Vintage Fender Telecaster- Leo Fender’s Revolutionary Idea
In todays vintage guitar collections the vintage Fender Telecaster happens to be one of the most sought after vintage guitars. Reason being that it was the first major solid bodied electric guitar to be produced. Sure there were a lot of prototypes of the electric guitar since the 20’s, but the Fender Telecaster was the one that set the standard in solid bodied electric guitars.
It took Leo Fender around 17 years of experimentation to produce the better known as “Tele”. The first prototype name of the Telecaster was the Esquire. The Esquire entered the scene in 1950 and had a short life span. Only around 50 guitars were manufactured and distributed then recalled due to manufacturing errors. This however did not discourage Leo.
After patching up his botched guitar and adding some new features he was ready for a re-release later that year. He would name his new release as the Fender Broadcaster. Leo’s luck remained poor and almost as soon as he started selling his guitars he was hit with copy righting argument with the Gretsch Company. They had a line of drums called the “Broadkasters” that they claimed an obvious violation of their copy right. The Broadcaster needed a new name.
This didn’t bother Leo and with third times a charm renamed his guitar the Fender Telecaster. Now you may be wondering why the “Telecaster” or “Tele”, well he named his guitar after the growing popular new medium the television. The guitar not only set new standards, but it started a new wave of music. The unpopular solid bodied electric guitar was now popular. Leo had changed music history.
With the release of the Telecaster the new players not only like the sound, but liked the way that the guitar was put together. It was rather simple to fix. The components were not individually constructed like most guitars at the time, but were mass manufactured. You would think with such a strategy that the performance of the guitar would suffer, but it did not. The Telecaster was sawed and routed from slabs, not hand-carved, necks were bolted and not glued, and the fretboards was a single piece with the neck not separate. Just a few examples of many neat features…
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