(soft music)
- My first factory tour was from Leo Fender,
and I've been hooked ever since.
He was all about how the guitar was made
where I was about the guitar itself.
He was like how it got to become a guitar, right,
so here's how we hold it, here's how we cut it.
I was always the kid, right, growing up
when you get the new Legos.
Most people follow the instructions
and build what was supposed to be the picture
on the box, I went, awesome, more parts
to build my own thing. (soft music)
If we could make a modern acoustic, what would we do?
There's no rules, we're a new generation
that has permission to think a new way.
Part of the design philosophy
was I watch modern players play, the styles have blurred,
right, and merged, and new styles are emerging.
So what if we could make an instrument that fueled that.
I had a couple things that really were important,
and it had to be a Fender guitar,
easy to play, awesome feeling.
And it had to make a really great sound on your lap, right.
I wanted the on-lap experience.
Oh, and by the way, it's got world class electric sounds
'cause we're Fender. (soft music)
Kinda looked around and went, ah.
Tim Shaw's in Nashville.
Hey, Tim, I have this idea, it's kind of crazy.
- We have known of each other for years,
but we hadn't worked together.
And the minute we started working together
was like working with my brother.
And we've been able to really cooperate on this
because we know where the other guy's coming from.
Brian had an idea, Brian, Josh and I sat down
literally on the floor with a piece of paper
and sketched out how this guitar was gonna function.
- Sketches turned into 3D drawings.
It was awesome because it had a vision,
and they were cuttin' wood.
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We created the first proof-of-concept body.
It didn't have a sound port yet.
It did have the forearm contour,
and it had the inset top, and you could tap on it
and realize, man, this thing rings like a cajon.
- We talked about the resimences
and how we were gonna maximum performance in this,
and that was one of the things that really intrigued me
about the process was the ability to have something
that responded like an acoustic guitar
but was only an inch and three quarters thick.
So we ended up experimenting with a diameter
of the port and the depth of the port.
I got to a point where I put things back together
and went, "Oh, okay, there we are, stop there."
- Spruce and mahogany, that's our farm meld.
We love that, and this is how we're gonna do the body.
And then, the next challenge was giving it its voice.
I like to talk about the story as a,
if you think about a singer-songwriter,
you sit at home and you write what you think is a good song.
You get brave, and you share it with somebody, right?
And that person then goes, "It's pretty cool.
"I like that, I like the hook.
"You know, the second verse could be a little better."
And if you trust them, you let 'em rewrite the second verse,
right, the song gets better.
It was like, okay, who do we play the song for, next?
Larry Fishman. - Brian called
and told me that he was working on a project.
And he was working with Tim Shaw on a new guitar concept
that was going to require a big leap in electronics.
And then, he said, "Larry, I think you're the guy to do it."
- So we sent him one, and he was like,
this thing really does something.
And it does something really unique acoustically.
It's a great guitar first, awesome.
Validated that point. - Tim and Brian designed
a guitar that was highly feedback resistant.
It's sensitive enough to be played acoustically.
Sort of the perfect performance platform.
Got a lot of us to do our work without the guitar
getting in the way. - He's like, well,
what do I have to work with?
And we said, well, we want a volume knob, a mon knob,
and a five-way switch. (soft music)
You're crazy (laughs). - And they were asking
for some very, very breakthrough and special things,
and we could do a lot of 'em at the time.
But some, we couldn't. - We got the invitation
to go back to the Fishman Headquarters
and sit in Larry's lab and hear it for the first time.
- [Larry] We had everything set up, we had a lot of sounds
to pick from, and we spent a couple of days
auditioning the sound choices that would go
into this guitar and tweaking them and volume levels
and EQ and so forth. - And it was one
of those moments that you'd never forget.
Here was our lovechild,
and it had all these wires coming out of it
'cause none of the electronics were on board yet.
They were all out external,
and there was a series of analog and digital boxes
all daisy-chained together. - The development guitar
was the biggest Frankenstein you ever saw in your life.
I mean, we had saw boxes taped to the outside.
We had things on the floor, things in the computers.
- And the first strum I remember looking at Tim
almost with tears in my eyes. - The initial chord,
the first thing you heard was just amazing.
We looked at each other and went, okay.
This is really gonna work.
- And my heart stopped. (soft music)
It was relief, it was euphoria.
It was, I can't wait for other people to hear this.
I see a lot of hard work from a lot of talented people.
- We were knocked out at the end of the day.
The performance of this instrument far exceeded
the expectation that we had going into it,
and I've never seen a room full of bigger smiles
from so many people in my life.
- We looked around at each other and everybody went,
"No one's ever heard this."
We kind of knew at the moment we had a game changer,
we should make this in Corona.
This should be at the heart of Fender.
Be a USA-made, modern acoustic,
and that's where the symphony gets even bigger.
How should it be built, and how should we manufacture
and put it into production?
So Fred added all this new dimension to it,
just helped refined design ideas into things
that were manufacturable.
And so, we built a world class cell to do just this.
We've got staff that make these that are exclusive
to the Acoustasonic Telecaster.
- [Tim] It's huge.
This is the sound that I've heard in my head
for 40 years, and it's here.
You can't get a bad sound out of this thing,
and that's part of the deal with Fender.
That's part of the things, one of the things
that I love about Fender is that when you plug a Fender
into almost anything, immediately, you get a sound
you can use and a sound that'll make you wanna play music.
- The music that this guitar will make
will influence the next generation.
So ultimately, it's for players that wanna be inspired.
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