Leo Fender
| Leo Fender | |
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Leo Fender and his early models "Fender Guitar Factory museum"
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| Born |
Clarence Leonidas Fender August 10, 1909 Anaheim, California, United States |
| Died | March 21, 1991 (aged 81) Fullerton, California, United States |
| Occupation | Inventor |
Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender (August 10, 1909 – March 21, 1991) was an American inventor who founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, or "Fender" for short. In January 1965, he sold the company to CBS and later founded two other musical instrument companies, Music Man and G&L Musical Instruments.
The guitars, bass guitars, and amplifiers he designed from the 1940s on are still widely used: the Fender Telecaster (1950) was the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar; the (1954) is among the world's most iconic electric guitars; the Fender Precision Bass (1951) set the standard for electric bass guitars, and the Fender Bassman amplifier, popular enough in its own right, became the basis for later amplifiers (notably by Marshall and Mesa Boogie) that dominated rock and roll music. Leo Fender was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992—a unique achievement given that he never learned to play the instruments that he made a career of building.
Clarence Leonidas Fender ("Leo") was born on August 10, 1909, to Clarence Monte Fender and Harriet Elvira Wood, owners of a successful orange grove located between Anaheim and Fullerton, California.
From an early age, Fender showed an interest in tinkering with electronics. When he was 13 years old, his uncle, who ran an automotive-electric shop, sent him a box filled with discarded car radio parts, and a battery. The following year, Leo visited his uncle's shop in Santa Maria, California, and was fascinated by a radio his uncle had built from spare parts and placed on display in the front of the shop. Leo later claimed that the loud music coming from the speaker of that radio made a lasting impression on him. Soon thereafter, Leo began repairing radios in a small shop in his parents' home.
In the spring of 1928, Fender graduated from Fullerton Union High School, and entered Fullerton Junior College that fall, as an accounting major. While he was studying to be an accountant, he continued to teach himself electronics, and tinker with radios and other electrical items but never took any kind of electronics course.
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