Image Gallery: Discontinued Fender Guitars

Read Time 1 Minutes

A Gallery Of Electric Guitars Fender Discontinued

Here it is – 26 discontinued Fender guitars. They are ordered by their original production years and they have the number of model years they ran listed below.
Click any image to enlarge and get more fun facts about the guitar.

The Fender Esquire — The Esquire (20 yrs.)

Reasons for making and discontinuing a guitar

There is basically one reason to discontinue a guitar, but it is also interesting to look at the reasons why they were created in the first place, and compare that to the main reason they were discontinued – lack of sales.

Fender Attempted to Compete

Fender really doesn’t have to compete with anyone – not even really Gibson (who has their own roster of discontinued models). They’ve got their own classic products, which will always find a significant demand. But you can also see why they wanted to compete with some of the other models coming out at various times.

The Katana tried to compete with the more wild guitars surfacing in the mid-80s, the Coronado and the Starcaster attempted to compete with the hollow-bodies of their time.

Of course you know Fender bristled a little bit the minute they heard the term “Superstrat” – and soon after they released the Prodigy.

All of these guitars were eventually discontinued, presumably due to lack of sales. It seems that for the most part, people want fender to keep making their classics – and new ideas aren’t generally widely accepted. Is that the price you pay for being a giant in your field?

Student Guitars

Student guitars make up the bulk of the rest of this list, but they generally have longer production lives than the guitars Fender designed to compete with other manufacturers. The discontinuation of the student guitars from the Fender line might also have something to do with the subsidiary company, Squier, taking over some of that load – but again with reproductions of old classics.