TELE VISION

Seven decades on from its launch, and counting, the Tele is still the guitar for all seasons.

- Jamie Dickson

When it was conceived it was a design of startling modernity. Today, it's as familiar as our own hands, as much a part of the landscape of guitar as weathered driftwood on a beach. More importantly still, the Telecaster was, and is, a guitar of the people - the workhorse of bar-rooms and clubs across America and then the world. Both country and blues music can claim the Tele as their own and its acerbic growl can be heard throughout rock. The Tele's neck pickup, meanwhile, gave it an elegant jazz voice, too, in the hands of players such as Ed Bickert and Julian Lage - something the Strat could never aspire to. Somehow the very simplicity and unassuming nature of the Tele means it has woven itself into the lives of ordinary (and extraordinary) musicians as few other guitars have, outside of the Martin Dreadnought. In the following pages we examine why the Telecaster's magic is still strong and explore some of the most unique examples of the Tele ever made.

TELECASTER TALES TALES

During a visit to Long Island's Well Strung Guitars, we discovered four rare examples of the Telecaster/Esquire family that prove not only how adaptable Leo's classic single-cut is but how deeply it is ingrained in the lives of musicians and their families down the generations

Ask a guitarist what electric they'd choose if they could only have one guitar to cover all gigs and there's a fair chance that they'll say 'Telecaster'. It's ironic that the simplest of Leo Fender's solid-body electrics has also proven to be the most adaptable. Though if we trace its evolution back a little further to the Broadcaster and Esquire that preceded it, we discover that it became simple by design - because in some ways the earliest prototype guitars were more complex than the classic Tele we know today.