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Founder
Leo Fender
1909–1991 · Anaheim, California
The radio repairman who reshaped electric guitar
He couldn't play a single chord. Yet he built the instrument the whole blues conversation began to flow through.
Clarence Leo Fender grew up on a citrus farm outside Anaheim. As a teenager he lost the sight in one eye — said to be the reason he never played guitar himself. He fell in love with electronics instead. He fixed radios, built PA rigs for farm meetings, and opened Fender's Radio Service in Fullerton in 1938.
When he started building guitars, he did it with an engineer's eye. No fancy joinery. Bolt-on necks, parts that could be mass-produced, pickups that could take a beating. The Telecaster (1950) was the first solid-body electric anyone built at scale. The Stratocaster arrived four years later. Blues players needed no convincing.
Anecdotes & moments
- He tested every prototype by letting customers play it in the shop — and noting what they complained about. Every complaint became a tweak.
- He sold Fender to CBS in 1965 for 13 million dollars because he thought he was dying. He wasn't. He lived another 26 years and started Music Man and later G&L — still chasing the perfect neck.
- Albert Collins called his Telecaster 'The Master of the Telecaster'. The title stuck.
Links
Photo: Wikimedia Commons