“The quality of guitars didn’t plummet overnight – some might argue that it remained high for at least a decade”: Fender CBS guitars get a bad rep – but what actually changed?

A close-up of a 1969 Fender Stratocaster sitting on a tweed hardshell guitar case.

CBS bought Fender because it saw the potential for a bigger market share and greater profitability in an era when guitars dominated popular music. Achieving those goals meant that CBS needed to increase production, streamline processes and lower costs – and that’s what lay behind many of the changes that occurred post-1965.

Vintage Fender folklore might lead you to conclude that the CBS takeover was the lutherie equivalent of the Khmer Rouge’s ‘Year Zero’, but nothing could be further from the truth. The quality of Fender guitars didn’t plummet overnight, and arguably remained high for at least a decade.