Telecaster by Fender
The Fender Telecaster, also known as just the Tele, is typically a dual-pickup, solid-body electric guitar made by Fender. Its simple yet effective design and revolutionary sound broke ground and set trends in electric guitar manufacturing and popular music. Introduced for national distribution as the Broadcaster in the autumn of 1949, it was the first guitar of its kind to be produced on a substantial scale. Its commercial production can be traced as far back as the March of 1950, when the single- and dual-pickup Esquire models were first sold. The Telecaster has been in continuous production in one form or another since its first incarnation, making it the world's oldest solid-body electric guitar.
The Fender Telecaster was developed by Leo Fender in 1949. Prior to its creation, the solid-body electric guitar had been created independently by several craftsman and companies, in the period roughly between 1932–1949, but none of these guitars had made a significant impact on the market. Leo Fender's Telecaster was the design that finally put the solid-body guitar on the map.
The Telecaster is known for its bright, rich cutting tone. One of the secrets to the Telecaster's sound centers on the bridge pickup, which has more windings than the neck pickup and hence has a much higher output, sometimes having twice the inductance of the neck pickup. At the same time, a capacitor is fitted between the slider of the volume control and the output, allowing treble sounds to bleed through while the mid and lower ranges are damped. A slanting bridge pickup enhances the guitar's treble tone. The solid body allows the guitar to deliver a clean amplified version of the strings' tone. This was an improvement on previous electric guitar designs, whose hollow bodies made them prone to unwanted feedback. These design elements allowed musicians to emulate steel guitar sounds, making it particularly useful in country music.
The Telecaster was important in the evolution of country, electric blues, funk, 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 (known in sound reinforcement circles as 'microphonic feedback') that hollowbodied instruments tend to produce at volume (a different kind from the controllable feedback later explored 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 1950's (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.
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