This year, the company has been busy celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Stratocaster by releasing several limited editions and a variety of other new products. Fender also recently unloaded the Guild acoustic guitar brand for an undisclosed amount and is beefing up international sales, particularly in China.

The company has just added a "design your own" guitar feature to the Fender website. That effort has created waves in music circles for its embrace of the direct-to-consumer sales model, which cuts out the company's traditional dealers.

Fender's instruments "have always been modular in construction, which has always made them ideal for individual personalization," said Justin Norvell, Fender's vice president of product marketing. The design-your-own initiative "also provides us with valuable marketing data as to what options, colors, etc. consumers are looking for in a Fender instrument," he said.

Like a good guitar riff, Fender has had its ups and downs.

Fender's first guitars were mocked at trade shows for their solid wood bodies and the way the necks joined the bodies with bolts and screws rather than glue.

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