Fender Bullet
FROM US FENDER BULLETS TO SQUIER BULLETS

The Fender Bullet was an entry-level guitar designed by John Page, whose effort earned him his first patent — for the guitar’s combined bridge and pickguard. The Bullet series was conceived for a young and novice budget-minded public to replace the outgoing Mustang and the Music Master: “To capture the essence of Fender guitars — at an exceptionally affordable price,” said the Fender catalog.
“I remember my directive from marketing was to design a guitar that could be made for $65 in standard manufacturing cost,” said Page in an interview with Dave Hunter, published on Guitar.com on March 11, 2020. “I think I came within a dollar of that. I believe it retailed for $199 at the time. So, it was a matter of, ‘How can I make the least expensive guitar that’s manufactured here, and use up a lot of parts, Mustang parts and so forth, that are lying around?’” |
Fender initially intended to have the Bullet manufactured offshore in Korea, but it did not work out due to some quality control issues, and the first two models, the Bullet (known as “Standard Bullet”) and the Bullet Deluxe, were made in the USA at the Fullerton plant between 1981 and mid-1982. These guitars were also called “Bullet One” by US dealers and retailers but never marketed as such.
It’s important to keep in mind that at that time, the Bullets were not a type of Stratocaster, but rather, they were a model of their own — similar to the Stratocaster, the Telecaster, the Precision bass, and so on. |
The Deluxe model was equipped with a plastic pickguard with a separate, strings-through body hard-tail bridge, while the Standard model featured a powder-coated white or black steel pickguard-bridge-tailpiece combo that had a small lip raised at a 90% angle to anchor the strings, along with separate saddles featuring offset string grooves and height screws.
All Standard pickguards had a “PATENT APPLIED FOR” sticker to protect the design of the pickguard-bridge-tailpiece combo until the patent was granted. |
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