25
votes
German retailer Thomann is suing Fender over recent cease and desists
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- Title
- Thomann takes legal action against Fender - Thomann Blog
- Published
- Jun 22 2026
- Word count
- 955 words
Interesting that Fender has somehow gotten a court to side with them about body shape (not just headstock shape) when they haven't been able to defend this for decades, with many clones having been around for quite some time now. On one hand, I kind of get it that you'd want to defend your company's iconic designs, but the ship sailed on the ability to defend a trademark on this body shape like 50 years ago. I doubt they'll be successful this time around, but I'm not a lawyer. Seems like a big waste of money all around.
The court gave them the ruling by default due to lack of paperwork from the defendant, not on the merits.
Exactly. Yet they've been using this to send cease and desist orders to a lot of small little luthiers, in order to pressure them to stop selling S-style guitars and even destroy their current inventory.
It's seems however, that they made the mistake of also targeting some of the big players. Thomann, who owns the brand Harley Benton, is by far the biggest retailer outside North America. And they are the 3rd largest distributor of Fender guitars in the world after Guitar Center and Sweetwater. They have deep pockets and can afford to fight this out in court. For reference, Fender has a revenue of about 700M USD whereas Thomann is about 1.5B USD.
Moreover, they are based in Germany where the default judgement was won. So they will be very familiar with the legal system there.
Overall, this whole debacle seems like a giant mistake on Fender's side. They've lost a great deal of reputation in order to bully some smaller companies, and now they're in a fight with one of their most important distributors.
Meanwhile, a company like Fender relies largely on brand reputation in order to make its sales. These days, others make similar and arguably better guitars (I'm looking at you, PRS Silver Sky). People buy Fender because of the name on the headstock. What for heaven's sake were they thinking?
Yeah Fender killed their reputation for me personally too. Their CEO is absolutely out of his mind.
I almost want to jump DAWs now that they own Presonus Studio One but will probably begrudgingly stay for now.
I am so glad to see a big name that has the weight to do so bringing clarification and pushback to Fender's behavior. It's still so sad this ever had to happen in the first place.
I actually just did that earlier in the year, once they started slapping the Fender name all over it and redesigning it. Updates have been mediocre since they took over, yet they want more money annually. I switched to Ableton, which is more popular anyway. The buy-in is more, but they go years between paid upgrades and ship minor updates every few months. (Plus, the included Ableton devices are excellent.)
It's clear to me that Fender sees the now-renamed "Fender Studio Pro" as a guitar accessory, and the whole most recent update was geared around that. And they've been trying really hard for the past couple of years to get people onto subscriptions.
Even before this lawsuit started getting noise surrounding it, Fender's been long known for being a company that "enshittification" is inevitable for.
Yeah, I will definitely not be going to any future updates because I see the enshittification happening that you're talking about (AI bullshit too...) and I refuse to support that or give Fender any money ever again. So I will be sticking with my current version frozen in time until I either feel like taking the leap to another DAW inexpensively (especially to something like Reaper) OR get an influx of money that I can earmark for moving to Ableton or something else. I've watched a lot of videos of Ableton in use (Andrew Huang, others) and it seems to have plenty of neat first-party things to offer too
A bit off-topic, but why do you use Studio One? I'm fairly new to recording, but I am currently using Reaper. I'm happy with it, but never really tried other DAWs apart from briefly playing around with Ableton in the past.
Does the DAW really make a difference, or is it just a matter of being used to a certain workload?
At this point, inertia/familiarity more than anything. It does have its own benefits in that it has a lot of great first-party instruments and plugins and so on, so that too. Having the Pro version means I get a lot of neat stuff
But comfort is a big part of it. I am used to the shortcuts, the UI and workflow, also some sunk cost fallacy sneaks in there- I have paid for multiple upgrades so the money I have invested in it means I have this pro-level DAW with tons of built-in stuff that works well.
So, as much as I could find another DAW to enjoy (like Reaper or whatnot), and I do "try" them out from time to time- I just always prefer what I already use more and feel like I am deep enough into the ecosystem that it's not worth it to migrate
Thanks. That makes sense. I suppose that's how they get you. As long as the inconvenience of switching remains greater than your annoyance towards them, you're not going anywhere as a customer.
I picked Reaper simply because of the free trail and I liked the vibes the company was giving off. I kind of assumed all the major DAWs are comparable, but I never really looked into the others much. It seems like that is the case from your comment, so it's reassuring to know that I'm not missing out on anything by sticking to Reaper
Yeah, for sure! A lot of the ideas are the same across all major DAWs- most of the fundamentals will be very similar. The timeline, the tracks, certain interface type things, all of the necessary stuff. The biggest things DAWs offer usually are just their particular set of enhancements or "nice ways of handling" those basics, or their specific additional features, or first-party stuff like plugins, but for the price (and potential/power) it's hard to beat Reaper (used as shareware or for it's inexpensive full price). I think it has a bit of a tougher learning curve overall, but I've heard from all sorts of people it's great once you're used to it.
With Studio One at this point, since I own the Pro version (and a perpetual license, so I may run out of updates, but can use my current version forever, no subscription), I get all sorts of useful Presonus/Studio One plugins and begrudgingly now some nice Fender stuff (guitar effects). Presonus' has all sorts of built-in plugins like drums, synths, bass, cinematic sounds, reverb, compressor, limiter, vocal tuning, all sorts of stuff- and they build those quite well. So it's nice that "out of the box" I get a lot of stuff even if I have added hundreds of my own additional plugins lol
For me now, yeah it's mostly just using both what I've invested in and what's familiar enough that my workflow has less "friction" because things are so second-nature / muscle memory. It may now come with an unfortunate branding change, but the underlying product is quite good