Explain me Fender guitars, for I am a dumbass

this thread is probably as good a place as any to get the fact that i think that fender has lost their way and is pretty much turning out terrible overpriced crap at this point. i'm pretty much done with them at the store, and after picking up G&L as a line, I have no idea why anyone would keep buying the Fender stuff. Unfortunately they dont make a jazzmaster, so if you want one of those your options are limited to either the craptastic mexican versions or the unforgivably overpriced american ones.

it's sad really, all the people that revitalized fender in the late 80's are gone, and the people running the show now are so convinced of the value of their brand (and taking the company public) that the basic design tenets of reasonably priced easily modified repairable guitars have been passed up in favor of gouging the public - another good manufacturer gone the way of Gibson i'm afraid. lame.

xpost: not to keep banging on about G&L, but the fact that the ASATs (thats code for tele btw) have individually adjustable pole pieces that actually work (tech dork moment: the magnets on the G&Ls are actually attached to the pole pieces, so you aren't just moving the pole pieces like many screwtop pickup designs) is designed to fix this exact problem.

hmm nabs i haven't played plugged in in a couple months but that big of a jump from b to e is not one of the experiences i recall (and def something that would drive me crazy) w/my strat--which while i agree in principle with what you are saying john is a really amazing guitar.

oh i have nothing bad to say about fender guitars in general (well, some things on specific models obv), i just hate what has happened with the company. strats and teles are iconic brilliant examples of industrial design - its just unfortunate that fender has lost sight of why in the interest of piling up money and positioning themselves for public offering (although this is not confirmed, boosting your prices and acquiring as many brands as you can in a short period of time is textbook stock exchange wrangling). many of my instruments are fenders, and i love them all.

i think we're saying similar things--at this point i think there are a few amazing finds in their product line and a lot of stuff that's not worth the money for one reason or another.

the most egregious quality error on my guitar -- which I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't even notice until recently -- is that I think whatever mechanism is used to pot the bridge pickup just missed. as in, there is a pole-sized dot of wax immediately adjacent to each actual pole, at a slightly incorrect angle.

oh, that and a tiny spur in the first fret that the E string would hang on when bent a bit, but seriously how often am I gonna bend the E at the first fret

it's sad really, all the people that revitalized fender in the late 80's are gone, and the people running the show now are so convinced of the value of their brand

If you a copy instore, it's expensive, you'd probably enjoy reading The Soul of Tone which is a very thick coffee table book on the company's history of amp making. From that, it's probably overstating it a bit that they've done nothing in the last few years that's been good, but the people in charge are very much into maximizing the history of the brand and trying to convince that the magic is back.

I bought a Fender SuperChamp XD soon after they were issued and am still fairly impressed by it, all things considering. Of course, it's made in China and I have one that has been solid.

But near the end of the book, it's fairly thin on things Fender can point to to be proud of. They seem very hot on their SuperSonic amp design.

I think they're stuck with the same thing so many famous US companies are saddled with. They made the decision years ago to dismantle all their manufacturing and have it done in a revolving ever-changing series of factories overseas, wherever the cheapest labor costs drive it. They lost quite a bit when they did that and it's not possible to get it back, even if they still have some custom manufacturing in the US.

I think of US-made Fender stuff as mostly aimed at people who can charge it off to their advances at major labels, upper middle class and upper class types buying as investments to hang on the wall in the basement and ...

I have a SuperSonic and the damn thing breaks down constantly.

If I could keep it in working condition and knew how to mod it to fix the high cut in the one channel I'd keep it but man she's been a bitch.

hi

jaguars are made of sex.

"buying as investments to hang on the wall in the basement" - that made me shiver. Even if it was a rare, legendary, played by a famous person guitar it's meant to be played!

I wonder how many of those Fender 40th Anniversary strats are actually ever played?

Baby boomer investment strategy?

I think they're stuck with the same thing so many famous US companies are saddled with. They made the decision years ago to dismantle all their manufacturing and have it done in a revolving ever-changing series of factories overseas, wherever the cheapest labor costs drive it. They lost quite a bit when they did that and it's not possible to get it back, even if they still have some custom manufacturing in the US.

OTM. I've seen two new identical guitars that have wildly different build qualities. If anything, if you're dead set on a Strat don't expect to find a good one in one day. Expect to play a lot of different ones, hem-and-haw, indecide for a bit, and end up putting together one from parts.

The Japanese-built Fenders seem to have a pretty good build quality with a narrow standard deviation between lousy and good.

do u know if the japanese ones are still a bitch to buy in america?

I dunno, I don't think of people who buy the expensive collector-ish ones as "investing" -- I just assume there are wealthy people who sorta play guitar but not really, who think hey, I want a really cool guitar to look at and hold and sometimes goof around on a little. I mean, hell, if in 15-20 years I have a lot of disposable income but don't play guitar that often, I will still sure as hell purchase a sweet-ass Rickenbacker, just, like, to have a sweet-ass Rickenbacker. And play around for half an hour once a month.

do u know if the japanese ones are still a bitch to buy in america?

― call all destroyer, Friday, August 14, 2009 8:33 PM (1 hour ago)

yep, like nearly impossible.

This deals with the guitar as an investment thing and came about after I read something related and non-sensical in the Wall Street Journal. Before the bottom fell out of the economy, Guitar Center was pretty regularly sending me a catalog with featured investment-type guitars, things so thoughtlessly
ridiculous only people with egos and bankrolls so big you wouldn't want to stand in the same room with would buy.

However, haven't seen any similar promotions in about a year.

http://www.dickdestiny.com/blog/2007/08/chronicles-of-annoying-continued-more.html

I was at this guitar shop down the street the other day (waiting for them to quit haggling with this kid who wanted to buy an amp for less than than what it cost the store to have it on their floor) and I saw a "distressed" guitar whose cracks and dings had been PAINTED on! And then one of the store guys tried to convince me the "cracks" were REAL! I mean it was clearly airbrushed or whatever and even had a clear coat over it.

yep, like nearly impossible.

There's a pretty steady eBay grey market though as long as you follow standard buyer-beware principles. I found my Japanese Strat XII from a local guy this way

man this thread is kind of interesting in a historical sense, didn't realize that i had scooped the (now failed) IPO on here that long beforehand. also the shift of fender has gotten weirder, with the new run of models that are fender branded and made in china. really the big winner in all of this appears to have been G&L, who are probably having the best year in the history of the company. how things change etc.

one of the prime reasons cited for the IPO failure was the amount of unpaid invoices fender is sitting on from guitar center/musicians friend (30-30% of fenders total income iirc), and the general feeling in the business community that they will never get paid.

kind of bittersweet to feel vindicated abt all of this because i do love fender guitars (well some of them. mostly older ones) and it's a shame to see the company go down this path.

but enough abt that, somebody come up with a weird fender question, im bored

so they now make guitars in usa, mexico, china, japan (still??), any other places?

sry that's not really a weird question.

still some korean production as well, not sure if they have anything out of indonesia. various rumors abt the starcasters (which are bizarrely unmarked with country of origin) being made in india (this is not good, those have been some pretty terrible guitars throughout history)

have you ever heard stories about someone attempting to insert their Fender rectally? if so, how far did he/she get?

(look, you're the one who asked for weird questions)

did i ever tell you about the dude who got his arm stuck in his acoustic guitar and drove over to the shop with it hanging out his car window

hahaha yes you did, classic

iirc the special technique you used to get his arm out of the guitar was "pull arm out of hole"

we i lived in india we bought some really awesome/awful and cheap musical equipment for various shitty bands i was in. "ivanez" guitars e.g. i vaguely remember a wah-wah pedal that had a string between the expression pedal and the base.

thats actually a sort of timehonored tradition tho, at least with volume pedals, the old ernie ball/fender/dearmond volume pedals all ran/still run with a string loop.

oh cool, i guess it was an artisanal handcrafted wahwah then

Library coworker of mine did this interview with the guy who did the Fender history book:

http://stereoembersmagazine.com/75-years-of-fender-guitars-an-interview-with-guitar-and-amplifier-historian-dave-hunter/