Stratocaster Telecaster

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Stratocaster Telecaster

August 19th, 2009 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

Stratocaster Telecaster

The Beginning Of The Age Of The Fender Stratocaster

Perhaps one of the most famous and best known names in the world of electric guitars is that of Fender, and it was in 1946 that Clarence Leonidas Fender, usually referred to simply as Leo Fender, created the design for the first electric guitar to have a solid body, and a pickup that worked through the use of a single magnet. Originally a radio repairman who also created amplifiers for instruments, Fender’s design was originally named the Esquire, and was a significant step away from the guitars of the time, as they were still hollow body designs, and generally used more for jazz. Fender’s Esquire was immediately popular with the country and western performers, especially in California.

Originally using just a single magnetic pickup, Fender later developed a two pickup version which was originally named the Broadcaster, but when it was later discovered that a drum set manufactured by Gretsch had a name which was very similar (Broadkaster) Fender decided to change the name of his two pickup electric guitar and so the Telecaster was born. As the names of these instruments suggests, this was during the dawn of television, when the western world was waking up to a new phenomenon.

Leo Fender’s Telecaster was essentially a solid body guitar made from ash, with a maple neck. The neck of the telecaster was available as either a 21 or a 22 fret version, and this was attached to the ash body using four bolts, with extra strength gained through the use of a steel neck plate. The pickups were two single coils, positioned at both the bridge and the neck of the guitar, and the Telecaster came with two adjustments for both volume and tone. Additionally, the performer could select which pickup or combination to use through the inclusion of a switch. A jack fitted onto the body of the guitar for direct output to the amplifier added to the amount of cabling and wiring embedded in the guitar, and a black pickguard, manufactured from Bakelite, was included to hide the wiring and cables from view.

Although it is sometimes believed that manufacturing a guitar with a solid body in a single piece of wood, including the neck, Leo Fender did not pursue this idea, and the Telecaster had a bolt on neck for a very good reason. It was Fender’s belief that creating a guitar in this modular fashion allowed for improved consistency in manufacturing techniques, as well as providing a much easier way of mending or repairing the guitar later in its life. It is partly for this reason that today it is possible to find a very rare example of what is dubbed a ‘nocaster’. This is because the creation of these modular guitars was occurring at the same time as the clash of names between the Broadcaster and Broadkaster brands. The modular parts of the guitar were made, and the Fender logo attached, but no model name – as this was in dispute. The very early examples still have Broadcaster stamped on them, and of course later models had telecaster, but a few very rare examples were caught in between, and have no model on them – and these now fetch a very high price if you can find one!

It was seven years after Fender first created his Esquire model that he developed the Stratocaster, which offered a wide range of improvements and technical advancements over the Telecaster. The body design was created from either ash or alder, with the wood very well dried beforehand, and the body shape was a double cutaway creating a very distinctive visual style, as well as providing very comfortable body contours for holding the guitar. An integrated mechanism was created to provide a vibrato effect, named a synchronized tremolo by Fender – a misnomer that has caused no end of confusion ever since, since tremolo and vibrato are quite different – one being volume, the other a rapid pitch change; unfortunately Fender chose the wrong name, but it has stuck ever since! The Stratocaster also included three single coil pickups.

About the Author

Victor Epand is an expert consultant for guitars, drums, keyboards, sheet music, guitar tab, and home theater audio. You can find the best marketplace at these sites for electric guitars and Fender Stratocasters , sheet music, guitar tab, and home theater audio.

What is the difference of Stratocaster or telecaster?

I am trying to buy an electric Fender guitar, on a site but it asks me is Stratocaster, telecaster or other. how do i know which 1. or what does it even mean??? Also what is the best electric guitar that exists?? :0)

They are different models of guitar made by Fender.

Wikipedia claims that guitars from other manufacturers with similar features are also sometimes called Stratocasters, but guitar enthusiasts may frown on this.

As for the best electric guitar, that’s been asked already:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061123111153AAWA4mf

In my ill-informed opinion, it’s your skills in making sound, not the instrument, that matters most. I could own the best guitar in the world and still suck. Jimmi Hendrix could pick up a guitar made from cheese and make it sound cool.

Stratocaster Telecaster
Fender Telecaster, Stratocaster and a Gibson Les Paul Guitar Sound Differrence.

SKB Hard Shell Case for Most STRATOCASTER and TELECASTER Guitars – Black

$129.99

Protect your STRATOCASTER or TELECASTER electric guitar during transport with this hard shell case that features molded plastic construction and an aluminum valance for durability. A rigid EPS foam interior cushions your instrument.

Fender Economy Hardshell Case for Stratocaster and Telecaster Guitars

$69.95

The Fender Economy Strotocaster and Telecaster Electric Guitar Case incorporates a soft lined, molded interior made to cradle your Fender Guitar. Incredible value, Exceptional price, the economy case is an excellent design to hold and protect Strat and Tele style electrics or other similar bodied guitars.

Fender Standard Molded Stratocaster and Telecaster Case

$99

Rectangular Case made from Molded Plastic with Black Acrylic Interior, Reinforced Frame, Heavy Duty Hinges & Latches with TSA Approved Lock.

Fender Classic Player Telecaster Deluxe Electric Guitar with Tremolo (and Gig Bag)

$799.99

Fender did it before and now they’re doing it again! There are real-world examples of the much-revered Telecaster Deluxe that were factory-built in the ’70s with Stratocaster(R) tremolo bridges. With their new Classic Player Telecaster Deluxe with Tremolo, you can experience this rare and versatile instrument.

SKB Case for Most TELECASTER and STRATOCASTER Style Guitars – Black

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This case features an EPS padded foam interior and built-in bumpers to provide your guitar with reliable protection from damage on the go. The reinforced latches ensure the case stays securely closed during travel.

Fender SKB Molded Case For Stratocaster and Telecaster Guitars – Black

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This Fender-exclusive SKB case has a reinforced frame, heavy-duty hinges, black acrylic interior and TSA approved lock. Nothing will protect your Strat or Tele better!

Stratocaster Gypsy

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Stratocaster Gypsy

Fender Stratocaster

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Fender Stratocaster

Country Telecaster Virtuosity

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Country Telecaster Virtuosity

Fender Telecasters: Fender Telecaster

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Fender Telecasters: Fender Telecaster

Ray Flacke: Country Telecaster Virtuosity -

$24.99

Ray Flacke: Country Telecaster Virtuosity -

Masters of the Telecaster -

$24.99

To many guitarists the Fender Telecaster is in a class by its own. Since its introduction in the early 1950s, Telecaster devotees have used its unique features to create sounds that are simply impossible to replicate on other guitars. In this release, “Telemaster” Arlen Roth instructs aspiring guitarists in a number of telecaster-centric techniques including classic rockabilly rhythm styles, shuffle patterns, peddle steel bends, chicken pickin’, and more before taking a few tips from such Telecaster greats as Steve Cropper, Albert Lee, Keith Richards, James Burton, and Danny Gatton. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The Fender Telecaster

$13.48

The Fender Telecaster is regarded as the first commercially successful solid body electric ‘Spanish’ guitar. Designed by Leo Fender at a time when the words rock and roll were not even coined, the ‘Telly’ is the senior member of a family of instruments whose sounds and looks helped revolutionize the world of popular music. This book relates the story of Telecaster Guitars since 1950 – everything you ever wanted to know is explored through lots of color and black and white photos, charts and interviews.

Fender Telecaster

$10.81

The Fender Telecaster is regarded as the first commercially successful solid body electric ‘Spanish’ guitar. Designed by Leo Fender at a time when the words rock and roll were not even coined, the ‘Telly’ is the senior member of a family of instruments whose sounds and looks helped revolutionize the world of popular music. This book relates the story of Telecaster Guitars since 1950 – everything you ever wanted to know is explored through lots of color and black and white photos, charts and interviews.

Fender Stratocasters: List of Stratocaster Players, Eric Clapton Stratocaster, Fender Hm Strat, Fender Contemporary Stratocaster Japan

$19.99

Fender Stratocasters: List of Stratocaster Players, Eric Clapton Stratocaster, Fender Hm Strat, Fender Contemporary Stratocaster Japan

Arlen Roth’s Masters of the Telecaster

$25.48

Arlen Roth’s Masters of the Telecaster by Arlen Roth Pap/Com Published in 1996 by Alfred Publishing Company

The Fender Telecaster Handbook

$15.56

The first hands-on, how-to manual is devoted to the legendary Fender Telecaster, covering the guitar’’s history, maintenance, repairs, tuning, stageside fixes, and basic performance enhancements.

Six Decades of the Fender Telecaster

$17.98

Launched by the fledgling Fender company in 1950, the Telecaster has become the longest-lived solidbody electric guitar, played by everyone from Muddy Waters to Chrissie Hynde. All who play know that the key to the Telecaster’s importance and versatility is its sheer simplicity. Packed with high-quality photographs of the great Telecasters, collectable catalogs, period press ads, and memorabilia, this tribute tells the story of the Telecaster and the Fender Company through exclusive interviews with Fender figures who were there when this musical star was born.

Six Decades Of The Fender Telecaster

$15.32

Launched by the fledgling Fender company in 1950, the Telecaster has become the longest-lived solidbody electric guitar, played by everyone from Muddy Waters to Chrissie Hynde. All who play know that the key to the Telecaster’s importance and versatility is its sheer simplicity. Packed with high-quality photographs of the great Telecasters, collectable catalogs, period press ads, and memorabilia, this tribute tells the story of the Telecaster and the Fender Company through exclusive interviews with Fender figures who were there when this musical star was born.

Fender Electric Guitar Gig Bag

$29.95

The Fender Electric Guitar Gig Bag features heavy duty nylon covering, and easy grip, easy to carry handles. Padded and durable. Fits most standard size electric guitars, including the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster.

Squier Affinity Telecaster – Butterscotch Blonde

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The Affinity Series Tele guitars feature two single-coil pickups, three-way switching and classic Telecaster styling.

The Stratocaster Chronicles

$34.98

The world’s most famous guitar had a golden anniversary in 2004, and this official, authorized book/CD package offers the best photos, quotes, facts and sounds to properly celebrate this achievement. From Buddy Holly to Jimi Hendrix to today’s hottest players, the Fender Stratocaster defines rock’n'roll for generations of fans and players. Special features include exclusive photos from the world’s greatest guitar collection, as well as a CD with musical examples of famous Strat sounds and styles hilariously performed by Greg Koch – even spoken excerpts from the author’s interviews with the Strat’s beloved inventor, Leo Fender. This book also recognizes that the Stratocaster’s deeper significance lies in the music that guitarists have created with it. You’ll hear what Strat players have to say about their instrument, their music and each other. The Fender Stratocaster both reflects and influences popular culture worldwide. The Stratocaster Chronicles focuses on the people who brought it into the world, the designers and builders who refined it, and the players who have taken it from there.

Fender Standard Telecaster -Maple – Candy Apple Red

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Since the early ’50s, guitarists have relied on the powerful and versatile Fender Telecaster . The Standard Series Telecaster features hotter single-coil pickups and new features including a tinted neck, parchment pickguard and a ’70s style logo.

Fender American Deluxe Telecaster Electric Guitar – 3TS

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Fender’s new American Deluxe Telecaster is the 21st century way to rock Tele style!

Fender American Deluxe Telecaster – Olympic Pearl

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Fender’s new America Deluxe Telecaster is the 21st century way to rock Tele style!

Electric Guitar Design

History

George Beauchamp invented the electric guitar or some may call the lap steel guitar. Initially, electric guitars consisted primarily of hollow archtop acoustic guitar bodies to which electromagnetic transducers had been attached.

Early years

Sketch of Rickenbacker “frying pan” lap steel guitar from 1934 patent application.

Electric guitars were originally designed by an assortment of luthiers, electronics enthusiasts, and instrument manufacturers, in varying combinations. Some of the earliest electric guitars, then essentially adapted hollow bodied acoustic instruments, used tungsten pickups and were manufactured in the 1930s by Rickenbacker. In 1935, a Soviet scientist working separately from his western colleagues was known to have produced an electric Russian guitar called the “Kuznetsov electromagnetic guitar”. It was exhibited at a technology expo in Moscow, but its development was halted since the Stalin regime was hostile to guitar music[citation needed].

At least one company, Audiovox, built and may have offered an electric solid-body as early as the mid-1930s. Rickenbacher, later spelled Rickenbacker offered a cast aluminum electric guitar, nicknamed The Frying Pan or The Pancake Guitar, beginning in 1933.

Another early solid body electric guitar was designed and built by musician and inventor Les Paul in the early 1940s, working after hours in the Epiphone Guitar factory. His log guitar (so called because it consisted of a simple 4×4 wood post with a neck attached to it and homemade pickups and hardware, with two detachable Swedish hollow body halves attached to the sides for appearance only) was patented and is often considered to be the first of its kind, although it shares nothing in design or hardware with the solid body “Les Paul” model sold by Gibson.

Fender

Main article: Fender Musical Instruments Corporation

Sketch of Fender lap steel guitar from 1944 patent application.

In 1950 and 1951, electronics and instrument amplifier maker Leo Fender through his company, designed the first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar with a single magnetic pickup, which was initially named the “Esquire”. The two-pickup version of the Esquire was called the “Broadcaster”. The bolt-on neck was consistent with Leo Fender’s belief that the instrument design should be modular to allow cost-effective and consistent manufacture and assembly, as well as simple repair or replacement.

In 1954, Fender introduced the Fender Stratocaster, or “Strat”. It was positioned as a deluxe model and offered various product improvements and innovations over the Telecaster. These innovations included an ash or alder double-cutaway body design for badge assembly with an integrated vibrato mechanism (called a synchronized tremolo by Fender, thus beginning a confusion of the terms that still continues), three single-coil pickups, and body comfort contours. Leo Fender is also credited with developing the first commercially-successful electric bass called the Fender Precision Bass, introduced in 1951.

Gibson

Main article: Gibson Guitar Corporation

Gibson, like many guitar manufacturers, had long offered semi-acoustic guitars with pickups, and previously rejected Les Paul and his “log” electric in the 1940s. In apparent response to the Telecaster, Gibson introduced the first Gibson Les Paul solid body guitar in 1952 (although Les Paul was actually brought in only towards the end of the design process for expert fine tuning of the nearly complete design and for marketing endorsement ). Features of the Les Paul include a solid mahogany body with a carved maple top (much like a violin and earlier Gibson archtop hollow body electric guitars) and contrasting edge binding, two single-coil “soapbar” pickups, a 24″ scale mahogany neck with a more traditional glued-in “set” neck joint, binding on the edges of the fretboard, and a tilt-back headstock with three machine heads (tuners) to a side. The earliest models had a combination bridge and trapeze-tailpiece design that was in fact designed by Les Paul himself, but was largely disliked and discontinued after the first year. Gibson then developed the Tune-o-matic bridge and separate stop tailpiece, an adjustable non-vibrato design that has endured. By 1957, Gibson had made the final major change to the Les Paul as we know it today – the humbucking pickup, or humbucker. The humbucker, invented by Seth Lover, was a dual-coil pickup which featured two windings connected out of phase and reverse-wound, in order to cancel the 60-cycle hum associated with single-coil pickups; as a byproduct, however, it also produces a distinctive, more “mellow” tone which appeals to many guitarists. The more traditionally designed and styled Gibson solid-body instruments were a contrast to Leo Fender’s modular designs, with the most notable differentiator being the method of neck attachment and the scale of the neck (Gibson-24.75″, Fender-25.5″). Each design has its own merits. To this day, the basic design of many solid-body electric guitar available today are derived from the original designs – the Telecaster, Stratocaster and the Les Paul.

Vox

In 1962 Vox introduced the pentagonal Phantom guitar, originally made in England but soon after made by EKO of Italy. It was followed a year later by the teardrop-shaped Mark VI, the prototype of which was used by Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Vox guitars also experimented with onboard effects and electronics. The Teardrop won a price for its design. In the mid 1960s, as the sound of electric 12 string guitar became popular, Vox introduced the Phantom XII and Mark XII electric 12 string guitars. Vox produced many more traditional 6 and 12 string electric guitars in both England and Italy.

GuitarOrgan

In 1966 Vox introduced the revolutionary but problematic GuitarOrgan, a Phantom VI guitar with internal organ electronics. The instrument’s trigger mechanism required a specially-wired plectrum that completed circuit connections to each fret, resulting in a very wide and unwieldy neck. John Lennon was given one in a bid to secure an endorsement, though this never panned out. According to Up-Tight: the Velvet Underground Story, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones also tried one; when asked by the Velvets if it “worked”, his answer was negative. The instrument never became popular, but it was a precursor to the modern guitar synthesizer.

Other guitars

Also other materials than wood were used. Travis Bean as well as Kremer built guitars with aluminium necks. Danelectro used cardboard bodies. Also plasic and carbon bodied guitars have been made in the past. The Gittler guitar was a design guitar made in the 8os. 1991 saw the introduction of guitar designer Jol Dantzig’s first truly workable acoustic-electric hybrid guitar design. The instrument, called the DuoTone, was conceived while Dantzig was at Hamer Guitars. (Dantzig was also the designer of the first 12 string bass.) Adapted by players like Ty Tabor, Stone Gossard, Elvis Costello and Jeff Tweedy, the DuoTone was a full “duplex” instrument that could switch between acoustic and electric tones. Recently there have been many entries in the hybrid category (capable of both acoustic and electric tones) including the T5 by Taylor, Michael Kelly’s “Hybrid,” the Parker Fly and the Anderson Crowdster. In the 90s the band Neptune began building weird looking metal guitar with 3rd Bridge options incorporated. A predecessor of this type of guitars is the Pencilina. Linda Manzer designed the Pikasso guitar with multiple necks.

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