40 YEARS OF
Four decades on, the budget brand Fender created to beat Japanese copyists at their own game has acquired its own identit y and cachet, even making the cut for Genesis world tours. As Fender releases a swathe of Anniversary electrics to mark the occasion, we look back at the birth of Squier and Fender JV, and why Fender decided to go big in Japan…
Inthe early 1950s, Fender was in the vanguard of innovation, revolutionising the guitar world with a new wave of solidbody electric instruments that stood, as usurpers, on turf that Gibson and Gretsch thought belonged forever to the hollowbody archtop. In fact, Leo succeeded so well in popularising the solidbody guitar, that only 30 years later his designs were being copied extensively by guitar manufacturers in Japan – who built their clones so diligently they began to seriously threaten Fender’s share in the market they had created.
The prognosis didn’t look great. At the start of the 1980s, during the final years of CBS ownership, quality control was faltering in Fender’s US factories, and Fender had a hill to climb in convincing guitar buyers that its flagship American instruments were still worth buying. And while Fender made effective moves to fix those problems with the help of a trouble-shooting team drafted in from Yamaha, notably including Dan Smith, the Californian company was still left with the problem of what to do about the rising threat from Japanese brands such as Tokai and Greco.
Fender’s answer was very much from the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ school of thought. In March 1982, Fender inked a business agreement with Japanese distributor Yamano Gakki and wholesaler Kanda Shokai, establishing a joint venture to manufacture and sell Japanese-built Fender guitars. Since Kanda Shokai owned the Greco brand, the deal neatly halted the threat posed by Greco-badged Fender copies from that moment on.
What followed was a minor renaissance in Fender guitar making, and it was soon realised that Japanese-built Fenders had a character and clean-lined beauty of their own – while the cost-saving, at that time possible by building guitars in Japan, gave Fender a competitively priced offering that was a bona fide official Fender product but which could go toe to toe on price with the remaining ‘clone’ competition. With Fender Japan guitars being sold to the domestic market in Japan, Fender created a sub-brand to sell what were effectively the same guitars in Europe. The brand was called Squier and its first products became known as Japanese Vintage or ‘JV’ models.
In the following pages, we take a look at two new JV electrics from Fender, stunning anniversary models from Squier itself, and explore some of the incredible Japanese-market Fenders that have been created since 1982. But first, it’s time for a little bit of Squier history…
