A Mural on the Fender factory in Mexico

Fender Musical Instrument Company provides a Fender Product Education Tour for employees, authorized dealers and distributors. Representing my store Guitar Stop, I had the pleasure of attending a tour in the month of April 2001.

The Fender tour starts at the factory in Ensenada, Mexico, proceeds to the Corona factory in California and ends with a classroom education of Fender's history and products. The program provides the attendants a general knowledge of Fender's manufacturing techniques and products.

The first stop on the tour was the factory located in Ensenada, Mexico. This factory manufactures strings, pickups and wooden amplifier cabinets. Rough guitar necks and bodies are shipped from the Corona factory to be sanded, painted and assembled. Amplifiers are assembled and completed with circuit boards and metal chassis that are manufactured in the Corona Factory.

The view from the hotel I stayed at in Mexico

String manufacturing machines

String manufacturing consists of approx. 2 dozen machines. One person operates two string winding machines at a time. The strings are placed individually in the machine to be wound to the correct thickness. Each string is inspected by the operator manufacturing the string. Bullet strings are hand threaded into the bullet end and then closed by a machine. There is a final inspection of each string before it passes on to the packaging stage of the process. Once the string is completed they are individually hand coiled and placed into a paper sleeve. A machine then collates the strings into sets of six. The collated sets are then hand packed in to a plastic package with the correct label. It was amazing to me how much hand work and inspection each string receives considering a set of strings normally retails for $5.

Part of our tour group outside of the Corona, CA Factory
Austin & Stoker: KSM Guitars, Ross: Tigard Music, Andy: Marion Music, Ryan: KSM Guitars,
Sam: Mars Music, Jeanne: Guitar Stop, Scott: Reno Music

All of the American and Mexican made Fender guitars start at the factory in Corona, CA. The lumber for the bodies and necks are shipped to the Corona factory where they are cut, fretted and inspected. At this time it is determined whether a guitar body will be painted a solid color or if the wood is nice enough to have a natural or transparent finish. Extremely nice pieces of wood are set aside for the Custom Shop. The Corona factory manufactures pickups, pickguards, bridges, metal chassis for amplifiers, neck plates, metal bridge covers and metal pickup covers. The pickguards are stamped out by a machine and the bevel is added by hand with a router. It was very interesting to see the care and attention that goes into the manufacturing of every single instrument!

George Amicay	The Fender Custom shop is located in the Corona Factory. George Amicay does incredible hand carvings on Custom guitars. The guitar on the wall is an intricate fish design. Originally made for his daughter, it took him 2 years to complete it. His daughter was not playing it and was storing the guitar in her closet. George borrowed it back and is displaying it over his work space.
John Willis (Fender Consumer Relations) and Abigail Ybarra. Abigail has been hand winding pickups for the Fender Company for decades.
	The Relic guitars were originally made because Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones told Fender that he did not like new guitars. He asked Fender if they could make him an old guitar. Fender made him 2 and he loved them!
Steve Grom (Fender Vice President of Quality Assurance) in the Custom Shop w/ a Relic Tele.

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