Fender Factory Tours – Then and Now

I saw 300guitars post a YouTube video of a Fender Factory tour from 1959. I’m an absolute sucker for old (or new for that matter) factory tours. I really enjoy seeing how great things get made. I really dig old footage to see how things looked back in the day. Imagine the Fender factory in 1959. No air conditioning. No respirators or proper ventilation. Limited safety precautions on dangerous equipment.  But seeing how they took pride in their work is quite inspirational and humbling.

Over Christmas I had an opportunity to watch some great slides and film footage of my inlaws. Normally.. that would suuuuuck, but it was really cool seeing how people dressed back in the 50s. There was definitely some magic in the air post-WWII.  I definitely related to that with this factory tour.

Here is the factory tour from 1959.

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Please take note at 5:58 – Abigail Ybarra

This video is a much more recent tour of the Fender Factory, but what blew me away in this video was at 6:18. Here we have Abigail Ybarra again! She was winding the pickups the whole time. Imagine, that she wound Hendrix pickups, Clapton pickups, Springsteen pickups.. crazy. I like the ju-ju factor there.

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