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Building One with Tomer Cohen
Building Fender With Justin Norvell: Iconic Guitars, The Art Of Restraint, And Learning To Play Faster With AI
00:29:25
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- [00:00]
Justin Larvel
The product, we can. We can put it on a pedestal, but it is a tool. This is a tool for the musician. So it has to have a way to integrate into their workflow, into how they want to use it. You sit at a piano, you sit at a set of drums, but you wear a guitar.
- [00:26]
Narrator/Host
Some products transcend utility, and then they become part of a culture, an identity, a movement. You always remember the first time you use them, and then they become part of you. A vehicle for self expression. And that's how I feel about the electric guitar. Today's guest has spent his entire career at the intersection of music, craft, and technology. He has helped shape one of the most iconic brands in the world. Justin Larvel is the president of Fender, a company that doesn't just make instruments, but actually help define modern music itself. It shaped generations of artists along the way. In this conversation, we go deep into what it actually takes to build an iconic brand through the lens of someone who leave both sides of the creative process as a working musician and as a builder leading one of the most influential brands in music history. We talked about why great products come from understanding human emotion, not just technology. How Fender balances heritage with innovation, what it means to design tools that serve creativity rather than overshadow it. And how building for artists today means building for a hybrid world of physical craft and a digital experience. This is a conversation about taste, about restraint, and about identity and what it actually means to build something truly iconic. Here's my conversation with Justin.
- [01:58]
Tomer Cohen
Justin, it's a pleasure to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.
- [02:03]
Justin Larvel
Thank you for having me. It's an honor.
- [02:05]
Tomer Cohen
So this is gonna be a special one. I'm a massive music fan. Massive guitar fan. I own a Fender Shadowcaster, so this is gonna be a unique one for me, and I hope everybody else will enjoy it the same way I would. And you were a working musician. You're a songwriter. Well, before you joined Fender, Yes. And at Fender, you started in sales, you moved to marketing, eventually led off product before. Before you became the president. That's quite the journey. I want to start at the beginning of that transformation, and I was curious about your experience being a young musician. What extremities did you play? What type of music? What drew you to become a musician from the first place?
- [02:44]
Justin Larvel
Music was around me growing up, and I actually would say Fender is one of my earliest brand memories. I remember my father played guitar just a little bit. Not really much. There's a guitar in a case. But I remember Seeing the picks, the guitar picks laying around sometimes in the Fender brand just struck me somehow. And I remembered that over, over time. But there was a fantastic record collection in the house. Always listening to music. It was very big. Went to Conc as a kid and started playing the drums originally. But you know, I think their portability or lack thereof kind of got in the way and I, I started being more drawn to guitar. This is dating myself here. This is the era of MTV and you know, all of the, all of that, that used to be my only.
- [03:37]
Tomer Cohen
My only channel when I was a kid.
- [03:39]
Justin Larvel
Yeah, exactly. So this is the 80s and I, I'm just obsessed with music. And so I was in a ton of bands. My parents worked for the government and it took them to the UK for three years. I lived in the UK while from like a, like 12 to 15 and was in a band there with some art students that were probably eight years older than myself. That was like my first really good band. Came back, finished high school and went to Arizona for college. And while I was there I was in bands and it was a really fertile time time musically. There was, you know, this is when Nirvana is big and all the grunge bands and all of that stuff. So there were frenzies, there was a Seattle frenzy. And then afterwards it was like, what's the next city? And so in Phoenix there were a couple bands that got signed and it seemed like, oh, this is possible. So that was, that was my goal, that was my dream, my band. And I got a job at Fender after finishing university. But that was a day job. You know, I was, I was convinced.
- [04:47]
Tomer Cohen
That was a side gig.
- [04:48]
Justin Larvel
That was side gig. I was making blueprints in R and D. Was, was my first entry into Fender. But as time went on, I just was enthralled with the making of the tools and the design of these tools and how this all works. That, that, that side of the business was a kind of magnetic pole. And I still make music today, I still release music and I do it for fun. I've always loved design, I've always loved art. And Fender's products really encapsulate that. You know, they, they were so stark and unique, you know, and if someone thinks of an electric guitar in their mind, they will draw a Stratocaster or a Telecaster. But in 1951, in 1954, all the guitars were the big jazz hollow bodies, you know, that were built way differently. So Leo Fender's style was, you know, building guitars out of solid planks of wood. That you'd put together, you know, so it was anathema to, you know, the guitar building community. The timing was right and people were looking. The rock and roll thing was coming and people were looking for a new style and a new sound.
- [06:11]
Tomer Cohen
That shift from the guy who makes music to the guy who helps others make their own art or music. Do you have to be a musician to be in that role? Do you have to be in bands like, do you. Is that like a qualifier? Because otherwise you don't have the empathy or on various sides, like what did.
- [06:27]
Narrator/Host
It do for you?
- [06:28]
Tomer Cohen
Like, where was the edge you got from it?
- [06:30]
Justin Larvel
I think the fact that many of us are the customer is something that keeps us very plugged in. But as far as at Fender overall, there are people from all kinds of different industries and all kinds of walks of life. I think it just gets accentuated. The musician thing, I think touch points like marketing is pro, you know, has a lot more people that are close to, you know, you have to understand the, the kind of psychological profile of a musician, et cetera and product development, I think are the two big areas where that does matter. And I think it is just because it's in your blood, it's. You understand it at a molecular level.
- [07:16]
Tomer Cohen
One thing I heard is that new products come along, you just sit down and play them. There's a new product, a new feature, a new pickup, something the team came up with. And you sit down. Is this like everybody's watching Justin to see how he.
- [07:29]
Justin Larvel
Like everybody takes a. Takes a big inhale.
- [07:31]
Narrator/Host
Exactly like.
- [07:32]
Justin Larvel
No, I think that it's. It's very kind of democratic that what we do as a team. And there are things. I think that one of the things that's very interesting is they say you can't be all things to all people. But our products are so versatile and they're so diverse.
- [07:52]
Tomer Cohen
And.
- [07:54]
Justin Larvel
There are things that are not for me that we still release that are great. Some of our amplifiers that are meant for super heavy metal, high gain music. It's like we find the person in the company that is kind of, who is the expert in that. You sit at a piano, you sit at a set of drums, but you wear a guitar. And the subjectivity of the. Do I like a large neck? Do I like a small neck? Do I like it to be heavy? Do I like to be light? The colors, the aggressiveness of the sound, the subjectivity of it becomes part of your kind of non vocal voice, you know, and your expression of yourself and your creativity.
- [08:40]
Tomer Cohen
I love music. I Love guitars. At the same time, you know, if you push me hard about what goes into the making of a guitar, you know, I could give you the basic, you know, elementary school probably answer, but I'm kind of wondering if you can walk us through what's the process like there's a new guitar that you want to bring to market. Like what is the process internally? If you can kind of do the high level also, you know, the manufacturing, taking it to market. But how does that look like?
- [09:08]
Justin Larvel
It goes a couple different ways. I mean we sometimes we're working with an artist and we're doing a signature model. We've worked with Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, younger players, John Frante from the Chili Peppers, John Mayer, many, many artists of the years, and everyone part of the.
- [09:27]
Tomer Cohen
R and D process basically 100%.
- [09:29]
Justin Larvel
And they'll, they'll say what they want, what they don't want, and then you try to make that come alive. And there's prototypes back and forth, and there's, you know, a little bit of, I wouldn't say trial and error, but just dialing in. You know, it is a symphony of tiny adjustments. You know, I remember standing in our model shop in R and D and Ed o' Brien plays with Radiohead and he was standing there and he could feel 10,000ths of an inch in the neck. He was just like, it's, it's a little big, it's not quite right. And it was, we measured it and you know, and it was like 10,000ths of an inch. Whether it's that or someone who's our pickup designer just designs a new pickup and we put, want to build a guitar around, goes through, you know, our product department. It's like, does this have a reason to exist? You know, is there a space in the market? Who is the customer? And then from there it would go into design and we'd just be like, you know, does this rendering or this idea manifest in real life as what we hoped it would be? And from there it can kind of start to get into, you know, all the drawings, the programming, cross functional meetings. You get into trying to get it into manufacturing, you know, and commercialized with engineering. So there's all of those steps and MPRs and pilots and it's, there are 150 hand processes in the making of a guitar.
- [11:11]
Tomer Cohen
And beginning to end is roughly what, a year, six months, like for some things, super fast.
- [11:18]
Justin Larvel
Yeah, it's anywhere from six months to three years. Amplifiers can take even longer. And then you're never done because our software Enhanced products have updates. So we're doing firmware updates all the time.
- [11:33]
Tomer Cohen
And for folks who are familiar with guitar but not with pickups, which is essentially the, what makes the guitar.
- [11:40]
Justin Larvel
It's the microphone for the strings, you know, essentially. So, yeah, so I'm, I'm sorry that like, I just get into the jargon. But yeah, the, the guitar is basically the neck, the body, the pickups and the electronics are kind of what make an electric guitar a guitar. And those are all super important for different reasons.
- [12:01]
Tomer Cohen
You know, when you go to the history of Leo Fender, one of the things I love when I was, you know, researching a bit was the, the notion that the first shop was really a gathering place for musicians.
- [12:11]
Justin Larvel
Yes, people just came along. He was a radio repair person. So when guitar players would come around and need electronics worked on, they would go to him, even though he didn't make or sell or, you know, distribute these things. So, and then he started looking at amplifiers and their, their, their electric guitars and making, having ideas. And he was not a guitar player. He just approached it in much more of a Henry Ford kind of utilitarian. How do I make it not break? How do I make it serviceable? He used to say, if I have $100 to make a product, I'll spend 99 making it work and 1 making it pretty. So it was, it was a much different take that he had. And so he started building his own guitars and amps, started with lap steels. But as he started doing guitars, like by 1951, I mean, many companies would be happy, ecstatic to have one product that hits and becomes a thing. So the Telecaster, which is behind me right there, that I'm pointing at, you know, and that's Keith Richards, that's Bruce Springsteen, that's, you know, Sheryl Crowe. That's iconic instrument, the Telecaster. If that happened in one year, you'd be like, wow, what a great business. The precision bass also happens in 1951. In that year, same year, the precision bass is the first popular electric bass. And this truly transforms music forever because a band's could only be as loud as the old big upright bass that everybody used to, you know, play. And now you have it, a fretted electric bass. And everybody could get louder. And then music started sounding different. When people were louder, things started, amps started distorting, which led to more rock and roll and just different genres. And like Quincy Jones said, it was the defining invention of the 20th century, you know, the Wright Brothers and the Fender bass. But so, and Then it doesn't stop. 1954, the Stratocaster, you know, 19, which.
- [14:32]
Tomer Cohen
Is by far today the.
- [14:33]
Justin Larvel
The most popular, most popular electric guitar in the world. And the irony of Leo saying, also, you know, out of a hundred dollars, I'll spend $1 making it pretty. The use of the Danish and French curves and design elements of these guitars are so compelling.
- [14:53]
Tomer Cohen
Elegant simplicity, classic design, in a way. I've heard the phrase coloring inside the lines to this philosophy. So it's about innovation within guardrails.
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Narrator/Host
Correct.
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Tomer Cohen
Is that the way you would explain this?
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Justin Larvel
Yes, and I much prefer coloring inside the lines to Golden Handcuffs, but they're kind of. It's different versions of the same thing.
- [15:14]
Tomer Cohen
Let's say somebody comes in to the company and like, they hear this, you know, and they're like a free spirit, creative. What does that mean for them, coloring inside their line?
- [15:25]
Justin Larvel
I think really the silhouette in its. In its main form, I think, is. Is the biggest line that we would. Not you. That we would color inside almost visually.
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Tomer Cohen
Basically.
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Justin Larvel
Yeah, yeah, it's the. The coloring inside the lines is. Honor that history. But then this modern world, the contemporary use case, because the product, we can. We can put it on a pedestal, but it is a tool. It is a sonic paintbrush for someone. Like, we make art so people can make their art. But the main thing is this is a tool for the musician. So it has to have a way to integrate into their workflow, into how they want to use it.
- [16:07]
Tomer Cohen
I think people sometimes don't realize how much the nuances matter. So maybe, like, is there like an adjustment that you made inside the line that actually had a massive implication for players and for music in general. And then on the flip side, you know, something you've done, which was kind of risky, that was an interesting learning bet, but didn't work out.
- [16:30]
Justin Larvel
Yeah, I would say actually, the. When we were trying to put technology on the guitar, like with the. We did a USB guitar, we actually sold it with Apple and realized that the guitar itself is sacred. And no one wants obsolescence potential obsolescence to make its way onto the guitar. You know, you should be able to pick up a guitar at any point in time and not need, like to daisy chain three adapters together to. To make it work. And people buy a guitar thinking, I'm going to play this in 20 years. So that was. And that. That was an interesting one because it felt like, well, this is where the world's going. And look, now you don't need an amp. You just plug from the Guitar right into your laptop. It's. That sounds amazing, you know, and it's like we got an amazing pushback.
- [17:25]
Tomer Cohen
There's the whole idea of moving from building a great guitar to actually help somebody become a guitarist, which is where the whole ecosystem comes into play.
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Narrator/Host
Right.
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Tomer Cohen
This is where digital plays a big role. And this, this idea of I can, I can, you know, take out the artist and everybody in a way. When you think of this ecosystem, what is success?
- [17:46]
Justin Larvel
Yeah, it's, it's, it's acquisition and retention, I would say. You know, guitar does not have a little league, you know, or a kind of system that, that just pushes people into it. So that funnel is important from a business perspective, but it is also keeping people playing. So the ecosystem is like Fender Play is an app that we have. I mean 4 million people have downloaded it and that helps you play and that helps you learn and it helps you get to, you know, that point where it is not an instant gratification skill. You know, to, to play guitar you have to put work in and you have to do your, maybe not 10,000 hours, but you definitely have to get over a certain hump to proficiency where it's not frustrating and you're actually getting, you know, joy and all of those things out of it. And play gives you quick wins where you can get to joy faster and maybe not get frustrated as early. It used to be that you had to be a professional almost and spend a lot of money to go to a recording studio and have, then the pressure clock is on. And so we have things like Fender Studio. It's like one touch recording the Fender of tomorrow.
- [19:06]
Tomer Cohen
I'm sure a lot of your head is in, you know, in the future, five, ten years from now. You know, we have this massive emergence of technology, especially with AI, we know creative lives will become even more important potentially in people's life. What role does a smart enabled hybrid, hybrid instrument play? What role do you want Fender to play? Can you envision that guitar or even.
- [19:33]
Justin Larvel
Experience of the future on the recording side, on the digital ecosystem and amplification side, AI augmenting. I want to get this sound that I hear on this record and not doing trial and error for weeks trying to get there and maybe not getting there. So tone matching, things like that make me something that sounds like this in this key that I can work on this riff that I'm playing with and obviously accompaniment. And you could become a one man band a lot easier with those tools. At the same time, much like when we were saying the guitar itself does not get the tech put on it. The. The outboard gear does what you connect it to. The guitar itself can also lean into being something real, something human. You know, in these moments where people kind of may want a digital cleanse or just to kind of have a very, you know, now, physical experience. And so I think there's a marriage there of human creativity, but then also plugging it in, you know, to a digital ecosystem that can augment what we were. What you were doing. You know, the tools that are going to help people get better, faster, stay engaged, are fantastic. And that's where I see it all going.
- [21:13]
Tomer Cohen
I'm envisioning an image, what you're saying that the guitar is at the center. And in many ways, it stays. You know, it becomes more modern and innovative, but stays very much adhering to those lines of Fender. But around it, there is transformation on a whole different level, where everything from. I can get the sound I want really quickly. The tone I want really quickly. I can get the adjustments I want really quickly. I can learn very fast because somebody's giving me feedback and they can watch me play, which is very costly to get a personalized tutor. So in a way, we should be seeing more musicians come out.
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Justin Larvel
Absolutely. The barriers are lowering. The ability to collaborate, send things back and forth with people you don't even know, you know, that you meet online or find. It's not. Are you in the same town? Can we go to someone's garage and play really loud until we get told to stop? You know, so all the tethers are being removed. So things are just totally evolving in terms of how music is reproduced, how it is recorded and just how it's made and how people collaborate together. Because even big artists right now are, you know, sending music back and forth and recording in disparate locations. And, you know, so we're just riding that wave.
- [22:39]
Tomer Cohen
If you can snap your fingers right now and a new technology emerged that would make making music so much better.
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Narrator/Host
What would that be for you?
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Justin Larvel
I think it would be an improvement to the technology that would allow people to learn to play faster and to progress past the points where people quit. And I think that's the biggest thing. I think it's always been a thing that we probably lose up to 90% of people who are guitar intenders, but they don't stick with it. And I think that once you get over the hump to the joy, everybody wishes they did.
- [23:19]
Tomer Cohen
And then somebody young, aspiring professional, she comes to you and she's like, I want to be. I Love music. I love guitar. I want to be at the intersection of guitar building and technology. What would you have her go learn or work at?
- [23:36]
Justin Larvel
Everybody approaches it initially from the art level and the idea of, you know, making a beautiful guitar, but understanding, I think that the psychological side of the business and understanding a customer and understanding what problem are you solving? Are you just making something pretty and that's that you like or that shows your skills or are you solving a need? Are you understanding what the needs are out there? I think it's interesting sometimes where we have four good ideas and you want to put them all in a product and it's like, no, no, no, no, no, just put one in or just two or you know, don't overdo it because you're actually going to start to A, lose the focus of what this product is, B, maybe one of these other features might turn some of those people off or so it's really one of the biggest skills, I think that's the most important is that understanding and the ability to kind of socratically ask all those questions about behavior. Not just making things, not just creating a product and putting it out there, but understanding the, the why the product exists, the who it's for, how it's going to be used, and putting that all together because you can make, you know, well built, beautiful guitars all day. But if you, if you're not answering those questions, it's not going to be, you know, what you're hoping.
- [25:09]
Tomer Cohen
Justin, thank you so much. I've learned so much in this interview.
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Justin Larvel
This was a, oh, thank you to me.
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Tomer Cohen
A personal pleasure of mine.
- [25:15]
Justin Larvel
This one me as well. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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Narrator/Host
I love this conversation with Justin, not just because of his deep understanding of how products or music are made, but because of how clearly he articulates something that is very easy to forget in.
- [25:30]
Tomer Cohen
This world of technology.
- [25:32]
Narrator/Host
And that's that great products are not just about features. They're about intentionality. It's about balancing progress with heritage. It's about having tremendous respect for the people who use them. Here are some of my favorite takeaways on the conversation. First, it was clear that at Fender, the highest form of product design is restraint. As Justin said, innovation doesn't always mean mean adding more. Sometimes it means knowing exactly what not to touch. Fender learned this the hard way when they actually tried to put technology on the guitar itself. They started adding USB ports and building tech and the pushback was immediate and visceral. Fender's insight was simple but profound. The guitar is sacred Innovation belongs around it, in the amps, in the software, in the learning tools, not inside the guitar. That's not conservatism, that's respect for a tool people expect to be playing 20 years from now. Next is the idea that great products don't express the maker. They disappear for the user, whether it's neck size, weight, balance, pickup response. Justin shared that the artist can feel the smallest nuance. That level of sensitivity reveals something very profound. A great product gets out of the way and then it becomes an extension of the person using it. The moment the product starts expressing the maker more than the user, you've lost. Third, the hardest product problem for Fender isn't acquisition. Since everyone would love to learn how to play guitar. The biggest problem is helping people get past the frustration cliff. Up to 90% of people who intend to learn guitar quit not because they don't love music. It's because guitar is not an instant gratification skill. Fender's biggest bet isn't on pros. It's on retention through digital and a physical ecosystem that can deliver joy. From feedback loops on how to get better, to better paths, to sounding good enough to keep going, to playing some pretty amazing pieces you always love to play. The deep insight here is that the real competition for Fender isn't another product. It's actually discouragement. Lastly, one of the most powerful ideas from the conversation is that AI doesn't replace creativity. It becomes a force multiplier for it. For most of history, making music required clearing enormous barriers. Whether it's access to instruments, expensive studios, technical mastery, and years of learning to just sound good enough to keep going. AI changes all of that. Not by writing the music for you, but by helping you get to joy faster. Imagine imagining the tone you're hearing in your head without weeks of experimentation, giving you feedback instantly. When you practice alone, helping you record and iterate without needing a studio or band, the result is amazing. The result is not fewer musicians. It's more musicians, more creation, more collaboration, more voices. And that's the real unlock. When the cost of expression drops, culture expands. I'm Tomer Cohen. Thanks for watching.
- [28:56]
Closing Announcer
You've been watching Building One. Our show is hosted by Tomer Cohen. Building One is produced and edited by Mason Cohn and the team at Coastal Production Works. This episode was mixed by Tim Boland at LinkedIn. Our team includes Rachel Karp, Sarah Storm, Dave Pond and Alicia Mann, with support from Alex Kuznetsova and Mujeeb Mehrdad. Until next time, keep building.