When was the telecaster made

The idea of new instruments and designs was certainly interesting. His belief was that anything that was made on the market could be made better, and you could make money doing it. No matter what it was, Leo thought anything he had in his store at the time, anything like that, if he set out to do it, he could do a better job.

Up until the time that I [first] left the company [in ], we were making mostly steel guitars, that was the big thing.

Neither of them thought the Spanish-type guitar was going to be too big a success. That was fine for a time, because there were big guitar schools that sold all these things. Guys found out they could learn to play standard Spanish guitar. We were moving towards that more, and the steel guitar was becoming more an instrument in these country and western bands and these big Hawaiian schools that were not faring very well.

So we were kind of forced into the so-called Spanish guitar market, the standard guitar. So with the solidbody guitar, all of a sudden, the guy could play as loud as a drummer, and blow the drummer off. For us, it was just a matter of necessity. Ads for the Telecaster emphasised features requested by musicians, for musicians. I was the only one working in the daytime, and Mr Fender would come in in the evening, because the bank was looking for him, trying to foreclose.

Matter of fact, we did a lot of work toward the design of the body and the neck and different type of things, to something that was workable. And most of those days were long, long hours. We tried to design something that would be strong and do a good job for a playing musician, sound good, be easy to play, easy to repair, all these things. We kind of had our work cut out for us.

He could not tune a guitar. The only time that Leo learned to tune a guitar was in later years, really later, when strobe tuners came out. He did not know one chord position on guitar. So as a guitar builder, I do not believe Leo would have been so successful in building guitars if he had been the sole person doing it.

He had lots of knowledge of electronics, but not of other things. It had a semi-lute-type head on it, which came as close as you could imagine to the fancy one that Paul Bigsby had made. And of course we knew Paul Bigsby, he was in Downey, about 15 miles from Fullerton.

Course, we knew Merle Travis, used to see him play at different places. The Telecaster was well suited for beginners, and still is.

For the first time, young players had the ability not just to observe their musical heroes, but to play the same guitar. With the Telecaster at the helm, rock and roll claimed the s for its own, confirming Leo's vision and craftsmanship. The original Tele was so well built and sounded so good that barely any changes were made in the 50s—or in any coming decade.

However, a few small changes did attend the Telecaster in its first decade. The original control layout proved to be wonky and inconvenient, and a fresh arrangement simplified player access to the Telecaster's sonic fruits. The new controls featured a triple switch that could swing the signal from the bridge pickup to the neck pickup, and let the player spin the tone switch on both modes. Additionally, players were quick to figure out that the triple switch could be balanced between pickup selections, adding a wider range of interesting tones to their arsenal.

Aesthetically, eventually the stock pickguard on Fender Telecasters changed from black to white, and Fender began to offer color finishes for a few extra bucks. Vintage colors that make collectors drool found their first issue in the s. Also of note, Fender introduced a spin-off model in , the Telecaster Custom which featured a rosewood pickguard and a bound body. Through the hustle and bustle of America's first decade of rock, the Telecaster prevailed as a reliable and powerful guitar, and cemented its place as a staple piece for musicians of all skill levels and tastes.

Simply, the Telecaster of was the Telecaster of —and more and more players were coming to love it. If "live fast and die young" is the heart of rock 'n roll philosophy, America got it right the first time. At the end of the rockabilly decade, the US rock legacy had, by many measures, lived up to the chaos the uncool accused it of encouraging.

Gene Vincent was dead. Buddy Holly was dead. Jerry Lee Lewis went into hiding at his lawyers' behest—for reasons we won't discuss here. Ironically, entering the Army might have saved Elvis's life. This is purely speculation, of course. Either way, the King was in green and off the scene, and a lot of the hotrodders were already six feet deep. But America, unwittingly, had sent a messenger with a Telecaster to the Homeland that would sow invisible seeds and save rock 'n roll from itself.

When Muddy Waters toured the UK in , kids no one had ever heard of set eyes on a Telecaster for the first time, and witnessed its particular power. With his Delta soul and undeniable guitar talent, the Hoochie Coochie Man lit a new fuse, and got countless teens dreaming of stardom.

All across the Old World, rock 'n roll was falling, along with the Telecaster, into the capable hands and hearts of what would become some of the most talented players and songwriters in history—. In the 60s, anonymous young British men would grasp and smash the Telecaster and use it to become household names, and life-long Telecaster enthusiasts.

Chief among them: KEEF. Keith Richards' thrilling rise to fame with the Rolling Stones saw him wielding Telecasters with an unmatched swagger. The Rolling Stones themselves were blues acolytes, and it stands to reason that Keith developed his initial predilection for the Tele through his love for the holy work black American bluesmen were doing.

By , Keith had begun to experiment with his guitar tunings—a trait that would come to mark his playing. It was the Telecaster he bonded with through his experimentation: " And what I found was," Keith later recalled, "of all the guitars, the Telecaster really lent itself well to a dry, rhythm, five-string drone thing. In a way that tuning kept me developing as a guitarist. Both guitarist George Harrison and co-frontman Paul McCartney would come to love the Telecaster as well, for influential touring and studio sessions in the 60s.

Harrison's Telecaster play would become so recognizable that Fender would eventually honor him with a custom rosewood Tele to play the bittersweet notes of the Beatles' "Let It Be" album and farewell atop Apple company headquarters in London. With the help of the Telecaster, epic British rock bands formed and legendary players arose in one of the greatest pop-culture booms in modern history. The times were indeed changing, but not all of the changes would lead to results worthy of the Telecaster's initial history.

The British Invasion of needs little introduction. Fender guitars made their way to England in ever-greater numbers and began making appearances of great portent in the hands of those kids—now young men—who so rabidly devoured the U.

Elsewhere in London, in , Who guitarist Pete Townshend faced a vexing issue. Clapton recommended his friend Jimmy Page as a replacement, but Page was reluctant to give up his lucrative session career and in turn suggested his friend Jeff Beck, who then joined the group. Back in the United States in the mids, the Telecaster-bred Bakersfield sound continued to grow in popularity. Nearly every album and single Buck Owens released from late to early hit number one on the Billboard country chart.

Two noteworthy Telecaster technical developments also marked This meant that, for the first time since , the Telecaster once again had a switch setting that activated both pickups simultaneously.

Equally major artistic and technical developments were in store for the Telecaster in Indeed, it was the year that saw the first truly significant design departure for the model in the lightweight form of the Thinline Telecaster.

The Telecaster Thinline debuted in and became an enduring success. Although James Burton became closely associated with the Paisley Red guitar, neither model lasted long. Artistically, the Telecaster served as the main musical voice of two monumental debut albums recorded in , both by U. Fender briefly put the guitar into production, but its unusual tonality and considerable weight made it a short-lived addition to the line.

The s began for the Telecaster with its two most acclaimed U. The decade would later see further big changes and even more acclaim and success for both men. As drew to a close, an article appeared in the Dec. The Rolling Stone reprint led to interest from public television station WNET, flagship of the then-new PBS network, which produced an hour-long documentary, Introducing Roy Buchanan , which aired that November and shifted his career into high gear.

With his band, the charmingly named Snakestretchers, he release indie solo debut Buch and the Snakestretchers late in before inking a deal with Polydor Records, for which he recorded five solo albums before moving to Atlantic Records in A quietly enigmatic figure who amassed enormous acclaim, Buchanan nonetheless seemed to flee the spotlight, apparently uninterested in achieving the kind of major-league stardom that otherwise seemed due to an artist of his astounding ability.

Out on the U. These were the Fender Wide Range humbucking pickups developed by Seth Lover, who had pioneered hum-cancelling pickups at Gibson in the mids the PAF, most famously and had joined Fender in This model proved reasonably popular, as several prominent guitarists had started modding their Telecasters with humbucking pickups especially at the neck position in the late s. In the U. He uses his Telecasters extensively to this day. Back at Fender headquarters, Telecaster experimentation continued apace by institutionalizing the most popular mod players had been making for a few years already—replacing the single-coil neck pickup with a fatter-sounding humbucking pickup.

At Fender, saw the last of the three major design revisions to the Telecaster. The Telecaster Thinline and Telecaster Custom were now joined by the Telecaster Deluxe , which featured two humbucking pickups, a Stratocaster-style headstock and a choice of hard-tail or tremolo bridge. The mids saw some of the most diverse use the Telecaster has ever been put to. An archetypal Telecaster moment came in when Long Branch, N. The guitar is often said to be the former, but has two pickups like the latter.

They also made the guitars easier to manufacture. Bodies were pine but ash and alder were on the menu too. Whatever Leo could get a hold of, he used. The single-ply black phenolic pickguard and six-in-line headstock, inspired by 19th-century Stauffer acoustics, gave the guitar a unique look. As with all revolutions, there were bumps on the road. Leo Fender sailed close to the wind financially, investing heavily in cutting-edge tools equipment so that his paradigm-shifting design could be produced at pace.

Also, what to call this guitar? The new two-pickup version of the Esquire was originally named the Broadcaster, but Gretsch claimed trademark infringement relating to its Broadkaster drum set. Fender simply snipped the decal logos on the headstock in lieu of a new name.