Fender Amplifier History

[technoguy]

In 1946 Clarence Leo Fender began building guitar amplifiers in Fullerton, California. He first targeted country players, and spent a lot of time in consultation with musicians to improve his designs. He initially trained as an electrical engineer, and was never much of a musician, so this process of consultation was his main guide through the years to development of his designs. As we shall see, it often lead to truly significant improvements to amplifier design, although it occaisionally lead him down the wrong path. All of Leo's designs were based on the research developed and released to the public domain by Western Electric in the 30s, and used vacuum tubes for amplification