SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS ON THE WIRE
Fender: The Official Illustrated History
The first two books focus on individual instruments. This volume widens the frame. Rather than organizing the narrative around a single guitar, Hunter follows the company itself from Leo Fender’ s postwar repair shop in Fullerton through the development of the Telecaster, Stratocaster, Precision Bass, Jazz Bass, Jaguar, Jazzmaster, Mustang, Coronado, Bronco, and dozens of other instruments that collectively shaped modern popular music. Fender’ s amplifiers receive equal attention. The Bassman, Twin Reverb, Princeton, and other familiar names emerge as essential parts of the story rather than supporting accessories.
Viewed from the company level, events that seem isolated in individual guitar histories begin to connect. The CBS acquisition affected far more than the Stratocaster. The employee-led purchase of Fender in the 1980s influenced far more than the Telecaster. Manufacturing decisions, economic realities, artist relationships, and changing musical tastes reveal themselves as company-wide forces rather than isolated episodes tied to a single model.
The broader scope also reveals how experimental Fender often was. The Telecaster and Stratocaster understandably dominate popular memory, yet Hunter spends time with the instruments that occupied smaller corners of the catalog as well. Some succeeded spectacularly. Others found devoted audiences years after their introduction. A few never quite found their place at all. Together they reveal a company that was often more adventurous than its reputation suggests.
Factory photographs, period advertisements, catalogs, brochures, artist imagery, and production photography place familiar instruments within their original historical context while documenting the people and facilities responsible for producing them.
Reading the three books together reveals the logic behind the series. The Telecaster volume examines the first great success. The Stratocaster volume follows the instrument that became Fender’ s most recognizable creation. Fender: The Official Illustrated History supplies the larger frame around both stories, explaining how a small Southern California company repeatedly found itself at the center of major developments in instrument design, manufacturing, and popular music.
The Telecaster and Stratocaster volumes naturally invite readers toward specific instruments. This volume tends to remain on the shelf as the reference that connects them.
Dave Hunter. Motorbooks, 2023. ISBN 978-0760387306
Taken together, Hunter’ s three Fender books form the sort of library that many enthusiasts eventually assemble for themselves. Like the catalogs, brochures, dealer binders, and factory literature that collectors now prize, they preserve a history that might otherwise remain scattered across countless sources. And, fittingly enough, they are the sort of books that may prove collectible in their own right.
142 | SUMMER 2026