I am away from my Rogers book during the pandemic, but this makes me wonder what the impetus was for CBS to move operations from Covington, OH to Fullerton, CA. in 1969, where Fender was based (also purchased by CBS). Lower wages? I can't imagine that the rank and file workers would have relocated that far.

It was company lore that CBS wanted to consolidate the upper management team and production facilities of Fender, Rhodes Pianos, and Rogers Drums. Fender's management team was given the assignment of running all three brands which reported to the CEO of CBS Musical Instruments. I hired in to the sales team of Fender/Rogers/Rhodes on November 3, 1980. Little did I know that this was one of the lowest points of the company history. John McLaren was hired away from Yamaha to be the new CEO of CBS Musical Instruments. In 1981 McLaren brought in his second in command at Yamaha, Bill Schultz, to be the president of Fender/Rogers/Rhodes. From the very beginning, one of Bill Schultz's jobs was to sell off Rogers and Rhodes and concentrate on Fender. CBS was also divesting itself of its other musical instrument brands-Steinway, Gulbranson organs, Rodgers church organs, Lyon and Healy harps, Gemeinhardt flutes. Under Schultz, Fender was completely deconstructed and reconstructed. In 1984, during this reconstruction, CBS decided to sell Fender. Schultz fielded many offers. Most of these offers were bogus insults that were made just so some fly-by-night Fender knockoff companies could brag that they offered to buy Fender. Mr. Schultz-the ultimate

salesman--put together a team of investors made up of Fender employees and some of our most loyal dealers and our overseas distributors. I was floored when Bill called each of us sales reps to invite us in on the buyout team. "I don't care if you have to borrow the money to buy one share... I want my salespeople to own a piece of this thing if we buy the company from CBS". I retired from Fender at the end of 2007 with the few shares that I purchased in 1985 having multiplied many fold due to stock splits.

Leedybdp,

So, in your first two sentences, you are referring to the late-60's?

Your tenure there must have been a tumultuous period. Wow.

I recall (reading or hearing) that Rogers was begging CBS to sue either Yamaha or Tama for blatant copyright infringement concerning Rogers' hardware designs. Legal at CBS replied that a lawsuit would costs at least a million dollars and that Rogers only made a

fraction of that annually, so therefore they refused.

Any truth to that?

Kurt

That sounds plausible to me. CBS cut off all R&D money for Rogers drums once they decided to sell that division of CBS Musical Instruments. So, Memriloc was the last innovation that was funded. Now, use that same law suit thinking for Fender guitars and amps--the most copied guitars and amps in the music industry. Can you imagine how many lawyers, how much expense, how much time in courtrooms it would take to win every lawsuit for patent and copyright infringement? Every suit for such stuff was won by Fender... at great expense for a judge to tell the counterfeiters to stop doing it. Those weasels just changed their company name, and resumed their dirty work.