Ernie Ball Strings Marks 50th Year

...into the mainstream of popular music. If Leo and Les are the “fathers” of the electric guitar, then Ernie Ball ranks as either a loyal best friend or a perhaps a helpful uncle. Which ever designation you choose, there’s no question he deserves a prominent place in a family tree of electric guitar pioneers. Thanks to millions of string sets sold each year, Ernie Ball is hardly an unknown name, and the day-glo packaging and cartoon eagle logo are also among the industry’s best-known trademarks. Yet, 50 years after Ernie introduced his Slinky strings, the importance of his contributions is not fully appreciated.

Lacking the volume of a horn and the sustain of a violin, for most of the past 300 years the guitar was perennially cast in a supporting role, backing up vocalists and supplying rhythm for instrumental ensembles. Then in the ’30s a collection of eccentric inventors in Southern California decided that a bit more volume was all it would take to move the guitar from the shadows to the spotlight. They were about 90% right. Leo Fender had the volume problem licked by 1948, and soon thereafter people began hearing the guitar like never before. However, to get from just loud to the inspired soloing of Hendrix, Clapton, and Beck required another critical ingredient: light gauge strings. That’s where Ernie Ball comes in.

Like light bulbs and internal combustion engines, light gauge strings are so common today that it’s hard to remember they were once an “innovation.” However, in 1962, when Ernie stuffed some 9-42 gauge strings into an envelope with the now famous Slinky Eagle, they were truly new. In pursuit of note bends and speed, others had strung their guitars with banjo strings, and Ernie never claimed to have “invented” the use of a lighter set of strings. However, he was the one who made them widely available, giving players the tools to take the guitar in an entirely new direction. This helps explain why over the past five decades, so much great music—from Jimi Hendrix to John Mayer—has been made on his strings. Today, Ernie’s original string gauging is now an industry standard, and the company’s pioneering role is pretty much forgotten. Yet, the Ernie Ball brand remains vibrant as ever, thanks to successive generations of able family management and an extremely distinctive marketing approach.

Ernie Ball was destined for a career in music, practically from birth. His grandfather, songwriter Ernest Ball, had achieved fame penning memorable tunes like “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” and “Mother Machree,” and his father was a studio guitarist in Los Angeles. Growing up in Southern California in the ’30s, Ernie got caught up in the national fixation with Hawaii and decided to master the steel guitar. With the single-minded determination that was to characterize his entire career, he made himself a highly proficient player and by 17 was performing widely on local radio and KTLA, then the biggest television station in Los Angeles. If it weren’t for an on-air riff by a radio DJ, people might be playing Sherwood Ball strings today. For his first 17 years, Ernie went by his given name, Sherwood. When a DJ introduced him on air saying, “We have Ernest Ball’s grandkid here to do a number for us today; take it away Ernie,” he changed his name on the spot and was never called Sherwood again.

Ernie’s musical career followed a fairly conventional progression. He began augmenting his radio sessions with club and lounge dates as soon as he was old enough to play in bars, and then toured with the Tommy Duncan band, which had been formed by a lead singer from Bob Wills’ famous Texas Playboys. His guitar playing was briefly interrupted by the Korean War, when he did a stint playing bass drum with the Air Force Band. Once the war ended in 1953, he was back in Los Angeles, juggling live gigs, studio dates, and a teaching studio with the demands of raising a family.

A meeting with Leo Fender in the early ’50s was a life changing experience for Ernie. Fender’s circumstances were extremely modest at the time. Leo was building guitars in a converted barn in Fullerton. But Ernie immediately saw the Fender guitar as a world-changing instrument, and he was determined, one way or another, to be part of the revolution. Leo also signed Ernie up as an endorser and began soliciting his opinions about new guitars and amps. In 1953, as his teaching studio expanded, he took over a small accordion store in Reseda, California, and turned it into one of the first, if not the first, exclusive guitar stores in country.

Before the advent of the Beatles, the guitar was still a niche instrument, and the fretted instrument market was dwarfed by band instruments and accordions. (In 1956, the year The Selmer Company posted sales of $10 million, Gibson revenues were a comparatively paltry $3.3 million.) Tom Walker, the Fender sales rep for Southern California and a close personal friend, urged Ernie to rethink his retail model. “There’s not enough business to make it as a guitar store,” he said. “Survival will be tough.” Ernie, however, had made up his mind, and was not to be dissuaded.

As Walker had predicted, surviving as an exclusive guitar store was “tough,” and Ernie struggled. On numerous occasions, Walker had to intercede with the Fender credit department on Ernie’s behalf to keep product in the store. Despite the hardship, Ernie’s unique business model was providing invaluable insights into the emerging guitar market. As the only exclusive guitar store on the West Coast, Ernie Ball Music soon became the destination for emerging bands like The Ventures, The Beach Boys, the Byrds, and dozens of other guitar bands that came to define rock ’n’ roll. Ernie also had a thriving teaching studio that drew hundreds of aspiring kids each week. Watching beginners progress, he had a major revelation: lighter gauge strings on an electric would make it easier to learn and play.

Sometime around 1961, Ernie suggested to Leo Fender that he equip his guitars with a 9 gauge E-string. An emphatic “No way” was the response. Leo was convinced that without the tension of heavier strings, the necks would bow, and that lighter strings would buzz. Other guitar makers were equally dismissive about the idea. After being rejected by everyone he approached, Ernie decided to go into business for himself. He made a deal to buy strings in bulk from Fender’s string division, and asked his high school classmate Roland Crump to design a logo. Crump, who was a junior animator at Disney at the time, took time off from his day job—drawing in the spots for the movie classic 101 Dalmations—and came up with the now instantly recognizable “Ball Eagle” character and the stylized Slinky typography. (Crump would later retire as head of Disney’s animation department.) By 1962, Ernie had strings and distinctive packaging. All that he lacked were orders.

Sterling Ball, who had been running the cash register at his father’s music store from the age of nine onward, accompanied Ernie on some of the early sales calls. “I had to sit out on the curb while he went into the stores. I was so hyper active, he was afraid I’d screw up the sale,” he recalls. “Once Ernie came out of a store steaming mad because the store owner had said, ‘I don’t want your bastardized guitar strings.’” To overcome this and other retail objections, Ernie hit on the idea of putting a dealer’s name on the front of the package. Through this private label effort, he finally began getting a few orders. “We’d cut a dealer’s logo out of the Yellow Pages, use it to make up a string package, and then send it out with an order form,” recalls Sterling. “That’s how we got our foot in the door.” Over time, the dealer logo migrated to the back of the package. By 1971, the Ernie Ball brand was strong enough that the private label effort was discontinued.

In the early ’60s, the distribution of guitar strings was almost entirely controlled by a group of about 30 wholesalers, and most of them had no interest in stocking an untried brand in weird day-glo packaging. Ernie took the rejections in stride and bypassed the wholesalers altogether, selling strings directly to retailers. Pre-internet, pre-toll-free number, pre-fax machine, setting up a dealer-direct sales organization was difficult, and competitors scoffed that “you can’t make money on tiny string orders.” Ernie managed to confound the naysayers with a well thought-out volume  and COD discount structure that led to bigger and more profitable orders.

The direct sales approach also provided a potent competitive edge. Years of selling guitars to everyone from beginners to pros had given Ernie a keen, intuitive sense for what players wanted. Sales information from retailers across the country provided additional valuable market data. By the time the Beatles triggered the guitar boom in 1964, he was uniquely positioned with a product that was perfectly in tune with the market. He understood the fun, irreverence, and enthusiasm that a new generation of players brought to the guitar, and he spoke to them like no one else in the market. That’s why virtually every iconic guitarist of the ’60s—Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page—latched onto Ernie Ball strings and continues to use them today.

Ernie Ball strings, by virtue of being on scores of platinum albums, are worthy of a lengthy footnote in rock ’n’ roll history. What makes the company noteworthy is the fact that it has managed to thrive under three generations of Ball family management. No small accomplishment, given the fact that less than 40% of all family businesses survive into a second generation.

By the time Sterling Ball joined the company full time in 1974, Ernie’s interests were divided between selling strings, flying an ultralight airplane, and surfing in Newport Beach. Brash, opinionated, and brimming with confidence, Sterling was willing to take charge when Ernie was out of the office, often ruffling feathers in the process. Against the objections of some co-workers, he doubled sales in Southern California with a variety of stunts including calling on dealers dressed in a Santa suit. Then, he turned his attention to export sales, signing up distributors in Asia and Europe. Two years into the job, a somewhat exasperated Ernie pulled him aside and said, “You think you have all the answers. You can run the business for a year and if sales stay the same or go down, you’re fired. If they go up, you can keep the job.” That year sales advanced 50%, and Sterling has been at the helm ever since.

In the ’70s, Ernie Ball was a 14-person sales and marketing operation that repackaged strings from other manufacturers. Early on, Sterling concluded that dependence on others made the company vulnerable, and he began the process of establishing an in-house manufacturing operation. Starting with a small string-making operation in 1979, the company gradually expanded production. Today, the Ernie Ball string factory in Coachella, California employs 400.

Manufacturing capability has enabled Ernie Ball to control its own destiny, but more significantly, it has provided the resources for an expanded marketing campaign. From the very start of the Ernie Ball music store, Ernie understood that the opportunity to perform was a magnet for getting kids to start on the guitar. “Never underestimate the power of a three-chord song,” was his mantra as he organized “guitar jamborees,” concerts, and other events to put young players in front of people. In 1997, Sterling concluded that the collective guitar industry had forgotten this basic principle. “We were trying to sell tennis racquets when there weren’t any tennis courts,” he explained. That year, he launched the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands, taking the concepts Ernie had pioneered in his retail store and rolling them out nationally. Now in its 16th year, the Battle of the Bands has evolved into a major event, with more than 25,000 entrants vying for a first prize of $15,000 worth of gear, an opportunity to perform on the Vans Warped Tour, and a record contract. Sterling’s son Brian, who currently manages the event, acknowledges that the prominent Ernie Ball mobile stage at the Warped Tour has helped burnish the brand and build sales. But he adds, “We’ve also gotten more people excited about music, and that’s benefitted everyone in the guitar business.”

Ten years after selling Fender to CBS in 1965, Leo Fender returned to the music business, launching Music Man. Just as he had turned to Ernie for advice 20 years earlier, in 1975 he asked Sterling to beta test his new basses and amps. Sterling recalls that it was a heady experience working with the man who brought the electric guitar to market, and at one point, he even considered quitting Ernie Ball and going to work for Music Man. After a brilliant launch, Music Man folded in 1984, due to an acrimonious dispute between Leo and his partners. Ernie and Sterling stepped in and bought the trademarks and product designs that year and restarted limited guitar production in San Luis Obispo.

Keith Richards of Rolling Stones fame was the first to endorse the new Music Man guitar, using a white one on a 1985 tour. In 1989, the endorsement of Eddie Van Halen and the introduction of an innovative EVH model further elevated Music Man’s stature. The company later parted ways with Van Halen, but successfully carved out a niche with distinctive designs, carefully crafted at the San Luis Obispo plant. With their bolt-on necks, Music Man guitars still have a bit of Fender DNA, but Sterling and his son Scotty, who manages the plant, expanded the original line with unique designs like the Bongo bass and signature models for Steve Lukather and John Petrucci. “R&D in the guitar business has consisted of a new color,” says Sterling. “We hired six smart young engineers from Cal Poly and turned them loose.” Their most significant development to date has been the “Game Changer,” a patented digital switching system that enables players to instantly rewire their pickups in any conceivable combination.

Fifty years after the introduction of the first set of Slinky strings, Ernie Ball enjoys an enviable position. The string brand is recognized worldwide, and is poised for growth as the guitar business expands in emerging markets around the world. Brian Ball says that a new string design, slated for introduction at NAMM, holds the promise of “really turning things upside down.” At Music Man, the company has found a way to profitably build guitars in the U.S., which is no small feat.

Rather than revel in this success, Sterling still runs scared. He worries less about competitors than losing touch with the market. “As a business gets successful, it’s easy for the management to get too far away from the customer,” he explains. “When you don’t use your own product, when you dread contact with the customer, when you need some junior marketing exec to tell you how something works, and when you hire some marketing firm to ask customers what they want, those are the signs that you’ve lost touch. You could see these symptoms in just about any once-successful company in the industry that went into a decline.”

Sterling and sons Brian and Scotty are determined to avoid that fate. That’s why they’re visible throughout the factories, and why all three are regularly at the Ernie Ball Battle of the Bands events at the Warped Tour, not in special seats, but in the middle of the crowd. Most importantly, they’re mindful of Ernie’s original reason for starting the company. His first thoughts weren’t about getting rich or building a big business. He was just a guy who got a thrill from playing the guitar and who wanted to make it easier for kids to have the same experience. Fifty years later, the scale of the business is bigger than Ernie could have ever imagined, but it’s still all about spreading the fun of playing the guitar.

In an office filled with guitars, amps, and effects, Brian Ball is testing a new string that he thinks will make “as big” an impact as the original Slinkys. He does an A/B test, playing a few chords on a guitar equipped with the new strings, then switches to an instrument with conventional strings. “They’re hotter,” he concludes. He’s not speaking as a company executive, but as a player enjoying a cool new tool. This is the same kind of intuitive approach that built the Ernie Ball company, and it’s the best guarantee of future success.

http://www.ernieball.com/