Hours Added to Last Days of Fender Show : Art: The exhibit, which includes his first guitar, is breaking attendance records at the Fullerton Museum Center.

The Fullerton Museum Center, which has broken its daily average attendance record with an exhibit on pioneer electric guitar designer Leo Fender, will extend its hours for the show’s final days, today and Saturday.

The center, which organized the show, will be open today from noon to 8 p.m. and will reopen tonight at 8:30 for a concert by Popsicle, a local pop band. The center will be open Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

“Five Decades of Fender: The Sound Heard Around the World” has drawn an average of more than 100 people a day, 10 more than the previous daily record average, director Joe Felz said. The show-which features 75 instruments including the first guitar Fender ever made--is expected to break the center record of 10,000 total attendance to a single exhibit, Felz added. Both records were set by “Titanic,” an exhibit in 1991 about the doomed ocean liner.

“Last weekend we had more than 500 people,” Felz said. “It’s real popular stuff.”

He added that the exhibit--an attempt to illustrate how Fender’s designs made a whole different type of rock music possible--has received national and international media exposure. Music magazines from France, England and Australia sent writers, and cable and radio stations around the country and Canada have broadcast information about the show, Felz said.

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A membership drive was staged in conjunction with the show; Felz said drive tallies won’t be completed until the middle of the month. But whatever happens, he said, the exhibit’s popularity won’t be triggering any sort of shift in center philosophy.

“Five Decades of Fender” focused on the impact of Fender’s designs on music and “how this was important to people, not just how neat guitars look,” said Felz. “That’s the same approach we take with every show.”

* “Five Decades of Fender: The Sound Heard Around the World” runs through Saturday at the Fullerton Museum Center, 301 N. Pomona Ave., Fullerton. Admission: $1.50-$2.50. Tickets to tonight’s concert by Popsicle are $5 and are good for admission to the exhibit as well. (714) 738-6545.