The Fender Telecaster Guitar – 10 Interesting Facts

The Fender Telecaster guitar has quite rightly been amazingly popular for many years because of its good looks and particularly distinctive sound, which is very effective in country music and blues. It has of course very often been utilised in other musical genres too.

The guitar has not surprisingly acquired a large number of famous guitar playing admirers through the years including Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Andy Summers and Bruce Springsteen.

Listed below are 10 quick facts relating to this legendary six string electric guitar:

1. Leo Fender developed the Telecaster in 1948 in sunny California. This was a time that many leading manufacturers were experimenting and producing designs. As a result the Fender Telecaster needed to be extremely quick off the mark.

2. The guitar came onto the scene as the Broadcaster model in 1949 and is still manufactured today in one form or another. There have of course been numerous impersonators but the Fender original is the all-important model.

3. In 1950 the very first one pickup model hit production and was known as the Esquire.

4. As far as the wood used for construction goes, the neck and the fingerboard were made from a single piece of Maple. This was duly bolted to a body constructed from Ash or Alder, which was a cheaper process than Gibson’s way more involved ‘set neck’ style.

5. A semi-acoustic style of the guitar appeared in approximately 1968 and was called the Thinline. The 1969 version of this particular model incorporated a Mahogany body and by 1972 the body was Swamp Ash.

6. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame used a 1958 Telecaster that was a gift from Jeff Beck on the now globally popular guitar solo on the amazing track Stairway to Heaven, from Led Zeppelin’s fourth album. Lots of people still to this day think that this guitar solo was played on either a Gibson Les Paul or an SG double neck but it wasn’t.

7. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones now famously put to use his Custom guitar in an extremely unconventional way during a live concert. Richards used his guitar to beat off an overzealous and potentially dangerous fan who ran onstage.

8. The Telecaster bridge pickup is positioned above a steel plate to improve the magnetic field which additionally helps to give this pickup its particularly distinctive tone.

9. Fender decided to modify the electronics in 1952 to incorporate a tone control into the circuit for the guitar pickups.

10. In 1950 in the period between the Broadcaster model and the eventual Telecaster, any guitars made during this interim period had no name and as a result are often referred to as Nocasters.

If you have never tried out one of these excellent guitars, head down to your nearest guitar shop a give one a trial run. I’m sure you will love it.