Katana by Fender
The Katana is a type of electric guitar built by the Fender company. Designed by marketing director Dan Smith in 1985, the Katana may have been the most unorthodox guitar ever made by Fender. It was designed to compete with the wildly shaped guitars of era such as the Jackson Randy Rhoads, and to satisfy Fender dealers who were feeling the pinch by them. Sadly, the Katana did not sell as well as was hoped and it was discontinued just a year later.
The Katana has a maple glued-in neck with bound rosewood fingerboard, offset triangle markers, a 24-3/4" scale with 22 frets, and a truss rod adjuster at the headstock end. It features a string clamp, an arrow-head-shape headstock and a neck that matches the body color. The guitar has two coverless humbucker pickups, two controls (volume, tone) and a three-way selector , all on body, and a side mounted jack socket. It also has a two-pivot bridge/vibrato unit.
A much cheaper Squier version of the Katana was also made, which had only one pickup, a bolt-on short scale neck and basic volume/tone controls. The Squier version is much more commonly available in the used market than the genuine Fender model.
