Fender still makes many of its guitars in the Golden State at its Corona, California factory southeast of Los Angeles.

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Although today’s guitar-making process involves advanced machinery to form blocks of wood into a musical masterpiece, every six-stringed creation is also a hand-made piece of art. “We owe to Leo the modular process with lumber,” Fender’s Director of Operations, Mark Kendrick, tells Popular Mechanics. “We continue to hand shape, hand craft the way we’ve always done it.”

The process begins with two pieces of wood: a 1¾-inch body and a 1-inch neck, which eventually fits snug inside a ⅝-inch pocket. Simple, right? Well, not really. Both the body and neck go through separate, intricate production processes. Luthiers shape and then rest the neck before inserting the truss rod, a thick bar of steel that acts like the guitar’s spine. After some shaping with a three-belt sander, a gang saw simultaneously cuts in the frets and then the neck winds up in the hands of expert luthiers for final shaping and finishing. “Every Fender neck is unique, and that’s because it’s done by craftsmen,” Kendrick says.

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Meanwhile, the body goes through its own perfection process until the neck and body are coated in lacquer in one of many classic Fender colors. “Very early on, there were custom colors that were being made, and those have become iconic,” Fender’s Executive Vice President Justin Norvell tells Popular Mechanics. “They’re all pulled from the cars of the fifties and sixties.” Once the lacquer dries, the frets are leveled, and the body and neck are sanded, buffed, and polished until the two pieces finally become one.

Next come the electronics, which are loaded into the pick guard. The pickups—transducers that convert vibration into electricity, essentially the heart of an electric guitar—are placed in a “suspension apparatus” so they can be adjusted under the strings. After installing the bridge and strap buttons, all that’s left is some stringing and fine tuning. Once the guitar is fully dressed to impress, it’s boxed up and shipped out.

Packed into every Stratocaster, Telecaster, and Jazzmaster is both 75 years of sound innovation as well as hands-on craftsmanship from Fender’s army of experienced luthiers. Because of this hand-made approach, no two Fender guitars are exactly the same. “We all play. We’re all guitarists . . . we think of things from a player’s point of view,” Norvell says. “We make our art so people can make their art.”

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How Fender Stratocasters Are Made in the USA