This past weekend (October 11-13), Fender hosted a three-day, three-venue event, the Fender Experience, in Tokyo, Japan, inviting music fans to get up close with its biggest signature artists and some of its most ambitious builds – including three new Godzilla guitars.
Much of the Experience’s focus was on Custom Shop instruments, with guitar design workshops, signature artist performances and 200 one-off builds. But nestled amongst the Master Builder creations, there were a handful of electric guitars designed by music fans with no guitar-building experience at all – and in some cases, no guitar experience, period.
The Fender Design Contest was an initiative that invited the Japanese public to submit their dream Telecaster designs. There were no limits, no guardrails. The guitar company wanted imaginations to run wild – no mean feat, given it also promised to build the winning entries.
“We've got a lot of flexibility with what we can do with our Made in Japan product,” Fender Asia Pacific president Edward ‘Bud’ Cole told me at the Fender Experience.
“We basically gave people a Telecaster template that they could draw anything on. People drew. People used paint. People used AI. People used all different stickers, collages, glue, paper, all sorts of things, everything you can imagine.”
The response was overwhelming. Over 1,500 Fender fans submitted entries. Some had never touched a guitar before. Others had played for decades. Others their entire lives.
Choosing the winners was an agonizing two-week process for the Fender Japan team.
“There was great jubilation, great joy, and there were tears, because people wrote stories about… I mean, there are not words.
“From the oldest people to the youngest people, to everybody in between, their stories were about their love affairs with guitars. Some of them have been associated with guitars for a long time. Some are at the very beginning of their musical journey.”
Three guitars were selected as recipients of the company’s Awards for Excellence. Airi Kutsukake’s purple design was the first winner. An intricate collage of creatures, plants and symbols, it’s perhaps the closest visually to a genuine Custom Shop design.
“I’d be happy if, when you glance at this guitar, it makes you feel joy or sparks your curiosity,” she said of her piece. “I aimed to create a sense of life overflowing with energy.”
On the flipside is a menacing build inspired by the Oni, a creature from Japanese folklore that’s often represented as a demon or ogre, but also symbolize inner strength or an indomitable spirit.
“Wishing all players to become guitarists like the ‘Oni’, delivering performances as powerful as a demon’s roar, overwhelming and captivating listeners with extraordinary talent,” says its creator, Kako.
“No matter how hard or painful things may get, I want you to keep the strong spirit of the Oni within your heart, face forward, and give your all in pursuing your dreams and goals.”
The delicate floral aesthetic of the third Award for Excellence winner Hideki Sai also channeled a ornate Custom Shop vibe.
“The motif of my design is flowers (gerbera, rose, lisianthus, and star-of-Bethlehem), created using my speciality technique of delicate hand-drawn pen art,” Sai explains.
“I also designed it so that the artwork works both when the guitar is placed vertically on a stand and when it is being played at an angle or horizontally.”
Finally, after receiving 100 submissions from children under 11, Fender added a second category to the competition: Awards for Distinction. Its winner, 11-year-old Ichiro Yamamoto, used his design to depict ‘The ideal town for guitarists’, placing Fender Flagship Tokyo right at the center.
“When I visited a Fender shop, I imagined how wonderful it would be if there were a town like this,” he said. “A place where you can play guitar anywhere, surrounded by joyful sounds everywhere you go.”
All four winners were presented with their guitars at the Fender Experience, and took them home after the event.
It’s an example of the community spirit that Fender Japan encourages – something that is also encapsulated in its evolving approach to signature models. But like the company’s flagship store, it’s also a form of outreach to encourage the next generation of guitar players.
“At Fender, at the core of what we do is playing music. Creating music is inspired. It's creative and it takes a lot of heart and soul and thought to do it,” Cole says.
“We wanted to expand that out for people, even those who couldn't play guitar, to find a way. Hopefully for a lot of those folks, that will be the creative spark that will inspire them to not only design a canvas that looks like a Telecaster, but then to pick up the guitar and begin to express themselves that way.”
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