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Electric Ernie Ball

Music Man is an American guitar and bass guitar manufacturer. It is a division of the Ernie Ball corporation. more...

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Early Years

The Music Man story began in 1971 when Forrest White and Tom Walker talked with Leo Fender about starting a company they would call Tri-Sonic, Inc. White had started working with Leo in the very early days of Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company as the plant manager and stayed on after the company was sold to the CBS Corporation, but had grown unhappy with their management. Tom Walker worked as a sales rep at Fender. Because of a ten year non-compete clause in the 1965 contract that sold Fender to CBS, Leo Fender was a silent partner.

The name of this partnership was changed to Musitek, Inc. by 1973 and in January 1974 the final name, Music Man, appeared. In 1974 the company started producing its first product, an amplifer designed by Leo Fender and Tom Walker called the "Sixty Five". It was a hybrid of tube and solid state technology. The number of designs rapidly increased. Fifteen of the 28 pages from 1976 catalogue were dedicated to amplification. In 1975 Fender's legal restriction had expired and after a vote of the board he was named the president of Music Man.

This wasn't Fender's sole enterprise however. He also owned and ran a consulting firm called CLF Research(Clarence Leo Fender) in Fullerton, California. By 1976 it had built a manufacturing facility for musical instruments and was contracted to make Music Man products. In June of 1976 production started on guitars and in August basses followed. The 1976 catalogue shows the first offerings; A two pickup guitar called the "StingRay 1" and the StingRay Bass. Both instruments featured bolt on neck designs with headstocks bearing distinctive 4+2 and 3+1 tuner arrangements. The StingRay Bass featured a single large humbucking pickup (located somewhat toward but not adjacent to the bridge) with a two-band fixed-frequency EQ. A row of string mutes sat on the bridge. Basses were produced in fretted and fretless versions.

These instruments were designed by Leo Fender and Forrest White. Sterling Ball assisted in the design of the bass. Tom Walker played a large part in the design of the bass preamp. They were the first production guitar and basses to use active electronics which could boost frequencies, whereas traditional electronics could only reduce frequencies. The preamps were coated with epoxy to prevent reverse engineering. The StingRay Bass sold well. While highly innovative electronically the guitar was not blessed cosmetically and met with little success. In December 1978 a two pickup bass was introduced called the Sabre (discontinued in 1991). A redesigned guitar bearing the same name followed. Both sold poorly.

Low sales stressed the staff. The company's internal conflicts caused Leo Fender to form another partnership. In 1979 he started a company called G&L with George Fullerton, an associate with whom he first worked on the solid body electric guitar in 1948. George Fullerton states that this company started producing guitars at CLF in January of 1980. This date also marks the end of wholly CLF produced Music Man instruments and Fender's active involvement with the company. By all accounts it was an acrimonious affair. Sterling Ball, the current owner of Music Man, describes the circumstances on the Ernie Ball website forum.