Popular Mechanics
How Fender Stratocasters Are Made in the USA
Fender still makes many of its guitars in the Golden State at its Corona, California factory southeast of Los Angeles.
Although today’s guitar-making process involves advanced machinery to form blocks of wood into a musical masterpiece, every six-stringed creation is also a hand-made piece of art. “We owe to Leo the modular process with lumber,” Fender’s Director of Operations, Mark Kendrick, tells Popular Mechanics. “We continue to hand shape, hand craft the way we’ve always done it.”
The process begins with two pieces of wood: a 1¾-inch body and a 1-inch neck, which eventually fits snug inside a ⅝-inch pocket. Simple, right? Well, not really. Both the body and neck go through separate, intricate production processes. Luthiers shape and then rest the neck before inserting the truss rod, a thick bar of steel that acts like the guitar’s spine. After some shaping with a three-belt sander, a gang saw simultaneously cuts in the frets and then the neck winds up in the hands of expert luthiers for final shaping and finishing. “Every Fender neck is unique, and that’s because it’s done by craftsmen,” Kendrick says.