Sep
15
2009

Vintage Fender Telecaster: The History Behind the Creation

This is my vintage fender telecaster :)

This is my vintage fender telecaster :)

One of the most sought after vintage guitars has to be the vintage Fender Telecaster. This vintage guitar took 17 years of trial and error from Leo Fender. The better known as “Tele” was first unveiled to the world in 1951 as the “Fender Broadcaster”. This name however had a short life span. The owner of the time Gretsch decided to rename it the Fender Telecaster. This isn’t just any vintage Fender, this is the first solid body electric guitar. The beginning of a long line of amazing guitars. This guitar comes with two pickups, single cut away slab with two knobs, three position toggle switch, three adjustable bridge saddles, and strings that anchored through the body.

Leo Fender’s simple and modular design was geared to mass production, and made servicing broken guitars easier. Guitars were not constructed individually, as in traditional luthiery. Rather, components were produced quickly and inexpensively in quantity and assembled into a guitar on an assembly line. The bodies were band-sawed and routed from slabs, rather than hand-carved individually, as with other guitars made at the time, such as Gibsons. Fender did not use the traditional glued on neck, but rather a bolt-on. This not only made production easier, but allowed the neck to be quickly removed and serviced, or replaced entirely. In addition, the classic Telecaster neck was fashioned from a single piece of maple without a separate fingerboard, and the frets were pressed directly into the maple surface—a highly unorthodox approach in its day (guitars traditionally featured rosewood or ebony fingerboards glued onto mahogany necks). The electronics were easily accessed for repair or replacement through a removable control plate, a great advantage over typical construction, in which the electronics could only be accessed through the soundholes in the case of hollow-body instruments, or later by taking off the pickguard after removing the strings (as in Fender’s own later design, the Stratocaster).

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 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 was first Bakelite, soon thereafter it was Celluloid (later plastic), screwed directly onto the body with five (later eight) screws. The bridge has three adjustable saddles, with strings doubled up on each. The guitar 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. A large chromed cover, often called the “ashtray”, was fitted over the bridge for improved grounding, but this is rarely seen as most players find it impedes their style.

The original switch configuration used from 1950 to 1952 allowed selection of neck pickup with treble tone cut in the first position (for a bassier sound), and neck pickup with normal tone in the second position. The third switch position selected the bridge pickup with neck pickup blended in, depending on the position of the second “tone” knob. The first knob functioned normally as a master volume control. This configuration did not have a true tone control knob.

Typical modern Telecasters (such as the American Standard version) incorporate several details different from the classic form. They typically feature 22 frets (rather than 21) and truss rod adjustment is made at the headstock end, rather than the body end, which had required removal of the neck on the original (the Custom Shop Bajo Sexto Baritone Tele was the only Telecaster featuring a two-octave 24-fret neck). The 3-saddle bridge of the original has been replaced with a 6-saddle version, allowing independent length and height adjustment for each string. The long saddle bridge screws allow a wide range of saddle bridge positions for intonation tuning. The stamped metal bridge plate has been replaced with a plain, flat plate, and the bridge grounding cover (which, while helping with the grounding, impedes players who like to mute strings at the bridge with the side of the palm, and makes it impossible to pick near the saddles to produce the characteristic Telecaster ‘twang’) has been discontinued for most models. Also different from the original is the wiring: The 3-way toggle switch selects neck pickup only in the first position, neck and bridge pickups together in the second position, and bridge pickup only in the third position. The first knob adjusts the master volume; the second is a master tone control affecting all the pickups.

During the CBS era in the 1970s, the Telecaster body style was changed to a new “notchless” shape, having a less pronounced notch in the crook where the upper bout meets the neck. The notchless body style was discontinued in 1982.

The short-lived Elite Telecaster of 1983 incorporated two specially designed humbucking pickups powered by an active circuitry featuring a TBX guitar expander and a MDX midrange booster with 12dB of gain. Other features included a Freeflyte hardtail bridge and die-cast tuning machines with pearloid buttons. This guitar was among the latest CBS-era Fenders to feature a BiFlex truss-rod system, low-friction EasyGlider string trees and active electronics. After CBS sold Fender to a group of employees led by Bill C. Schultz in 1985, the Elite Telecaster, as well as the other Elite models, has no longer been produced. Fender Japan made its own version of the Elite Telecaster in late 1984, featuring a 22-fret neck with medium-jumbo fretwire and a modern 9.5″ radius.

So the big question is where can I find this guitar now? My advice to you is ebay. This will be the easiest way to find your perfect guitar. Reason being that not every guitar shop will have this guitar. Trust me. And if you do find it in a guitar shop the price might make your head spin. I remember  when I first started collecting vintage guitars I used to be an avid guitar shop shopper. Through some contacts I made my way on ebay. Just to find that some of the guitars in my collection were actually online for much much less then what I payed. So take it from one avid guitar collector to another. With ebay you can’t go wrong. You save money. It’s safe. And also there is buyers protection. If you get a broken guitar in the mail you don’t pay for it. Well… you will cry. No one ever wants to see a vintage guitar get trashed.

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