Electric guitar 'Telecaster'

Fender

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Instrument

Electric guitar/Guitars/Strings/Musical Instrument ; Electric guitar

Instrument Family

Strings

Maker

Fender

Place Made

Fullerton ; North America ; United States of America

Date Made

1956

Description

Weight: 3.62 kg Electrics: Working. Later switch and capacitators (originals retained). Potentiometers dated to 1956. Hardware: Bridge and pickup positioned together in lower casing of bridge cover. “Ashtray” style bridge cover for this was lost prior to acquisition. One pickup selector switch in the post 1955 “top hat” style. Two metal knobs for volume and tone control respectively. Two metal strap buttons, one in middle of bottom rim of guitar, the other on the left upper curve of the body. Body: Solid ash body in traditional "blonde" colour. Light ageing. Wear around the output jack. Wear with some of the finish worn away on lower left curved edge of body from use. Small chips taken out of body beside the lower metal knob and on the left side of the front of the body. White pick guard, probably a replacement. The colour of the pickguard was changed from black to white in 1954 but the current one doesn’t show enough signs of wear in comparison to the rest of the guitar for it to be original. Fretboard: Maple. Light wear, mostly to right edge due to use. 10 dot inlays in fretboard positioned with one dot in the 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, 15th, 17th, and 21st fret and 2 dots in the 12th fret. Neck: Lightly aged maple neck. Appears to have had a light overspray. Small dot inlays on left edge of neck, mirroring location of dots on fretboard. Frets: 21 frets. Re-fret. Strings: 6 metal strings. All strings are pulled straight over the nut. Headstock: Tuners have a vertical "Kluson Deluxe" stamp down the center of the gear cover. All the tuners are on one side of the headstock. Decal likely replaced at some point. Mechanism: There is a three-position selector switch that can alter the use of the knobs. The knob closest to the neck always controls master volume. The second knob can control master tone but can also affect the sound when the selector switch is in the rear (bridge) position. This leads to a bit of tonal versatility. Measurements: Body: W 32.26 cm, L 39.88 cm, D 1.5 cm Neck (from base of neck to upper edge of nut): W 5 cm, L 47cm, D 2cm Headstock (from upper edge of nut to top of headstock): W 7cm , Length (diagonal from lower left hand corner to upper right hand corner) 17cm, D 1.5 cm Accessories: Case: non-original hard case. Tan exterior with orange interior. Cultural/Historical importance: Origins: Some scoffed at the Telecaster when it was officially unveiled at the industry’s largest U.S. trade show, calling it a “boat paddle” and a “snow shovel.” Leo Fender and his team had laboured throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s to design something new, a mass-produced solid-body Spanish-style electric guitar. Several features were carried over from the Hawaiian steel guitars Fender had been making since 1945, such as the “ashtray” bridge cover, chrome knobs and Kluson tuners. Unlike many existing guitars at the time, the Telecaster’s strings were pulled straight over the nut, with all the tuners on one side of the headstock, which Leo said he had borrowed from 19-century Istrian folk guitars and Viennese Staufer guitars. Differing from any guitar that had come before it, the Telecaster had an incredibly bright, clean and cutting sounding, with a piercing high end and thick midrange and bass. The design has not altered much, with a basic modern Telecaster outwardly differing very little from the original. Its simplicity and efficiency as a solidly reliable workhorse guitar remained hallmarks of its design throughout the 1950s, as indeed they would throughout subsequent decades. Importance: The Telecaster was a major factor in the development of the rock and roll sound of the 1950s and 60s. Fender guitars being disconnected from high-end guitar manufacture meant that they were seen as hardy and affordable. They provided those involve in the youth movement of the 1950s a chance to make their sown sound. Thus, by the mid-50s the Telecaster was finding its way into the recordings of rock ‘n’ roll, R&B and country guitarists. In Nashville in July 1956, Johnny Burnette and the Rock and Roll Trio recorded a rock version of 1951 jump blues song “The Train Kept-A-Rollin” with their lead guitarist Paul Burlison using his Telecaster to play potentially the first recorded instance of a contemporary fuzz guitar sound. It became an important tool of the trade in studio recording sessions too, becoming an essential art of the arsenal of studio veterans nationwide and A-list session veterans Barney Kessel, Howard Roberts and Tommy Tedesco all got Telecasters. The importance of this guitar spread across many genres of music. In the 1950s, Renowned R&B players, like B.B. King and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown, also took readily to this instrument. In the country world, Luther Perkins accompanied Johnny Cash from 1954 onwards, on a Telecaster. It would go on to become the foundation of the “Bakersfield Sound” that was pioneered in the late 1950s and popularized in the 1960s by Owens and his band, the Buckaroos, Merle Haggard and the Strangers, and others. In the 1960s, motown house guitarist Joe Messina often used a Telecaster, and out west, Bakersfield, Calif., singer/guitarist Buck Owens was pioneering a loud, no-frills anti-Nashville country sound dominated by the sound of his Telecaster. Then came the renowned British Invasion of 1964. Following the Beatles’ phenomenal worldwide success, mainstream rock music became intensely guitar-driven in a way it never had before. Fender guitars poured into England in ever-greater numbers and began making appearances of great portent in the hands of those who had so rabidly devoured the U.S. sounds of the 1950s. The Telecaster became a part of legendary stage theatrics in 1965 when The Who’s guitarist Pete Townshend decided that it was too expensive to continue his iconic guitar smashing stage routine at the end of their set-closing anthem “My Generation” using the delicate Rickenbacker guitars he was known for playing. So, in an attempt to save money, he began switching to Telecasters for this stunt as they were less expensive and easier to repair. Overall, this guitar fed the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll and a simultaneous explosion in U.S. youth culture, and by the end of the 1950s it was an indispensable workhorse instrument for guitarists of many musical styles and genres nationwide.

Collection

MIMEd

Accession Number

6652

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