1950s-style Telecaster with natural finish
The Fender Telecaster series (including the original model, the Esquire) were the first mass-produced wooden solid-body electric Spanish guitars. Or, for all practical purposes: The Telecaster was the first modern electric guitar.
The Telecaster was developed by Leo Fender in Fullerton, California, in the 1940s. But like many great ideas, the solid-body electric guitar was created independently by several craftsman and companies over a similar period (roughly 1932-1949), such that any claim of a 'first' demands a great deal of qualification. Leo Fender's Telecaster was simply the right guitar at the right time, and like many other great ideas, it began as an accident.
Fender had an electronics repair shop called Fender's Radio Service where he first repaired, then designed, amplifiers and electromagnetic pickups for musicians -- chiefly players of electric semi-acoustic guitars, electric Hawaiian (lap steel) guitars, and mandolins. Players had been 'wiring up' their instruments in search of greater volume and projection since the late 1920s, and electric semi-acoustics (such as the Gibson ES-150) had long been widely available. Tone had never, until then, been the primary reason for a guitarist to go electric, but in 1943, when Fender and his partner, Doc Kauffman, built a crude wooden guitar as a pickup test rig, local country players started asking to borrow it for gigs. It sounded shiny and sustaining. Fender got curious, and in 1949, when it was long-understood that solid construction offered great advantages in electric instruments, but before any commercial solidbody Spanish guitars had caught on (the small Audiovox company apparently offered a modern, solidbody electric guitar as early as the mid-1930s), he built a better prototype.
That hand-built prototype, an anomalous white guitar, had most of the features of what would become the Telecaster. It was designed in the spirit of the solid-body Hawaiian guitars manufactured by Rickenbacker -- small, simple units made of Bakelite and aluminum with the parts bolted together -- but with honest wooden construction. (Rickenbacker, then called 'Rickenbacher,' had also offered a solid Bakelite-bodied electric Spanish guitar in 1935, many details of which seem echoed in Fender's design.)
The initial production model appeared in 1950, and was called the Esquire. (Fewer than fifty guitars were originally produced under that name, and most were replaced under warranty because of early manufacturing problems.) Later in 1950, this single-pickup model was discontinued, and a two-pickup model was renamed the Broadcaster. The Gretsch company, itself a manufacturer of (hollowbody) electric guitars, claimed that "Broadcaster" violated the trademark for its Broadkaster line of drums, and as a newcomer to the industry, Fender decided to bend and change the name to Telecaster, after the newly popular medium of television. (The guitars manufactured in the interim bore no name, and are now popularly called 'Nocasters.') The Esquire was reintroduced as a one-pickup Telecaster, at a lower price.
In its classic form, the guitar is extremely simply constructed, with the neck and fingerboard comprising a single piece of maple, bolted to an ash or alder body that's inexpensively jigged with flat surfaces on the front and back. The hardware includes two single-coil pickups controlled by a three-way selector switch, and one each of volume and tone controls. The pickguard is Bakelite (later plastic), screwed directly onto the body. The bridge (shown here without detachable bridge cover) has three adjustable saddles, with strings doubled up on each. Fender couldn't play guitar, and many believe that this contributed to the instrument's appliance-like design. It was, however, a very attractive instrument with an aura of the modern upon it, and it quickly gained a following -- and soon other, more established guitar companies (such as Gibson, whose Les Paul model was introduced in 1952; and later Gretsch, Rickenbacker, and others) began working on wooden solid-body production models of their own.
The Telecaster was important in the evolution of country, electric blues, rock and roll and other forms of popular music, because its solid construction allowed the guitar to be played loudly as a lead instrument, with long sustain if desired, and with less of the whistling 'hard' feedback that hollowbodied instruments tend to produce at volume (a different kind than the controllable feedback later exploited by Jimi Hendrix and countless other players). Even though the Telecaster is more than half a century old, and more sophisticated designs have been coming out since the early 1950s (including Fender's own Stratocaster), the Telecaster has remained in constant production. There have been numerous variations and modifications, but a model with something close to the original features has always been available.
Notable Telecaster players include Muddy Waters; Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones; Jimmy Page (on Led Zeppelin's studio recordings); Syd Barrett; Andy Summers of the Police; Jeff Buckley; John Frusciante of The Red Hot Chili Peppers - used on songs such as 'Can't Stop' and 'Easily'; Jonny Greenwood, Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien of Radiohead; Prince; Albert Collins; Clarence White of the Byrds; Bruce Springsteen; Roy Buchanan; Danny Gatton; Francis Rossi; Rick Parfitt; and James Burton. The Edge of U2 has also begun to use a Telecaster on a regular basis, such as on the album "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."
Other
- A walldisplay (monochrome or multi-color display mounted to a wall) that displays information about all sorts of (mostly work related) information is sometimes referred to as Telecaster. One can often find them in a call center or companies that want to inform people about measurable information like work queue, number of visits, stock market etc.
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