bottom@katadn.DEC (03/01/85)
According to my local FENDER dealer this is the scoop. Fender guitars is for sale. They are not making any guitars at this time. They are still for sale, but apparently nobody is interested. Fender electronics was sold as a separate unit to some Japanese company, they have not made any contact with dealers as yet. So hoard your fenders as they may be the only ones left. I would say one thing about the SQUIRE STRATS, I bought one for my girlfriend's oldest boy and I thought it was a superb guitar as good as the mid 70's fender product but not as good as the older models and some of the newer ones, however I played several of the ELITE series strats and thought that most of them were junk. The whole deal here is that some of the SQUIRES were junk also, typical of fenders, actually most brands have this problem. Does anybody have any ideas about why some guitars are better than others made by the same company and built to the same specs? I once played a schetcer strat and it was ok, I think the schecters are somewhat at the mercy of the builder as they are kits. The highest quality kit material for strats etc that I have seen are made by Philip Kubricki (he's associated with Semour Duncan in some way). They seem to be very good stuff although expensive. *db* dec-rhea!dec-katadn!bottom ps: I highly recommned Semour Duncan pickups, especially the hot stacks for fender single coil replacements, they humbuck and they sound great. *relax....have a homebrew........
elf@utcsri.UUCP (Eugene Fiume) (03/04/85)
I too have heard nasty (unconfirmed) news about both Fender and (less imminently) Gibson. I believe the old Strat, especially, is a very fine guitar, but let me remind potential mourners that all is not lost. There are many starving guitar-makers around who make exceptionally-good electric guitars for about the same price as (or a touch more than) mass-produced guitars. Remember that the embossed name on an instrument makes no audible contribution (maybe a golden-ears would disagree? (:-) ). Eugene Fiume
gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor) (03/07/85)
As I understand the story, CBS was looking to sell the company. THe man they harried to look for potential buyers put together his own consortium of investors and bought the company. Moog Music was purchased under somewhat similar circumstances a year+ ago (save that the main investors were the employees themselves).