The Fender Stratocaster: A Short History

hi this is Keith Williams welcome to five art world works to help you get the most music from the least gear how did the fender stratocaster go from being seen as some sort of factory built gimmick to being the very definition of an electric guitar I want to take us through the development of the strat and touch on some of the players that were influential in its history if you enjoy we're doing here at five watt world take a minute to subscribe and hit the bell icon to be notified when new videos are released if you've already subscribed swing by the store and grab a t-shirt or a mug to support what we're doing here so when did the Stratocaster start George Fullerton remembers that around the end of 1951 in the early part of 1952 Leo started working on the pickups by the latter part of 52 a lot of the work had been done on getting the new guitar project completed one of the earliest Fender employees Freddy Tavares was charged with drawing up the design of the Stratocaster the influences came from different places the body designed from the Fender precision basses the peghead from the early Bigsby guitars several features involved from the Telecaster plus whole new items like the pickups in the vibrato it's clear that Leo saw the Stratocaster as an evolution from the Telecaster and like with the Telecaster leo fender involved many guitarists in the design process he recalled about 25% of every day was spent visiting musicians trying to figure out what would best suit their needs upon its release in 1954 the strat had an ash body with two or sometimes three pieces glued together they carved the body with gentle but deep contours in response to players complaining that the hard edges of the tele were uncomfortable this led to what fender called the original contoured body was carved on the back to fit against the players body and sloped on the front with the players arm picking arm rests there was routing on the front and back to house the pickups controls in the vibrato assembly and the routing was covered by the pick guard another small plate covered the vibrato mechanism in the back a cutout on the rear plate allowed for the strings to be fed into vibrato block and on the earliest guitars a serial number was stamped into the top the one-piece maple neck was assembled in the same way as it was on the Telecaster the 21 frets were laid directly up into slots in the face of the maple neck the fingerboard radius was approximately seven inches a metal truss rod was set in the channel in the rear of the neck and the channel was covered with a walnut strip which would later be referred to by players as the skunk stripe the truss rod could be adjusted by screw at the base at the neck near the body but typically only if the neck was removed from the guitar fitting with fenders modular design philosophy black plastic dots were laid in the face of the neck and tiny position markers were laid into the side of the neck the nut was made of white bone and the scale length matched that of the telly at twenty five and a half inches if the telly headstock seemed to be influenced by the single sided Traverse Visby solid body guitar the strat headstock certainly brought to mind the old quote imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Don Randall had a fenders distribution and marking company at the time recalled them the new headstock designed that it was a little more graceful a little more ludus a little more Paul Bigsby ish six in-line closed back loosened tuners were fitted with a thin metal shaft and small oval buttons a small circular string attained ur on the headstock kept the ENB strings in place decals on the headstock were the black outline gold spaghetti-like fender a black Stratocaster and a black with synchronized tremolo and a tiny script black that's had original contour body the body was given a two-tone sunburst finish common on Gibson guitars but it was the first time fender had used one was created by applying two coats at different colored nitro cellulous finish first a yellow for the brighter center then black around all the edges a single-layer white plastic pick guard was applied with eight screws the three pickups were identical white plastic covered a bobbin wound with 42 gauge enamel wire that was wax dipped all around 6l nações cylindrical pull pieces the pole pieces are revealed in the top of each pickup cover and then pickup was angled at the bridge like on a Telecaster early pickup covers were made with bakelite plastic which over the years proved to be fragile leaving many guitars with cracked pickup covers the guitar was equipped with a 3-way selector switch that would individually choose each of the three pickups the output jack was mounted at an angle in the face of the guitar separate from the pick guard in a metal plate there had been four broto bars on guitars four of various designs notably those by Bigsby but the built-in vibrato on the strat was by all accounts Leo's pride and joy through trial and error the final version was wildly successful and Leo applied for a patent for it in August of 1954 it was an adjustable bridge tailpiece and vibrato system all in a single unit it was what Leo fender did so well taking an existing idea and improving it with a whole new design unlike the Bigsby where the strings moved over a fixed bridge often putting the guitar out of tune when the strings hummock hung up on the bridge leo system moved the entire unit tailpiece and bridge saddles together the bridges metal baseplate was attached to the body with six screws forward of the saddles on which the bridge pivoted the barato arm screwed into the baseplate like on the telly before the bridge came with a metal cover quickly removed and either discarded or repurposed as an ashtray hence the nickname the sustain block or inertial block extended down from the base play into the body of the guitar the strings were fed through the block through the bridge over the saddles the tension of the strings was offset by up to five Springs that attached the block to the body with an adjustable claw in the body route on the back of the guitar the springs allowed for fine-tuning the stiffness and hence the feel of the vibrato system the new bridge had six bent steel saddles that were each adjustable for height and length this wasn't the first six way adjustable bridge Gretsch had produced their Malita bridge around 1952 and Gibson's tune-o-matic appeared on the Les Paul Custom in 1953 the real innovation here was that the strap bridge offered adjustment of the height as well as the intonation something the other two bridges did not do it's well known that leo was influenced by the car designs of the time and like the cars the parts came together to produce an object that was as beautiful as it was functional another addition to the long list of 1950s designs the history remembers us simultaneously groundbreaking and timeless Eric Clapton would later say my feeling about a perfect design is that it has to be functional and with the strat its functionality really steers it that's what makes the design so beautiful it's superb Lee thought-out the first batch of 100 stratocasters were ready to ship on the first sales slip was dated October 13th 19:54 Don Randall had come up with the name of the Telecaster and he was also charged with naming the Stratocaster he said later that his inspiration came from the beginning of the Space Age and the lure of the stratosphere fender set the list price of the Stratocaster at 249 50 + 39 54 the case you could buy a non verba version for two twenty nine fifty despite the mass production efficiencies it was expensive when compared to the Gibson Goldtop which listed for two hundred and twenty-five dollars and the Gretsch duo jet for two hundred thirty dollars in the same year it's estimated that by 2010 approximately 3 million strats had been sold but in the beginning the guitar did not catch on right away only about 720 strats were sold in 1954 and 1955 combined compared to 1027 Telly's for the same time period slowly as rock-and-roll grew so did interest in the guitar and soon fender was having trouble keeping up a demand the big break came on December 1st 1957 when Buddy Holly and the crickets performed on The Ed Sullivan Show performing his hit that'll be the day and his new song Peggy Sue Holly stood at the front of the band with a shiny new Stratocaster for the TV audience to see by 56 small changes are already starting to come to the strat the bodies were more likely to be made of alder the neck profile was becoming more pointed in the back what would later be known as a boat shape or a V the string guides on the headstock changed from the early round type to the butterfly shape and in 58 the 2 tone sunburst would change to a 3 tone adding a layer of red to the yellow and black fender was now spending much more on advertising and the catalogues went full-color in 1957-58 announcing new custom colors a bright red strat was on the cover of the 5859 catalog this is big news as prior to that most Telly's only came in blonde and the strats mostly came in sunburst in 1957 fender announced a strat in see-through blonde finish with gold hardware Don Randall's idea it was likely in response to Gretchen's release of the white falcon unfortunately the thin gold plating wore off or corroded quickly so this wasn't a popular option in the long run but the blonde in gold was fenders first official custom College Stratocaster the custom color guitars with their five percent up charge we're not particularly popular as an option in the 50s hi the early 60s vender issued an official list of available custom colors under used paint from the DuPont do Co color line and they were heavily influenced by car colors even the names came from car catalogs Fiesta red for example can be traced to Ford's 1956 Thunderbird according to Fullerton Fiesta red was the first true custom color the marketing guys were much less than enthusiastic even wondering aloud who's gonna want a color guitar especially a red one the next big change would come in 1959 with the move to a rosewood fingerboard this was following on the heels of the 1958 jazz master their new premier model having appeared with a rosewood fingerboard during 1959 all fender guitars were switched to a rosewood fingerboard the position dot markers were correspondingly switched from black plastic to a lighter color now known as clay dots these earliest Brazilian rosewood boards had a flat base and became known as the slab boards fender continued to experiment with the Rosewood thickness to get the best sound and by 1962 had settled on a curved bass board a thin layer of rosewood that is referred to as a laminate board and maple boards were continued to be offered as an option as well also in 59 the one layer pick guard was changed to the three ply white black white some believe that the white was somewhat discolored by the layer of black underneath leaching into the white creating what is now described as mint green guards Thunder used plastic tortoiseshell pit guards on some of the guitars in the 60s as well by the late 50s many blues guitarists were discovering the Stratocaster Buddy Guy bought a strat upon relocating to Chicago in 1957 after his Les Paul Goldtop was stolen but he's success with the glassy tone cutting through the mix made many other bluesman take notice of the strat instrumental electric guitar music was being popularized in the movies in 1961 Dick Dale had a big hit with let's go trippin playing his custom gold Sparkle finish left-handed strat awash in a sea of reverb and the ventures walk don't run was a big hit in 1960 before moving to MOSFET guitars the ventures Don Wilson used the Stratocaster and Bob Bogle played a jazz master by 1960 demand from abroad we came apart offenders growing business so Don Randall began working out the details Britain was particularly important as the British Invasion was in full swing in the early 60s demand for Fender guitars had been preloaded in Britain perhaps because the government had put a ban in place from 1951 to 1952 on importing certain products from America which included guitars in love with American pop music British singer cliff Richards wrote to fender directly asking for a copy of their catalogue he received the 5859 catalogue with the red strat with gold hardware on the cover the generous Richards ordered one for his guitarist Hank Marvin so just as the ban was lifted Marvin was playing that red Stratocaster likely the first one ever in the UK into his vox ac30 in front of audiences all over Britain fender success grew steadily in the early 60s topping out at approximately forty million dollars worth of retail sales by the middle of the decade fender was feeding the boom demand for electric guitars basses and amps and a peak of its success fender was sold in 1965 to Columbia Broadcasting System for a reported 13 million dollars despite the fact that CBS had no background in instrument manufacturing was buying up instrument companies right and left the new CBS management were engineers interested primarily in high production volume criticism started to come back from dealers right away complaining that quote the guitars don't play like they used to unquote in the early 60s a new chunkier logo started to show up on the other guitars in the line and was added to the Stratocaster in 64 known among collectors as the transition logo because it leads from the original thin spaghetti logo to a bolder all-black version often referred to as the CBS logo that was introduced around 1968 in 1965 fender also began using the neck plates with a stamped F on them and the F would soon appear on the new tuners as well the biggest difference to the strat that came with CBS was the new wider headstock jazz master and Jaguar guitars were made with bound necks and in 66 a very few strats were put out with bound necks as well the July 1965 performance by Bob Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival turned into a media frenzy when he performed with electric instruments Dylan showed up playing a black Stratocaster and his lead player Mike filled played a blonde Telecaster George Harrison and John Lennon of the Beatles each 'dick wired a Stratocaster in the mid 60's both finished in Sainik Blue John played his strata on Ticket to Ride recorded that January they used them on an instrumental section of nowhere man including the harmonic at the end harrison repainted his into a psychedelic masterpiece and used it in the magical mystery tour movie during the I am The Walrus sequence but perhaps the biggest lift the strat received at the end of the 60s was in the choice of instruments of one James Marshall Jimi Hendrix Hendricks got his first strat in 1966 he may well have chosen the strap because his hero Curtis Mayfield was playing one at the time early in his career Jimi played many rows aboard strats but in the last few years of his life he played maple board once one black and one in white Jimi played standard right-handed models turned over and restrung to accommodate being left-handed he said the Stratocaster is the best all-around guitar for the stuff we're doing you can get the very bright troubles and the deep bass sound Hendrix died tragically in 1970 Eric Clapton tells a story in his autobiography that on a whim he'd bought a left-handed white Stratocaster he'd seen in a shop window for Jimi and had carried it to the slime family stone concert that night where they were to meet up Clapton only learned the next day the Jimi had died the night before Eric Clapton recalls seeing Buddy Holly perform on British television when he was just 12 years old he purchased his first strat in 1967 at Sound City in London a used 1956 Stratocaster later nicknamed brownie that looked very much like the guitar Buddy Holly had played on that TV broadcast Clapton used the strat sporadically at the end of cream but really moved over to it in late 1969 when he toured with Delaney and Bonnie in 1970 he recorded his first solo album Eric Clapton the London Howlin wolf sessions and Layla and other love songs all playing his beloved brownie late in 1970 while Clapton was in Nashville with Derek and the Dominos he bought six strats for about $100 each the sho-bud music store of the six guitars purchased he gave three to George Harrison Pete Townsend and Steve Winwood he then took the best parts from each of the remaining three and put together a new guitar Blackie it had a 57 neck refinished black 56 body and two 50s pickups and a third pickup from around 1970 Blackie remained Clapton's main guitar until 1985 over at CBS on fender quality continued to slip as the 70s wore on and many dealers and collectors believe the 70s are the low point for fender production quality first the truss rod adjustment point was moved from the base of the neck to the headstock the new bullet-shaped adjuster second a tilt neck adjustment was added to make it easier to adjust neck pitch angle these two changes were small enough in themselves but unfortunately they coincided with the drop in quality and became emblematic of the problems with the instruments at the time dale hyatt head of fender sales at the time said they blamed the new three bolt neck but it wasn't that you could have put six bolts in it and it still would have moved the neck pockets were being cut oversized but players were blaming the new three bolt neck the company also moved to its new thick-skinned finish of dozens of coats of polyester this finishes plastic appearance makes it clear that a guitar came from the 70s blues rock was huge in the 70s an Irishman Rory Gallagher wielded his battered 61 strat on stage it's far and wide the guitar had been bought by Gallagher used in a shop in Cork for a hundred pounds in 1963 over the years to come the sunburst finish was warmed to bear wood over most of the guitar the pickups were all replaced the controls were changed to a single volume in a tone and it was reef reddit many times Jeff Beck had long played Les Paul's but around the time of Beck Ola he wanted something more original sounding he'd had a number of strats over the years but the one we likely and all know best is from the cover of his album wired which was released in 1976 on that album he played a 1960s white Stratocaster given to him by guitarist John McLaughlin he used this guitar on tour for many many years only retiring it from the road use when his first signature strat was built in 1991 the original Jeff Beck's signature guitars were primarily based on that white wired guitar also in the 70s Ritchie Blackmore played a strat and deep purple Curtis Mayfield continued to weave clean strat tones on soul records and one can't forget the famous lights Stratocaster played by Journeys Neal Schon on Infinity in 1978 like with Les Paul's in the 60s players looking for offender in the 70s we're looking to the 50s and 60s for the magic the idea that the older guitars were better fueled the search for vintage instruments Norman's rare guitars opened in California in mid 1970s to help meet this demand the owner norm Harris said succinctly at the time you simply can't compare what I have to offer with what the big companies are mass producing today based on the cold reception that the new humbucking equipped Telly's had received fender started to pare back their offerings the custom colors were eliminated in late 60s and early 70s Freddy Tavares was still consulting with fender and said that though there were some things they wanted to change on the Stratocaster the attitude of CBS was not to fool with success as the 70s came to a close fender was producing 40,000 instruments a year the production had grown so much the fender had even dispensed with putting a date on the base of the neck these dates originally written in pencil and later rubber stamped on the neck were part of the history of the instruments emphasizing the human hands involved in the build but from 1973 to the early 80s fender stopped doing it altogether it seems they were either too busy or they just didn't seem to care in the mid-1970s fender built some stratocasters using black hardware knob switches and around 1975 fender moved to closed cover tuners bought from the German company Schaller but by far the most important change to come out of the 70s was the move to a 5-way pickup selector switch Clapton had mentioned in a 1970 interview I just set the switch between the first and middle pickups I get a much more rhythm and blues or rock kind of sound that way the somewhat hollow sound was caused by phase cancellation between the two pickups creating the characteristic honky sound as well as a drop in volume that players loved some aftermarket five-way switches were produced and instruments were modified but it took fender until 1977 to embrace this feature remember early 3-way equipped strats did not have reverse wound metal pickups in fact strats made in the very desirable pre CBS period had pickups pulled out of a bin without regard to matching their output levels or to the position where they were being installed one guitarist who made the most of this tone was Mark Knopfler who exploded on the scene with the dire straits in 1978 their debut album was covered with the sound of an in-between strat through an early 60s brownface vibra Lux amp Knopfler had bought the natural finish 61 strat in 1977 but had had it refinished in red in honor of his childhood hero Hank Marvin in the early 80s bill Schulz was hired away from Yamaha to become fenders president he said about improving the strat returning the truss rod adjustment point to the base of the neck and using a more vintage style headstock he also wanted to start production in Japan because American companies were being hammered by the Japanese copies in the market place Schultz cut a deal to create the Japanese fender company with Fuji gen building the instruments while plans were moving forward to build what was effectively copies of classic Fender guitars in Japan CBS was moving the same directions back in the States around 1980 Freddy Tavares began working on a project to build a vintage Telecaster a recreation of an original 1952 tele they began the vintage reissue program in earnest by buying up original guitarist uses and examples along with the 52 tele the strats were modeled on a 57 and a rosewood board 62 these guitars are famous for their extremely thin lacquer coatings which wore very quickly collectors call them Fullerton reissues because of where they were manufactured and they command a high premium over later reissues meanwhile the first batch of Japanese made Fender guitars arrived in the States they had a marketing dan smith remembered everybody came up to inspect them and the guys almost cried because the Japanese product was so good it was what we were having a hell of a time trying to do starting in Europe the Japanese fenders were market under the name of Squire but by the end of 1983 under pressure to bring more modestly priced strats to the US market the decision was made to bring the squire guitars to America as well at the same time the u.s. made strats had some ill-conceived changes the second tone control was removed and the distinctive jack plate was removed as well these changes only lasted until 1985 but they pushed more buyers towards the more reasonably priced and historically correct Japanese Squier guitars notable in their headstock shape and contours the squire guitars were considerably more accurate to vintage spec than anything fender was making separate from the Fullerton reissues from this period forward into the early 90s it can be argued that fender moved away from the roots of the original Stratocaster trying and failing to better the original design still the 1980s had no lack of famous Stratocaster players though they were making history mostly on vintage instruments David Gilmore a dedicated Stratocaster player from the early days of Pink Floyd was seen on tour in support of the wall album standing atop a giant wall on stage playing the solo to comfortably numb' one of the greatest rock guitar solos of all time 1983 saw Stevie Ray Vaughan playing a Stratocaster on both Bowie's Let's Dance and his own album Texas Flood his Hendrix licks filtered through a rough Texas energy changed our sense of blues rock forever Vaughan often referred to his sunburst number one guitar as a 59 but in fact it had a 62 neck and a 63 body which is likely how it left the factory as Nexen bodies often sat on racks after being made while waiting to be built into a complete instrument in the metal world 1984 saw the release of yingwan malmsteen's rising force with the iconic image of his 1971 Stratocaster on the cover and in 1984 a young and relatively unknown eric johnson would play a 50 strat through a wall of amps on the Austin City Limits television show showing us that the variety of tones you can get from a Stratocaster we clearly carry us through the decades to come CBS would sell fender almost exactly 20 years after acquiring the company to an investor group led by then President William Schultz and with that I'll end our tale of the development of the Fender Stratocaster the company has gone on to create its own custom shop to much acclaim in fact a friend of mine believes that the first run of relics made in 96 and 97 are perhaps the finest guitars fender has ever made periodic improvements this strat scents have generally taken us incrementally back towards the vintage guitars that are so prized today this video was made possible in no small part by two excellent books the Stratocaster guitar book by Tony bacon and the Stratocaster Chronicle by Tom wheeler I'd also like to thank Perry McManus for fact-checking the manuscript and for his continual insistence that the Stratocaster is the greatest guitar ever made I'd like to thank Dave Onorato of dojo guitar repair in Atlanta for answering my questions in fact checking my script Dave grew up dealing vintage guitars with his dad and he's where I turn when I need to these sorts of things if you're still watching I'll assume you enjoyed the video so don't forget to subscribe and click the bell icon to be notified for new videos and hit the store link in the description to grab a t-shirt or mug is super order until next time thanks for being part of the five walk [Music]

Channel: five watt world

Views: 944,248

Rating: 4.9440584 out of 5

Keywords: five watt world, keith williams, fender stratocaster, buddy holly, david gilmour, eric clapton, jimi hendrix, hank marvin, mark knopfler, eric johnson, richie Blackmore, rory gallagher, 57 stratocaster, 54 stratocaster, 62 stratocaster

Id: mWFw23PLr-Y

Length: 24min 45sec (1485 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2019