70 Years Of The Telecaster From Prototype To Present

FEW DESIGNS EVOLVE FROM PROTOTYPE TO SHOWROOM FLOOR IN JUST A COUPLE OF YEARS AND THEN GO ON TO REMAIN RELEVANT – AND, IN THEIR ESSENCE, UNCHANGED – FOR THE NEXT 70 YEARS. SEVEN DECADES ON, WE PAY TRIBUTE TO THE FIRST, AND JUST MAYBE THE GREATEST, SOLID BODY ELECTRIC GUITAR: THE FENDER TELECASTER. JOIN US AS WE TRACE ITS EVOLUTION FROM SINGLE-PICKUP ESQUIRE ANCESTRY TO THE LATEST ACOUSTASONIC INCARNATION OF THIS AGELESS ELECTRIC

- Jamie Dickson & Rod Brakes

The year is 1949. The Second World War had ended just four years previously but already a shining new technological age was beckoning. Jets streaked across the California skies – and down on terra firma, in Fullerton, California, Leo Fender was building the first prototypes of a guitar that would propel six-string design into the wide blue yonder.

These early testbed instruments were blocky, even crude looking. The body materials, pickups and control layout were experimental. But they had one pioneering feature that set them apart from every other guitar then available: a solid body. Even the name of this jet-age instrument was a kind of prototype back in ’49. Leo planned to call it the Esquire, but – as we shall see – the guitar would gain a pickup and change names twice before it assumed the historic moniker that became famous for the next seven decades: Telecaster.

One man who has researched the early evolution of Leo’s first electric guitar in forensic detail is David Davidson, a hugely experienced vintage guitar trader and curator of the Songbirds Guitar Museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He says that the solidbody concept was born of Leo Fender’s practical outlook and desire to carve out a niche for himself in a guitar market that was still dominated by the old guard of tradition-steeped American guitar makers such as Gibson and Martin.

“Leo had been thinking for a period of time about coming up with an inexpensive alternative to the very expensive Gibson and Gretsch models,” David says. “He was laughed at when he came out with a solidbody instrument. Mostly because people thought, ‘How could that possibly sound good?’ But he was a pretty diligent guy who just kept on trying to perfect it.”