuff i was talking abt upthread, when bedell bought breedlove priority number one was not to fuck with it, which included voluntarily hiring all the former owners on in executive positions.

if I got another Guild I'd want it to be the '71 I played in some way-too-expensive London guitar boutique, that thing sounded amazing, but I think I am actually (shield your eyes from this sentiment jjj!) maxed out on guitars. I had one built for me by John How a couple years ago and between that, my two Larrivees (SD-60 & OM-3), an old Gibson LG-1 & my electrics + the less check-it-out stuff I tour with I'm pretty much good I think

OTOH that '71 Guild was awful nice

Gibson LG-1s are the fucking awesomeness

like on my list of totally underrated old guitars that and the harmony sovereign are like in competition for spots 1 and 2

I hope by this time next year I can actually participate in the guitar geekery rather than sitting by the sidelines going "I can play C, E ang G chords on my Gibson Riviera if you give me enough time to move my fingers"

guys i have something that haunts me. when i was a little kid my mom bought me this hagstrom SG bass that was SO FUCKING COOL IN RETROSPECT but when i was like 13 i traded it in to get this corny pearl white Aria jackson/kramer type clone bass

:(

JJ - bedell sounds cool! i will check them out online and come holla @ you when i have the extra scratch

One drawback to that: you have to replace the tubes every three months.

VW actually made a 2012 Beetle with a tube amp that they displayed at car shows, no production plans unfortunately. Looks cool though, complete with Strat-like sunburst wood trim:

http://hybridvehicle-s.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/1ce72__volkswagen_beetle_fender_concept_show_floor_205_2_cd_gallery.jpg

I bought a VW when they were giving away those First Act guitars (I like to joke that I spent $18,000 for a First Act guitar, but it came with a free car). Agreed about the awful intonation. The built-in preamp is nifty though. The point was to promote the new-for-2007 aux-in input jack intended for iPods but the preamp allowed you to play the guitar through the aux-in too.

As for the IPO, well, it can't be worse than being bought out by CBS....

ha we are also selling hagstrom now so i can fulfill all of your wonderful needs dude xpost

The built-in preamp is nifty though.

A friend of mine does noise/drone stuff and swears by his First Act VW (minus the car) because of the preamp.

It's also useful for processing Motorik beats...

http://www.hagstromguitars.eu/index.php?option=com_zoo&task=item&item_id=120&category_id=18&Itemid=12

it has switchable distortion thru the preamp too, so you can get fuzztone through the car speakers, and yeah when played through a real guitar amp you can get some coruscating riffage by combining the built-in preamp distortion with the guitar amp distortion

hmmm did not know that, that's pretty interesting

Rosewood fretboard, which I don't think the wal-mart First Acts have. The color of the pickguard matches the color of the car you bought.

huh i didn't know hagstrom was still going!

thats the fun part, no one does! this is the benefit of liking weird stuff and owning a store

Fender changes their mind, will stay privately owned

With the decline of rock music as a popular influence, teenagers interested in making music are more likely to spend their limited cash on computers or other electronics. The traditional garage band, the lifeblood of electric guitar sales, has given way to electro-pop made on a laptop.

hmmmmm....

Time to bring back the fender blender

Fender still shaky, and Bain's controlling interest in Guitar Center isn't helping, for some reason.

The Guitar Center aspect of Fender's overall financial strategy is significant, for sure. But I don't think people realize how badly Facebook's IPO really ruined it for any company trying to go public at the time, as exchanges collectively took a hit. (I will need to look up when I am work what companies were added to NASDAQ in May/June and see their performance before/after FB's launch.) Investors collectively balked at doing anything for a hot minute.

Also, I find the Times' argument of "kids and their laptops and 'Guitar Hero' these days" totally weak. I don't see anything wrong with kids wanting to play "Guitar Hero" and/or "Rock Band." Fender is never going to win over that crowd because what motivates a person to pick up a video game is completely different than picking up a real instrument.

I think the disappearance of music education programs in schools (and at home), combined with the actual cost of equipment, says more about it than anything else this article tries to suggest