The Fender Performer was an electric guitar designed by John Page for

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

and

metal A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...

guitarists in the mid-1980s. The Performer was also available as an

electric bass The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

Origins

The Performer was first introduced in 1985, and was assembled by Fender Japan, Ltd. It was introduced in the transition from the

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainm ...

-owned Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company to the new privately owned Fender Musical Instruments Corporation,Fender History
from www.fender.com and it was discontinued after only one year. The Performer was commissioned to combat lost sales to the " Superstrats" that were flooding the market in the mid-’80s.

Features

The body is small with a deep double cutaway similar to the

Fender Swinger The Fender Swinger (also known as the Fender Musiclander and Fender Arrow – as the "Swinger" emblem is usually missing from the headstock) was a short-lived electric guitar model released by Fender in 1969 and reissued by Fender Japan in 2019 a ...

. The tuning machines are found on the upper edge of the triangular headstock and a locking nut clamps the strings behind a plastic nut, as typically found on Fender guitars. The rosewood fretboard has 24 jumbo frets and features a locking nut. The bridge is a floating System I tremolo. The controls have inset rubber grips, the tuning heads have fully enclosed gears, and the jack socket is an enclosed, not 'skeleton', type, in contrast to many other Fender products with 'economy' hardware. The Fender Performer was available in the following poly finishes: Brown Sunburst (532), Frost White (555), Burgundy Mist (566), Emerald Mist (567) and Gun Metal Blue (568). The two pickups are custom

humbucker A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in ...

s which both sit at an angle opposite to that of a standard

Stratocaster The Fender Stratocaster, colloquially known as the Strat, is a model of electric guitar designed from 1952 into 1954 by Leo Fender, Bill Carson, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares. The Fender Musical Instruments Corporation has continuously ...

Telecaster The Fender Telecaster, colloquially known as the Tele , is an electric guitar produced by Fender. Together with its sister model the Esquire, it is the world's first mass-produced, commercially successfulLes Paul had built a prototype solid body ...

bridge pickup. It appears that the coils are offset to keep the magnets in line with the strings, although they are potted in epoxy so the magnets cannot be seen. The guitar featured controls for master volume and TBX, a 3-way pickup selector and a

coil splitting A humbucking pickup, humbucker, or double coil, is a type of guitar pickup that uses two wire coils to cancel out the noisy interference picked up by coil pickups. In addition to electric guitar pickups, humbucking coils are sometimes used in M ...

switch. The TBX circuit used stacked 250k and 1M pots with a center detent.

Collectibility

Many years after the introduction of the instrument, it came to be recognized as a versatile rock instrument of fine quality. Recent sales of 26 Very Good through Excellent quality Performers on Reverb.com show an average sold price of $1747 USD.

References

{{Fender guitars

Performer The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfor ...