Two ex-Fender men and a silent partner.

Music Man is usually dated to 1974, and the company itself says it was “originally founded in 1974.” Its roots go back a little further. English Wikipedia says that in 1971 two former Fender employees, Forrest White and Tom Walker, a one-time Fender sales representative, set up a company called Tri-Sonix, Inc. in Southern California. Leo Fender, who had sold his company to CBS in 1965, was involved only as a silent partner, because the sale had bound him to a ten-year agreement not to compete.

The business was renamed Musitek, Inc. and then, in January 1974, Music Man. Its first product, according to Wikipedia, was an amplifier rather than a guitar: the Sixty Five, a hybrid of valve and solid-state circuitry designed by Fender and Walker. When the non-compete period ran out, Leo Fender became the company’s president; Wikipedia’s articles give 1974 and 1975 for that step, so we say only that it happened in the mid-1970s. Wikipedia gives the company’s home as Fullerton, California, Fender’s own town.

Instruments followed in 1976. They were built under contract by CLF Research, Leo Fender’s own Fullerton company, with guitars arriving in June and basses in August, according to Wikipedia. The first catalogue offered a StingRay guitar and the StingRay bass, and the bass became the instrument that made the name. It had a large single humbucking pickup, a headstock with three tuners on one side and one on the other, and an on-board active preamp powered by a 9-volt battery, designed by Walker. Wikipedia calls Music Man’s the first production guitars and basses to use active electronics, and the company today says it “built its name” by introducing active electronics on production instruments; both are claims we have not tested against other makers. Guitar World has called the StingRay “arguably Leo Fender’s final great design achievement.”

The partnership did not last. The Sabre bass appeared in December 1978, and in November 1979 Music Man’s ties with Leo Fender were cut, Wikipedia says; he went on to found G&L. Music Man kept going for a few years without him, adding the Cutlass, a StingRay with a graphite neck made by Modulus, in 1980.

A warehouse, some trademarks and a new factory.

By the early 1980s the company was failing. In March 1984 it was bought by Ernie Ball, the string maker, which had moved to San Luis Obispo on California’s Central Coast in 1979. The connection was personal. Guitar World reported in 2022 that Ernie Ball had known Leo Fender since the early 1950s, that Tom Walker was the godfather of Ernie’s son Sterling Ball, and that Sterling had tried out the StingRay prototype on stage for Fender and Walker. “Leo wasn’t a musician, so I brought the player’s perspective to the StingRay’s design,” Sterling told the magazine.

What Ernie Ball bought was little more than a name. “Music Man was going under,” Sterling recalled in the same interview; the partners were fighting, and the brand seemed likely to end up with its Japanese distributor. The deal covered “just some inventory, a warehouse and the small amount we paid for the trademarks … we didn’t have a factory.” Amplifier production ended. Sterling, Dudley Gimpel, whom he had met at a Minneapolis music shop in 1981, and Dan Norton built and equipped a new factory, and the first Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay followed in 1985, then the Sabre bass.

The first guitar of the new era was the Silhouette of 1987, with a four-and-two headstock, a wheel for adjusting the truss rod and pickguards that could be swapped with different pickup sets, Guitar World says. Signature models became the brand’s other pillar: a Steve Morse guitar at about the same time; in 1991 a model for Eddie Van Halen, his first official signature guitar, which continued as the Axis after he left for Peavey in 1995; Albert Lee and Steve Lukather models in 1993; and, from 2001, guitars for John Petrucci, including the Majesty, co-designed with the company’s chief engineer Drew Montell. “We don’t have contracts with our artists,” Sterling Ball told Guitar World.

Later instruments drew on outside design. The Bongo bass of 2003 was developed with DesignworksUSA, the California studio owned by BMW, according to a 2019 company blog post cited by Wikipedia. A signature guitar for St. Vincent arrived in 2016, and in January 2025 Guitar World reported a StingRay II developed with the guitarist Cory Wong.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this guide are American electric-guitar names outside the Fender and Gibson pair, though several trace back to one or the other. Music Man began in 1971, formed by the former Fender men Forrest White and Tom Walker with Leo Fender as a silent partner, English Wikipedia says; Ernie Ball bought it in 1984, and the company says it has made instruments in San Luis Obispo, California, ever since. G&L was the company Leo Fender set up with George Fullerton in Fullerton, California; Guitar World reported in November 2025 that its closure had been confirmed.

Heritage was founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1985 by former Gibson employees who stayed when Gibson moved to Nashville, and remains there. Kramer, founded in Neptune, New Jersey, in 1976, has belonged to Gibson since 1997, Wikipedia says.

Dean, started by Dean Zelinsky in Chicago, has been owned since 1997 by Armadillo Enterprises of Tampa, Florida, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2026, Guitar.com reported. Reverend, founded by Joe Naylor in the Detroit area in 1997, now gives an address in Toledo, Ohio. B.C. Rich grew from Bernardo Chavez Rico’s family shop in Los Angeles and now lists an address in Orlando, Florida; its owner since 2019 is not named in the sources we checked.

Where guitars are made varies even within one brand: B.C. Rich’s own product pages list the United States, Korea and Indonesia.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Hand-soldered on the Central Coast.

Music Man is now part of the Ernie Ball family business, and the Ball family runs it. The company says Sterling Ball was later joined by his sons Scott and Brian; Guitar World reported in 2022 that Brian Ball had joined in 2000 and become chief executive in 2019, while Scott Ball oversees factory operations.

The company is specific about where its guitars and basses are made. It says each instrument is “hand-soldered” in its San Luis Obispo factory, that frets are applied by hand and that finishes get three layers of high-gloss polyurethane; it even names two of its machines, a CNC feeder called “Big Bird” and a buffing robot called “Ursula.” It says it ships to more than 135 countries from California’s Central Coast. Those are the company’s own descriptions, which we have not inspected, but the location is consistent with independent reporting on Ernie Ball’s base.

A cheaper line sits alongside. Sterling by Music Man, named after Sterling Ball, was licensed in 2009 to Praxis Musical Instruments as an import brand, according to Wikipedia. Its own site describes it as based in Los Angeles, with instruments “built by trusted international production partners and finalized at our California HQ”; it does not name the countries, and neither do we.

The parent company is still adding businesses. In July 2026 Guitar World reported that Ernie Ball had acquired Source Audio, the effects-pedal maker founded in 2006, which would continue under its own name.

For a design guide, Music Man shows how a brand can survive the loss of its famous founder: the StingRay’s shape and three-and-one headstock stayed constant while ownership, factory and town all changed. Compare Ernie Ball, the string maker that owns it, and Fender, the company Leo Fender left behind. For this guide we use navy, cream and amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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