Are All American Stratocasters Made in Corona?

rabbuhl

rabbuhl

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My recently acquired used Stratocaster says "Corona, California" on the back of the neck. Does this matter?

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rabbuhl

rabbuhl

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All USA Fenders are made in Corona.
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Thanks for the reply. The guy who sold me the guitar made a big deal about the fact the guitar was made in Corona. I guess there is only one Fender plant in in the U.S.
 
I

itkindaworks

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It was always my understanding that Corona is the current factory for american made fenders. I could be wrong though.
 
straightblues

straightblues

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9,808
Yes they are all made in Corona. The custom shop is a section of their main plant. They also make Jackson solid bodies in the same plant. I have toured it. It is really fasinating. It is a building that was built for them to make guitar in. They paint the guitar and then they go up in the rafters to dry for several days. So you go in and see hundreds if not a couple of thousand guitar bodies hanging over your head. Before moving to Corona they were in Fullerton California from the begining.
 
TRGuy

TRGuy

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I saw a tour of the Gibson Custom factory and it has pipes above chucking water into the air to keep it constantly humidified. Cool stuff :)
 
John C

John C

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daddyo said:
Don't mean to be a smartass but pre 1984 Strats were made in Fullerton, Ca. ;)
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Actually pre 1985 might be the better date. I've tried to research when CBS pulled the plug on the Fullerton factory, and it appears that they might have done some assembly of parts made in 1984 on into maybe January or February of 1985. The Fullerton factory was definitely shut down before FMIC acquired the company in April 1985.

EDIT - I should add that FMIC didn't get the factory; just the name, designs, patents, etc. FMIC opened their factory in Corona sometime in mid-1986.
 
R

re-animator

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8,240
define "made."

The hot rods, EJs, and a lot of CS guitars are actually finished in mexico. Nitro is not sold (illegal to buy?) in CA.




this is what i've heard on the gearpage, so take it with a grain.
 
M

masliko

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re-animator said:
define "made."

The hot rods, EJs, and a lot of CS guitars are actually finished in mexico. Nitro is not sold (illegal to buy?) in CA.




this is what i've heard on the gearpage, so take it with a grain.
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WRONG! about the hot rods and CS guitars FFS.

Nitro is still legal for wood and furniture-GUITARS etc.Its just illegal for the auto industry.
 
John Hurtt

John Hurtt

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John C said:
Actually pre 1985 might be the better date. I've tried to research when CBS pulled the plug on the Fullerton factory, and it appears that they might have done some assembly of parts made in 1984 on into maybe January or February of 1985. The Fullerton factory was definitely shut down before FMIC acquired the company in April 1985.

EDIT - I should add that FMIC didn't get the factory; just the name, designs, patents, etc. FMIC opened their factory in Corona sometime in mid-1986.
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There was an intermediate place, I believe. Before the current factory opened in the mid-90's the facility was in a different Corona facility....

...someone must know.
 
John C

John C

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John Hurtt said:
There was an intermediate place, I believe. Before the current factory opened in the mid-90's the facility was in a different Corona facility....

...someone must know.
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Actually I've found out a lot more in the past 5-6 years about the Fullerton-to-Corona timeline. Some of this comes from now-former employee Rob Schwartz (who was for a long time the head of Customer Service at Fender, covering service to both their dealers, authorized repair shops/luthiers, and consumers):

Summer 1984: CBS/Fender starts "officially" shutting down the Fullerton factory by laying off employees by seniority. The final layoffs occur circa September/October 1984. However, Fender brings back some employees as temps, paid cash under the table, and continue a "second shift" production through the end of 1984.

January 1985: A second crew of temps brought in to do some QC/setup rework of items in the warehouse - such as adding those locking nut assemblies to Strat Elites and maybe even some of the 2-knob standard Strats; this crew is only there for a couple of weeks. Any final parts production/assembly from scratch done by the production temps during January. Schwartz took the layoff in the summer of 1984, and was part of the second crew of QC/setup temps in the couple of weeks leading up to the NAMM show; he was never sure when the production temps actually ceased work (December 1984 or January1985). Both temp teams released before the sale of the company in early February.

February 1985: CBS sells Fender to the management team, who form it as "Fender Musical Instrument Company" or FMIC. They buy all parts, supplies, some workbenches and tools, and even some of the production machinery, but their goal is to make it a smaller USA operation and fill in with MIJ instruments from Fender Japan (a separate "joint venture" type entity). While they do not buy the Fullerton factory, FMIC does agree to a short-term lease on the building until they can find their own space.

March-June 1985: FMIC uses space in Fullerton to assemble full guitars from whatever parts remained from the CBS operation; they do stockpile a small amount of "orphan" parts from the USA Vintage Reissue models ('52 Tele, '57 Strat, '62 Strat, '57 Precision Bass, '62 Precision Bass, and '62 Jazz Bass at that time) as their initial goal is to put the Reissues back into production in the USA, and probably add some other "high-end" model to replace the Elite series. FMIC does not intend to continue the Elite or Standard models (and CBS had already shipped the Bullet series off to overseas production prior to the sale of the company). The QA/setup temps are brought back (still as temps) to do setups on the now-arriving MIJ product.

July 1985: FMIC secures two facilities - a small factory space in Corona, CA and business offices in Brea, CA. The QA/setup temps pack up all the parts, tools, workbenches and machinery that FMIC did purchase for the move from Fullerton to Corona. The temps unpack in Corona, and after they are done unpacking they are rehired as full-time FMIC employees. FMIC then goes back to the production people and begins to rehire them as full-time employees.

July-October 1985: Rehiring and retraining continues, with the goal of restarting the USA Vintage Reissue production at Corona.

October-December 1985: Production finally restarts in Corona, but is of a very limited nature. I would assume that any of the "orphan" parts left-over from Fullerton for these models would have been used up at this point in time.

1986: Fender does have a change of heart about building "modernized workhorse" Fender models in the USA (instead of them being just MIJ/imports), and designs what becomes the American Standard series during 1986. When they put the American Standards into production at the end of 1986 it leads to Corona ramping up to large-scale production during 1987.

You are correct that Fender did wind up building a larger facility in Corona in the 1990s - I don't think they just expanded the original facility, I think they built next door to the original space - the original space was more than large enough for what they had in mind for Fender USA in the summer of 1985, but not for the continued production expansion after the American Standards and the Lace Sensor "Plus" models became hits.

That business office that was in Brea, CA is what eventually moved to Scottsdale, AZ - probably about that same time frame.
 
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