So how would the new Fender company accommodate changing styles and tastes, and adapt its venerable Stratocaster guitar to the needs of the present? During the CBS era, clear answers had often eluded the suits who ran the company. One exec opined in private, “What are we supposed to do — build in the same old mistakes, just to keep the purists happy?” Hendrix is known to have owned and played approximately 32 Strats, as guitarists fondly call them. Tying for distant second place are two Gibson models, the Flying V and the SG, of which Hendrix owned two each. No two Strats sound alike. They have an incredible variety of sounds available on the same instrument. It's brilliant. There is no other instrument like it. One of the 20th century's most innovative companies, from its owner's humble beginnings as a helicopter manufacturer to its rise as the biggest acoustic guitar maker in the U.S. Ovation guitars. At the dawn of the Schultz era, things began to come back into focus, and in 1985, with Schultz and his investors now owning the company, Fender faced one of its most daunting design challenges yet: Build a better Stratocaster. Not a reissue, not a cost cutter, not a “Cadillac,” not an import — just a basic U.S. Strat. Great guitars new and used Gibson, Fender, Ovation, Gretsch and Rickenbacker available via the website. The first mass produced electric bass was developed by Leo Fender, a well-known guitar manufacturer, as experiments with upright basses with pickups did not work very well at the time. Lesson.
