Fender Telecaster

Fender Telecaster, model of electric guitar created by American inventor and manufacturer Leo Fender that has the distinction of being the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar. The Telecaster, or “Tele,” is renowned for its ease of use, durability, and affordability relative to other types of electric guitars; its simple design (which features a single cutaway in its body section that allows players to reach the highest pitched frets); and its clear, punchy tone. The Telecaster features prominently in most modern Western popular musical styles, especially country music, rhythm and blues, and various forms of rock music, including punk and alternative.

History

The first elements of what would become the Telecaster were designed and patented during the late 1940s, as Fender attempted to construct his own electric version of the popular Spanish guitar. Although hollow-bodied electric Spanish guitars had been developed from lap steel guitars (which were also known as Hawaiian guitars) during the 1920s and ’30s, they had a tendency to produce feedback (an unpleasant, high-pitched screeching sound produced when the amplified signal is relayed back into the guitar) at high volumes. Fender’s solution was to develop a solid-body guitar, a challenge also taken up by American jazz and country guitarist and inventor Les Paul, who first presented his idea for a solid-body guitar to the Gibson Guitar Company in 1945.

Fender created several early solid-body prototypes. The Esquire—which was Telecaster-shaped but had only a single contact microphone (or pickup)—was released in 1950. (A pickup is a transducer that uses magnets to convert the mechanical energy created by plucking a string to an electric current whose signal can be amplified by a loudspeaker.) Later that year Fender produced a dual-pickup model called the Broadcaster. Before sales of the new model began in earnest, however, American musical instrument company Gretsch challenged the Broadcaster name in 1951, noting that “Broadkaster” was the name of one of the company’s current drum lines. Fender hastily removed the word Broadcaster from the decal on the instrument’s neck headstock, and the company began to refer to the guitar as the “Nocaster” in early 1951 before settling on Telecaster later that year. Additional manufacturers of solid-body electric guitars, most notably the Gibson Guitar Company (which first released its Les Paul guitar in 1952), would compete with the Fender Telecaster throughout the remainder of the 20th century and the first decades of the 21st century.

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Design

Unlike the first electric guitars, which were hollow-bodied individually handcrafted instruments whose necks and bodies were glued together, the Telecaster was solid-bodied, with a neck made of maple and a body made of ash, alder, or mahogany. Both parts were mass produced separately to reduce costs, and during assembly the neck could be connected to the body with screws, which allowed Telecaster players to change out the neck as the tuning pegs, frets (that is, the raised metal strips on the guitar’s neck that separate individual notes on one or more strings), and the fingerboard wore out with heavy use. Servicing the Telecaster’s electronic components and wiring could be performed through the front of the guitar through a metal plate below the strings. This plate also encapsulates a three-way selector switch (to activate the pickup nearest the neck, the pickup nearest to the bridge, and both pickups simultaneously) and two control knobs for sound volume and tone.

Several Telecaster variants, including models with 12 strings and those that can bend the instrument’s B string to C-sharp (the B-Bender), have been produced. Since the Telecaster’s inception, most have been constructed with two single-coil pickups; however, some of the most common variants include those with three single-coil pickups, one double-coil pickup near the neck and a single-coil pickup near the bridge (such as in the Telecaster Custom, first marketed in 1959, and the Telecaster Thinline, a semi-hollow variant first marketed in 1968), or two double-coil pickups (such as in the Telecaster Deluxe, first marketed in 1972).

Famous Telecaster players

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The signature sounds and styles of several famous musicians rest on their close association with the Fender Telecaster. One of the most recognizable is British musician Keith Richards of the British rock group the Rolling Stones. His blond-bodied blackguard Telecaster—which he named “Micawber” and modified personally, replacing the single-coil neck pickup with a double-coil and replacing the single-coil bridge pickup with a lap steel pickup—is one of the best known single instruments in rock music. Other well-known Telecaster players include blues musicians Muddy Waters and Albert Collins; country musicians Buck Owens, Lucinda Williams, and Brad Paisley; and rock musicians Chrissie Hynde, Carrie Brownstein, Bruce Springsteen, Joe Strummer, and Jonny Greenwood.