02.15.12
The old Fender factory, in 8mm
Today Fender, the “iconic American” guitar maker, employs more people in China and Indonesia than it does in this country. However, at one time it was an obviously proud-to-be-American company. And average Americans, as seen in the above home movie, worked in guitar manufacturing for it. There was no rubbish spouted in newspapers about Americans not being skilled enough for a manufacturing economy.
Leo Fender and his fellow businessmen trained people and put them to work.
From past posts on Fender and other US guitar companies, firms that moved labor as quickly as possible overseas, turning their domestic operations into artisan shops:
An aerial view [of the old Fender factory] in “The Soul of Tone,??? a coffee table book on Fender, shows old pre-CBS Fender filling nine medium-sized warehouse-type buildings. CBS then immediately doubled the company’s manufacturing floor space.
The American manufacturers of rock and roll equipment have all offshored to China.
What remains in the US is essentially custom shop business. The American-made items are ten times or more the expense of the same models made in China. And the former are reserved largely for people with major label music contracts and that part of the upper middle and plutocrat class which dabbles in guitar playing. For them, the expensive American made guitar is a status symbol for a gilded age.
All down the line in the Guitar Center showroom, all the famous American-made guitar lines are now produced in China. Gretsch, like Fender, divided into two tiers. The famous big semi-hollow body guitars popularized in Nashville and Memphis, played by the inventors of rock and roll — the guys in the bands backing Elvis and Gene Vincent — are made in China. If you want to pay ten times or more for one, the premium models are still made here.
The middle class jobs and factories that produced those instruments which made the sound that went worldwide are gone. And this country, and the rest of the world, isn’t better for it. It was profit driven decision-making in a race to the bottom. And it destroyed tradition and a proud legacy in something the made the whole world a brighter place. You could be proud of working in a factory that made guitars and amplifiers for everybody in the USA.
Am I bitter? You bet your ass I am. The people who did this deserve stoning.