The Fender Telecaster - A Complete History

it's 1951. no it isn't yes it is and what a time to be alive just look at the things that were happening there's almost three million US soldiers in Korea the economic boycott of Iran is begun by Britain in San Francisco a peace treaty is signed by Japan with 48 countries officially bringing the Pacific War to an end and there's a formal peace agreement between Germany and Canada can't argue with that timing at all oh and men in Switzerland voted against women's votes so good job Switzerland among all this one man and his company made up of other human beings produced something that would change the world no the fund italicaster Leo Fender and the staff of a small Southern Californian instrument and app making company knew that they'd built something rather special when they introduced the Telecaster in early 1951. they had no idea of the size and scope of the musical Revolution their invention would start it was not guaranteed that the instrument would succeed some scoffed at the Telecaster when it was officially unveiled that year at the industry's largest U.S trade show marking it as a boat paddle and a snow shovel although electric guitars had been around in various forms since the 1920s Leo Fender and his team had worked throughout the end of the 40s into the 50s to design something that really didn't exist before a mass-produced solid body electric guitar the controls on the original Telecaster were different from how they would later turn out to be while on the surface it might appear the same upon a deeper inspection the differences are profound with a pickup selector in the rear position both pickups would be engaged and the tone pot acting as a blend control determining how much of the neck pickup would be mixed with the output in the middle position the selector switch would deliver just the neck pickup with its natural mellow tone and in the front position the selector switch would engage the neck pickup with extra capacitance that produced a bassier tone in this position the rear pot would affect neither of these settings this control Arrangement would go on to be simplified in 1952. after this change putting the selector switch in the rear position delivered the bridge pickup alone with the rear pot acting as a proper tone control the selector switch in the middle position delivered the neck pickup alone with the rear pot continuing to act as the tone control and the selector switch in the front position would deliver the neck pickup alone with that preset bassier sand and non-functioning rear pot in this control scheme there was no switch setting which both pickups were on at the same time an arrangement that lasted until the late 1960s however players were quick to discover that the telecaster's three position switch could be precariously balanced in the two in-between switch positions to deliver in or out of phase Sands which was determined by the polarity of the pickups an unintentional design feature exploited by players to an even greater extent on the Stratocaster it's worth keeping in mind that the Telecaster was released before rock and roll was even around Leo Fender and his staff were building guitars and amps mainly for Western swing guitarist twos touring circuits often brought them near to where the company was based Fender's Innovative new instruments fed the rise of the small loud bands that by the mid-50s had largely supplanted the big bands of the 1930s and 40s which set the stage for the explosion of the U.S youth culture fender with the Telecaster made a point to separate themselves from the norm of the Guitar World which was focused toward a more high-end instrument thus upping the cost with a tough and affordable end product customers could get their hands on a new instrument ready for the new cultural movement of post-war 1950s America as a result by the mid-50s the Telecaster was Finding its way into the hands of rock and roll r b and Country guitarists and onto their recordings in Nashville July 1956 Johnny Bennett and The Rock and Roll Trier recorded an energetic rock version of the 1951 Jump Blue song the train kept her rolling meanwhile in the country genre Luther Perkins accompanied Johnny Cash from 1954 on by playing bright catchy lines on a Telecaster and Esquire farther west in Bakersfield California Buck Owens was using a Telecaster to work in a loud stripped-down country style that stood in stark contrast to the Slick string heavy country sand then in Vogue in Nashville by 1959 the decade was quickly coming to an end the Telecaster had made its way across the Atlantic to the UK and into the hands of some teenagers these included Keith Richards George Harrison Jeff Beck James page Eric Clapton Peter Townsend Roger Sid Barrett David Gilmore and Andy Summers to name but a few in its first decade of Life the Telecaster had established and proven itself as an Innovative new kind of instrument from its humble beginnings however rock and roll had all but disappeared in the US by 1960. what came to the rescue of the genre and the Telecaster was the UK Richard Harrison Beck Paige Clapton Townsend Barrett Gilmore Summers and Atlas the others spent 1960-62 continuing to absorb U.S rock and roll and further honing their craft and some performing publicly with their earliest bands the British Invasion of 1964 brought with it these UK bands over to the US mainstream Rock became increasingly guitar driven more so than it had ever been before Fender guitars made their way to England in ever greater numbers and began making appearances in the hands of those musicians in July 9 1964 London quintet The Yardbirds appeared on a broadcast playing Louise and I wish he would with the guitarist Eric Clapton playing a Telecaster elsewhere in London in 1965 who guitarist Pete Townsend was presented with one of the most difficult situations of any successful guitarist possible the who had made a name for themselves in part due to their live performances smashing up their instruments by the end of their sets this in turn had a dramatic impact on their production costs in a brilliant money-saving exercise tanzan switched to telecasters for the final songs of their sets back in the US in the mid-1960s the Bakersfield sound continued to grow in popularity nearly every album and single Buck Owens released from late 1963 to early 1968 hit number one on the billboard country chart a fellow Californian and early Bakersfield sign devotee also started racking up impressive chart successes too in 1966. Mel Haggard and the strangers hit number one with their seventh single I'm a lonely fugitive two noteworthy Telecaster technical developments also marked 1966 7. first Fender sold by Leo Fender in 1965 now under the corporate Banner of CBS reconfigured the guitar's controls into the traditional setup that we see today this meant that for the first time since 1952 the Telecaster once again had a switch setting that activated both pickups simultaneously and there was much rejoicing second musicians Jean Parsons and Clarence whites invented the Parsons white string pull later known as the B bender and equipped it to White's 1956 Telecaster 1968 saw the development of the Thinline series introduced through Roger rossmiesel who joined Fender in early 1962. after previously working at Rickenbacker that same year the remnants of The Yardbirds would get together to form Led Zeppelin on the debut album Jimmy Page played a psychedelically painted Telecaster on tracks including days to confused Good Times bad times communication breakdown and one would guess the rest of the album as well no group represented the 1960s More Than the Beatles however as the decade went to a close so did the band's phenomenal career ever since recording Ticket to Ride in February 1965 the band started to use Fender gear more and more and it was in the group's Final Chapter that the Telecaster came into significant play George Harrison received a prototype custom all Rosewood Telecaster built by fenders Phil kubnick Harrison played this guitar on the final Beatles album Let It Be and played it Atop The London headquarters of The Beatles company Apple joined the famous General a 1969 rooftop concert that would be the Beatles final live performance Fender briefly put the guitar into production but its unusual tonality and considerable weight made it a short-lived addition to the line and so the 1960s closed with Fender's original electric guitar enjoying wider and more varied use than ever with the company starting to explore Innovative new takes on the Telecaster that would continue well into the decade to come with the arrival of the 1970s the Telecaster was not slowing down in its use James Burton joined Elvis Presley's band and was now playing The Paisley Telecaster that would be so closely identified with him Steve Cropper had left stacked records to establish his own Studio TMI where he would play with and produce artists such as Jeff Beck John Lennon Ringo Star Tower of Power Rod Stewart and many more in the UK Keith Richards got his hands on a butterscotch 1953 Telecaster in 1971 that soon became his number one instrument for many years thereafter he made a few notable modifications a six saddle Bridge with the low E saddle removed to accommodate his preference for a five-string open G tuning and a white Stratocaster style switch tip in place of the original Barrel tip it's of course worth mentioning that Jimmy Page used his 1958 Telecaster to record the solo for Stairway to Heaven from Led Zeppelin's fourth album back at Fender headquarters Telecaster experimentation continued by taking the solid body Telecaster replacing it with just a neck pickup with the fattest sounding humbucker which is a proven and popular mod at the time incorporating a new pickguard design three-way toggle switch a 4 or pot control layout all which led to the creation of the Telecaster custom launched in 1972. 1973 saw the last of three major design revisions for the Telecaster The Thin Line and custom were now joined by the Telecaster Deluxe which featured two humbucking pickups a chunky 70s style Stratocaster headstock and a choice of hardtail or tremolo Bridge the mid-1970s saw some of the most diverse use the Telecaster had ever been put to from Prague to punk rockabilly inflected Jazz to FM Rock and an unexpected Blues Revival to chart topping pop Fender's first guitar still largely unchanged was more ubiquitous than ever in the middle of its third decade at the same time change had struck the UK music scene Punk was making a name for itself despite the establishment snubbing the progrog Psychedelic and blues bass bands for something more raw simplistic but most importantly aggressive the Telecaster was right at home here too the 4th of July 1976 saw the debut show for The Clash with Joe Strummer playing a beat up 1966 Telecaster around the same time veteran UK guitarist Andy Summers who had worked in bands such as dantalian's Cherry up soft machine and the Animals met bassist and vocalist Gordon Sumner and drummer Stuart Copeland who would go on to form the police Summer's Telecaster was heavily modified with a humbuck and neck pickup face switch onboard preamp and overdrive unit in the 1970s the Telecaster itself hardly changed while bringing in whole new versions of itself to fit an Ever widening array of musical styles but what lay ahead in the next decade while the 1970s was dominated by bands such as Led Zeppelin yes Pink Floyd the 80s would shift the likes of the police The Clash and The Pretenders all of which had the Telecaster as part of their DNA the guitar was very much seen by wide audiences the police became one of the biggest bands in the world in the early 80s The Clash was also it as artistic and Commercial peak in the first half of the 1980s like Summers leader Joe Strummer was also wielding a battered 60s era Telecaster which he continually plastered with slogans befitting the group's early 80s status as the only band that matters London Calling was released in late 1979 but was truly an album for the 80s and included the band's first U.S top 40 hit train in vain Strummer would play his 1966 Telecaster with authoritative Swagger through the other Clash albums of the period Sandinista and combat Rock before the band started to disintegrate nonetheless he remained a revered post-punk figure as The Clash soldered on until 1986. he would later be honored posthumously as Strummer would pass away in 2002 by Fender in the late 2000s with a tribute Telecaster model that reproduced his battle-hardened guitar down to the last detail while things looked good for the Telecaster itself Fender the company wasn't doing so well after nearly two decades of General neglect quality control problems and budget cuts under CBS the fender of the early 80s had fallen far from its former glory it now suffered from a bleak reputation for producing and revenues were starting to decline along with quality a late 70s Telecaster may have looked like its 50s or early 1960s ancestors but that was about it and it was around this time that the word began to circulate that if you wanted a really good Fender instrument you needed an old one and pre-cbs products were the ones to get to remedy this situation CBS enlisted former Yamaha Executives William Bill Schultz as president of Fender and Dan Smith as director of marketing for electric guitars the US Factory did produce the short-lived Elite Telecaster of 1983-84 which was intended as a high-end model with humbucking pickups and active circuitry 1984 however was also the year that CBS decided to sell Fender Shelton on a group of investors bought Fender in a sale that was completed in March 1985 ending 20 years of unpopular CBS rule the American Standard Telecaster appeared in 1988 updated with 22 threats and more robust sanding Bridge pickup and a six saddle bridge in the mid-90s in the UK inventive guitarists such as blows Graham coxson and radiohead's Johnny Greenwood put the Telecaster to remarkably creative use Jeff Buckley seemingly made his whole notable yet sadly short-lived career exclusively with his 1983 Telecaster tomarello helped bring rage against a machine to the attention of General audiences early on in their career with huge songs like Killing In The Name of using his 1982 Telecaster in the 2000s the Telecaster was pretty much everywhere from modern country with Brad Paisley Keith Urban and Dirks Bentley to Modern metal with Fender's signature artist John 5 and Jim root and to Modern alternative ending Franz Ferdinand block party Jimmy Eat World and countless others as the 50th anniversary of the Telecaster approached the Fender Custom Shop celebrated by introducing a limited edition run of 50 layer Fender broadcaster models in 2000 that featured Leah Fender's signature on the headstock in place of the standard logo that year also saw the introduction of the American national b-bender Telecaster which uses a mechanical device that raises the pitch of the B string by a whole tone producing bends very much like those heard on a pedal steel guitar since then Fender has offered a wealth of modern Telecaster models designed to suit the playing personality and pockets of any guitarist from artist models to the vintage series modified versions pristine designs to ones that look like they've been beaten up to high-end models and to budget conscious designs with its simple construction it's a platform that allowed its users to modify it my own standard Telecaster has the original Bridge picket removed and replaced with a P90 giving it a much more aggressive tone than the stock single coil could ever bring the Telecaster has been part of the development of modern music from the 1950s to the present day it's retained its overall look while allowing the development of related models to find their own Niche it's a platform that's worked its way into so many genres through its history the cynical among you might say it's only achieved this because it got there first while it has been around since the start it captured the attention of musicians throughout the preceding decades and updated where needed to earn its place as one of the most iconic instruments of modern music

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Keywords: fender telecaster, leo fender, guitar, history

Id: SGKH-W_5ZMI

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 07 2023