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 Now Fender is releasing a California-made acoustic guitar - its
first production acoustic built in the United States in nearly
50 years.
The company on Tuesday launched the American Acoustasonic Series
Telecaster, which will sell for about $2,000 and be manufactured
at the company's Corona, California factory.
Fender already sells acoustic guitars, but they are made
overseas at lower prices and are aimed at beginners and
intermediate players. It has not made acoustics in California
since a limited run in the 1960s and early 1970s.
"We didn't really have a line that was being embraced by working
musicians, particularly professional working musicians," Fender
Chief Executive Andy Mooney told Reuters in an interview. When
Mooney laid out his requirements to Fender's designers and
engineers, he insisted the guitar be made in California "because
the source of origin, for the working musician, is very
important. It's a signal of quality."
Fender will be competing against California-based Taylor Guitars
and Pennsylvania-based C.F. Martin & Co.
"There's a substantial amount of volume done in that $1,200 to
$2,500 price point, but it's become almost a Martin and Taylor
duopoly," said Brian T. Majeski, editor of The Music Trades
Magazine, which tracks the industry.
Mooney said Fender hopes to establish "a new category" with an
instrument that has features of both acoustics and electric. For
example, the new Acoustasonic works with either kind of
amplification systems and can be plugged directly into a laptop
to make digital recordings.[to top of second column] |
Those features are part of a push to reach younger working musicians
that will see Fender spend about $50 million on marketing this year,
much of it on social media. Privately-held Fender had $550 million
in revenue in 2018, growing at a "double digit" percentage, Mooney
said.
Mooney conceded the new instrument might meet skepticism from guitar
purists at first, just like Fender's guitars did in the early 1950s,
when its original electric Telecaster was a solid slab of wood when
most guitars were still hollow.
"We expect [the Acoustasonic] to find its audience over time, as the
Telecaster and Stratocaster did," Mooney said. "What encourages us
to believe the audience exists is the reaction of artists we've
already shared it with."
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)
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