![]() “And Schultz figured that as the copyists made their biggest profits at home in Japan, that was the best place to hit back by making and selling Fenders there. “Fender’s sales were being hammered by oriental copies,” Bacon added. Simultaneously, Schultz suggested making Fenders in Japan. This meant production was virtually stopped while new machinery was installed and staff re-trained.” “And Bill Schultz recommended a program of investment, primarily to modernize the factory. “One of the first changes Dan Smith made was to revise the overall specs of the Strat,” said Tony Bacon, the author of 50 Years of Fender (Backbeat Books). The initial goal wasn’t so much to make an obvious reissue line, but to make Strats and Teles that were closer to their original specs. And John Page was also brought in he would later lead Fender’s renowned Custom Shop. Smith, Schultz, and Balmer consulted with some of the key employees of the pre-CBS Fender era, including designer Freddie Tavares, pickup winder Gail Paz, and final assembly inspector Gloria Fuentes, each of whom had over 20 years experience at Fender. Smith knew of the high regard players had of the pre-CBS Fenders, and their even lower regard for the ’70s equivalents. Their first step was to bring in Dan Smith from Yamaha and make him head of Fender’s guitar division. Roger Balmer – decided that they’d had enough of hearing of the glory days of the pre-CBS era. It began in 1981, when two of Fender’s executives – president Bill Schultz and V.P. Turning the CBS-controlled Fender around was a bit more problematic. While far from perfect copies of the great sunburst Pauls of the late 1950s, they at least replaced the then-standard three-piece tops of the newer Les Pauls with two-piece tops, with often stunning looking curly or flamed maple. In the late 1970s, Gibson geared up to produce its Heritage 80 line of reissue Les Pauls (VG, February ’04). Carlos Santana was regularly seen playing his Yamaha in concert and at high-profile gigs such as his 1978 appearance on “Saturday Night Live.”īut American manufacturers were slow to respond. And Yamaha designed its hybrid of the Gibson SG and Les Paul, dubbed the SG-2000. ![]() Tokai, in particular, produced extremely handsome clones. recording sessions armed with little more than his ’62 Fender Precision Bass.īy the mid ’70s, the Japanese responded to the vacuum by producing a series of increasingly accurate copies of vintage instruments. And pioneering Motown bassist James Jamerson continued to work in L.A. ![]() Roy Buchanan played a well-worn blond ’53 Telecaster. Eric Clapton toured with Blackie, a mongrel built from a variety of Fender Strats. Jimmy Page toured worldwide with a 1959 Les Paul, and switched to a Lake Placid Blue ’65 Stratocaster for numbers requiring a vibrato. Meanwhile, guitarists who read interviews with their favorite musicians observed that in the vast majority of cases, their primary stage and recording instruments weren’t the latest and greatest designs, but vintage instruments of the 1950s through the early ’60s. ![]() Numerous spin-off models of the Tele were created, though, some of which had the infamous three-bolt neck attachment. The basic Fender Telecaster wasn’t altered as radically, but was given the new headstock logo. The Strat’s larger headstock, its “television-friendly logo” in large block letters, and especially the three-bolt “micro-tilt” neck, didn’t sit well with fans. Since being purchased by CBS in 1965, Fender had radically modified the Stratocaster and Telecaster models on which its existence was essentially based. But both manufacturers, at the time mere cogs in large corporate wheels, all but ignored them. Serious electric guitar players and collectors clamored for reissues of the original instruments. Early reissues of the Stratocaster (left) and Telecaster.īy the late 1970s, cumulative changes in the details of the various classic guitar models on the market – Fender’s Stratocaster and Telecaster, and Gibson’s Les Paul – were so numerous that the instruments barely resembled their original versions.
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