The beginning of the road for the Stratocaster was 1954, when Leo Fender along with George Fullerton and Freddie Tavere, after many iterations settled on the now-familiar Strat design with its double-cutaway body. Few were made, and the model lasted only a year, through 1982. In 1950, Fender introduced the first mass-produced solid-body electric guitar, the Telecaster ("Tele") (originally named the Broadcaster for two-pickup models and Esquire for single-pickup). Leo’s tinkering with the designs would lead him to co-found a small company called K & F Manufacturing Corp. The Fender Stratocaster, simply known as the ‘Strat’, has unquestionably been the most influential and iconic electric guitar ever made. He and his closest staff spent long hours developing and perfecting the new model, which quickly shaped up to be its own instrument rather than an improved version of the Telecaster. Not happy with letters the right way round? This was especially disappointing to young London guitarist Brian Rankin, who went by the stage name Hank Marvin and had just joined singer Cliff Richard’s band armed with a cheap Japanese electric guitar. They also shaved off some weight too, making it slightly easier to carry. They also changed the body tonewood from ash to alder in their sunburst models (the blonde finish stuck with the ash). In 1965, Fender changed to "machine winding", as it is a completely automated process. Fender had made promising inroads into the stodgy old U.S. musical instrument industry by 1953. Fender has been around for over 70 years, initially setting the bar for guitars, basses and amplifiers and repeatedly raising that bar with new innovations, such as Fender Play's debut in 2017. Be the first to know about new products, featured content, exclusive offers and giveaways. The Answer Won’t Surprise You, Guitar Scale Length – What it is, How to Measure it, and Why it Matters, ©2020 - Zinginstruments.com. CYBER WEEK SALE: Save 50% on a Monthly Plan. And utterly unbeknownst to Fender, players had other plans entirely for the Jazzmaster. Who knew if it had any kind of future ahead of it, let alone a bright one? Its brief reign at the top of Fender’s two-instrument professional guitar lineup ended in 1958 when a third pro model, the Jazzmaster, was introduced. With its beautiful contour body, Leo Fender created a masterpiece that is only rivaled by the Les Paul and Telecaster for most influential electric.. Actual overall sales figures being hard to come by, it’s a difficult job to try and name the best selling guitar of all time. Following its success, Fender created the first mass-produced electric bass, the Precision Bass (P-Bass). Fender Select Stratocaster HSS - 2013 Edition, Fender Select Series (2013) FSR American Stratocaster Rustic Ash - Special Edition Series (7/2013-12/2013) Fender/Roland G-5A VG Stratocaster (2013-Discontinued) 2013 Custom Shop Custom Collection: 1956 Stratocaster Relic - … First up, they changed their finishing process, namely, the yellow tint that was used in the sunburst finish was now dyed into the wood rather than sprayed on. By Jeff Owens. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/dJXjV6UY9lc?rel=0. It wasn't perfect though … The tension of the springs on the back and the guitar strings on the top held the whole system “floating” in balance and enabled shimmering vibrato, uncompromised tone and, crucially, stable intonation. Towards the end of the 1970s, they also brought in a 5-way pickup switch rather than the standard 3-way one. The round string holes in the back tremolo plate became oval-shaped in 1955. Which are the Best Years for a Fender Stratocaster? The Fender Telecaster is seen by many as the primordial electric guitar.Sure, one can argue that Paul Bigsby was also developing solid body instruments at the same time and in the same general area as Leo Fender but it is the Telecaster that is generally accepted as the first production solid guitar and the start of the modern guitar manufacturing business. Pickup magnets were changed from alnico 3 to alnico 5 in late 1956, which is also when the headstock’s round string retainer was switched to the “butterfly” string tree with a “half-tunnel” guide for the B and high E strings. Rock ‘n’ roll had been building steam since the late 1940s by the time it broke out into a national phenomenon in the mid 1950s, and during that initial period, with few exceptions, its main lead instruments were saxophone and piano rather than guitar. In 1985, a wonderful thing happened. And in Seattle, a kid named James Marshall Hendrix—“Jimmy” to family and friends—turned 17 that November. With Fender in the midst of a substantial reorganization, Smith’s redesign was a transitional guitar that was in fact the first version of the modern-era Standard series Stratocaster. Besides vintage reissues, modern Strats offer a variety of different features and tonewoods and most have a thinner C neck for improved playability. Those early rock ‘n’ roll musicians who did sling guitars most often played flat-top acoustics or big, hollow electrics by Gibson and Gretsch. Some of the earlier models supposedly had problems with neck twisting which the larger headstock supposedly helped to deal with. A practical person, he just wanted to build a better guitar. With three pickups, a contoured body that made playing guitar comfortable, and a tremolo built-in and designed correctly for the guitar, made it … All along as design refinements preceded throughout late 1953 and early 1954, Leo and his staff were ably abetted by several western swing guitarists in addition to Gallion and Carson who were happy to field-test Stratocaster prototypes in local nightclubs. In fact, the Stratocaster’s second vibrato system was so effectively “over designed” that it proved capable of far more than its designer intended or imagined. If you manage to find a ‘54 Strat, you’ve done very well as they’re rare as hen’s teeth and sell for a small fortune. History. In the meantime, Fender put its new Stratocaster into the hands of the western swing and pop guitarists Leo intended it for—players such as Buddy Merrill (of Lawrence Welk’s band), Alvino Rey, Eddie Cletro, Charlie Aldrich, Al Myers, “Stash” Clements, Kenneth “Thumbs” Carllile, Charley Raye, and others. All Rights Reserved Registered Address – Dramatik, c/o Wesley Offices, 74 Silver Street, Bristol, BS48 2DS. Despite what people say about the CBS era ones, they’re still amazing guitars which fetch a hefty price tag because of their age, even if Strat purists turn their nose up to them. This is how Fender pickups were wound prior to 1965, since it was a semi-manual operation, using a machine to turn the pickup bobbin, while a worker would guide the wire onto the turning bobbin. With its introduction serendipitously preceding the rising popularity of a new musical and cultural phenomenon called rock ‘n’ roll by about a year, you’d think the Stratocaster would’ve quickly rocketed to stratospheric heights of acclaim and popularity. The inspiring sound of a Stratocaster is one of the foundations of Fender. The Stratocaster was designed by Leo Fender, George Fullerton, and Freddie Tavares for the Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company, which was founded by Leo Fender in Fullerton, CA in 1946. In the early ‘60s, they introduced a thinner profile C-shaped neck (called a modern “C” or flat oval) that impacted the sound quite a bit, making it less bright. Featuring this classic sound—bell-like high end, punchy mids and robust low end, combined with crystal-clear articulation—the Player Stratocaster is packed with authentic Fender feel and style. The solution was to turn to Fender Japan to build all of the company’s guitars, which would be the case for a period of some months. Randall and his salesmen were chomping at the bit to get the new guitar out, and there was considerable pressure on Leo himself to devise a new Stratocaster vibrato system. They weren’t quite done yet. This consisted of two then-common paint colors—a brownish-black outer hue called dark Salem, which graduated to a golden inner hue called canary yellow. Leo ran a small electronics repair shop. These new rosewood-fingerboard models also replaced the black marker dots on the side of the neck with new off-white “clay” dots. Leo invested a great deal of time and money into trying to perfect the system well into 1953 before scrapping the entire design and starting over. In spring of that year, however, new arrival Freddy Tavares sketched out a new body shape that sleekly adapted Leo’s balanced two-horned shape for the Precision Bass. Dan Smith, with the help of John Page, proceeded to work on a reissue of the most popular guitars of Leo Fender's era. The first full-scale production run began in October 1954, with the vibrato model priced at $249.50 and the non-vibrato model at $229.50. The neck was also thinned out. Fender guitars and basses from before 1965 are considered far more desirable than anything Fender has built since. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/g6-n4V_l3jI?rel=0. The story of the Fender Stratocaster begins in the late 1930s, when Clarence Leonidas "Leo" Fender opened Fender Radio Service in Fullerton, California. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. Others embraced the Stratocaster later in the decade, too. Been that way for quite a while now. Thereafter, a selection of custom colors became widely available for an extra charge. From surf to psychedelia, the sixties were the decade that changed everything. Getting hold of one will be out of most people’s budgets. In the compartment routed into the back of the guitar, the whole assemble was anchored by springs (three at first but soon five) that attached to the inertia block at one end and an adjustable anchor plate screwed to the forward wall of the cavity at the other end. Overall, there’s no correct choice, however, models do vary throughout the years. Design changes implemented in 1959 were significant enough for models introduced later that year to be considered the “second incarnation” of the Stratocaster. As with the Marshall logo, the original ‘spaghetti’ style Fender logo (above) is by [someone unknown], although general chatter suggests it was based on Leo Fender’s own signature with the ‘F’ being simply reversed!It’s a detail like that that can really create a truly ownable brand mark. Fender switched to less-expensive and more easily workable alder instead of ash for Stratocaster bodies in mid 1956. Leo Fender, in collaboration with George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares, designs the first Fender Strat. Perhaps author Tom Wheeler put it best when, in his indispensable history The Stratocaster Chronicles, he asked: "How was such an ultimately dominant product created by a newcomer to the business who seemed to have several strikes against him? The answers to those questions were far from clear. Leaving aside black, Fender’s 1960 color chart reflects a strong bias toward GM, with 10 colors out of 13, and in particular toward Cadillac, with five colors. We’re so used to ‘far out’ guitar designs that the Strat looks, by today’s standards, pretty conservative by comparison – but back in the day it was a real head-turner. Here we go. Guitarist Rex Gallion is often credited with suggesting that a solid-body guitar didn’t need squared-off edges since it didn’t have an internal sound chamber, and with asking Leo himself, “Why not get away from a body that is always digging into your ribs?” The Stratocaster was consequently given rounded edges and deep body and forearm contours that made it remarkably comfortable and added to its sleekness. To compete with more high-end instruments from other manufacturers—particularly Gibson’s Les Paul, introduced in 1952 in response to what Randall once called the “plain Jane” Telecaster—the Stratocaster was a marked step up in design and innovation for Fender. The Fender brand began with the work of an inventor named Leo Fender. Last month, we did a post on the history of the Stratocaster from its inception in 1954 up until the end of the CBS-era in the early ‘80s. But who knew where the Stratocaster was destined to fit in? Also, the original Stratocaster necks had a rounded “C”-shaped profile (also described as “D”- and “U”-shaped) that was changed to sharper “V” and “medium V” profiles from 1955 to 1957 before returning to rounded profiles as the decade closed. If you want the best of both worlds – a Strat modeled on the pre-CBS ones but affordable, I’d suggest you check out modern ‘vintage’ Strats. Pee Wee Crayton, Ritchie Valens and Carl Perkins played Strats in the 1950s, as did Cliff Gallup’s successors in Gene Vincent and his Blue Caps, Johnny Meeks and Howard Reed. Ged is editor-in-chief and founder of Zing Instruments. Marvin’s Fiesta Red instrument illustrates another formative step in the history of the Stratocaster in the 1950s: the availability of custom colors. 1954 - This was the year the Stratocaster was introduced. The modernized tremolo pickup is superior even to the original design, which makes the bridge more stable which will go out of tune less frequently. READ MORE: C-V-U? Other Stratocaster innovations included single-coil alnico 3 pickups with staggered-height pole pieces that effectively addressed the varying output of the heavy string gauges in use at the time, and a slanting output jack mounted on the face of the guitar rather than the side. The biggest bit of innovation, however, was the guitar’s vibrato bridge (which Fender erroneously called a ‘Tremolo’ bridge). Vintage Custom 1959 Stratocaster® NOS, Rosewood Fingerboard, Chocolate 3-Color Sunburst More about Vintage Custom 1959 Stratocaster® 1959 was a pivotal year in the annals of Stratocaster history. Work on elements such as new pickups and a new bridge was certainly well under way by late 1952. The first Fender to be produced came in a solitary piece ash body with a two-color sunburst finish. His specialty was radio, but he also had a steady stream of customers who wanted him to look at various items related to creating music. There was no tone control for the bridge pickup, which Fender’s description of the guitar noted “does not require additional tone modification.”. READ MORE: Fender Stratocaster Buying Guide: 7 Strat Models Compared. The Invention of the Fender Stratocaster. The two-color sunburst finish became a three-color sunburst finish in the first half of 1958 with the addition of an “in between” red hue. A sunburst finish was the norm right from the start in 1954, with a small handful of guitars made for specific artists in specific colors around that time—a gold one for Texas Playboys guitarist Eldon Shamblin; solid red models (later referred to as “Dakota red”) for Bill Carson and Pee Wee Crayton. The beginning of the road for the Stratocaster was 1954, when Leo Fender along with George Fullerton and Freddie Tavere, after many iterations settled on the now-familiar Strat design with its double-cutaway body. The vibrato system had to offer solid tuning stability without compromising tone, sustain, player comfort and ease of use, and Leo immersed himself in the task with his customary focus. Ike Turner championed the Stratocaster early on with dramatically swooping tremolo use that prefigured Jimi Hendrix by a decade. Then came a seismic change to Fender which changed the design of all their guitars forever. All Rights Reserved. In the United States in late 1959, a flamboyantly talented 23-year-old Louisiana guitarist named George “Buddy” Guy had just got his first record contract the year before, and 22-year-old Californian Richard Monsour, who went by the stage name Dick Dale, had just released his first two singles on the tiny Deltone label. C-V-U? Their input was invaluable, and while the Stratocaster was in one sense Leo’s baby through and through, it was in another sense the collaborative work of a remarkable group of designers and musicians. It was a sleekly beautiful instrument bursting with great features and producing full, clear and sparkling tones. In this design, the strings actually moved over the bridge on the rollers. As intended, the three-way pickup selector switch delivered one pickup at a time rather than combinations of the pickups; that is, you could get the neck pickup by itself, the middle pickup by itself and the bridge pickup by itself. Two small children in Dallas, 8-year-old Jimmie Vaughan and his 5-year-old brother Stephen Vaughan, or “Stevie,” were barely big enough to get their hands around a guitar neck. Wide Panel 1953 - 1955 A 1953 Deluxe READ MORE: What Are Alnico Pickups? The three control knobs placed near the bridge were within easy reach of the strumming/picking hand—a master volume and two tone controls for the neck and middle pickups. The Fender Stratocaster (and Telecaster) from the 1950's put the solidbody electric guitar on the map. In response to player feedback on the Telecaster, Randall wanted the new guitar to have some kind of vibrato system, and Leo was eager to better the designs by his former business partner, Doc Kauffman, and by his contemporary, Paul Bigsby. History. Indeed, for about its first 10 years or so, the Stratocaster patiently bided its time while the world caught up with it. It didn’t. As you can see the world of the Stratocaster is pretty vast, which can make it hard to decide which is best one for you. When the Fender company was bought from CBS by Bill Schultz in 1985, manufacturing resumed its former high quality and Fender was able to regain market share and brand reputation. More changes saw the introduction of a soft-V neck shape instead of the U profile. Many purists hate the large headstock, but in actual fact, the larger look was designed by Leo Fender just before he passed away. Fender couldn't break into the jazz market, and breaking into markets is a brand's favorite thing to do. Even the mighty Gibson Company cannot boast such a successful instrument, a true icon for generations of guitar players. During the CBS era, Fender guitars and amps saw a lot of change. It’s generally considered that the pre-CBS Strats are far superior in every way to the CBS era ones. It’s certainly true that the innovative electric guitars introduced by Fender throughout the 1950s—the Telecaster (1951) and the Stratocaster (1954), plus the Jazzmaster (1958) and some student models—changed the way music was created and experienced. The first Fender solid body model, the Esquire, lasted (in name only) from April 1950 to October 1950. The Main Reasons Explained, How Many Frets on a Guitar? He's also got an unhealthy obsession with vintage VW Campervans. The development of the Stratocaster also saw a notably elegant touch in Fender’s first use of a sunburst finish, which was included at Randall’s insistence to give the guitar a more high-end look. At the dawn of the 1960s, elder brother the Telecaster was enjoying a new and hard-won sense of indispensability. A scrappy little post-war West Coast upstart that was only seven years old and led by a taciturn self-taught electronics tinkerer, Fender had already introduced two revolutionary instruments—the Telecaster and Precision Bass guitars—plus a full line of well-regarded steel guitars and a small handful of loud, rugged and stylish amps that were the best available. The Telecaster was originally designed and sold in 1950 by Leo Fender in California. We hope you’ve enjoyed this little romp through the history of the Strat. READ MORE: How the Stratocaster Came to Have Two Headstocks, The Stratocaster’s electronics were mounted to the single-ply white plastic pickguard (anodized aluminum on some early models) rather than to the body, enabling an entire pickguard/pickups/controls assembly to be dropped in place and screwed on (using eight screws) and only requiring connection to the output jack. To be honest, I didn’t -- until I made a visit to Fender's factory in Ensenada, Mexico, earlier this month to help celebrate the facility’s 25th anniversary. This sparked a rise in mainstream popularity for vintage (and vintage-style) instruments. This model name was replaced by the "Broadcaster", which lasted (in name only) from the October 1950 to January 1951. Third in BillyBadAxe’s Classic Electric Guitars 101 series: The Fender Stratocaster. The Fender Stratocaster history starts in 1954 when three men, Leo Fender, Freddie Tavares and George Fullerton designed the first double cutaway guitar which has gone on to change the history of guitars. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Pf7vKfg6qeg?rel=0. Long-held conventions of design and method meant little if anything to Leo, which likely goes a long way in explaining the genesis of an instrument as extraordinary as the Stratocaster. As sleek and innovative as it was, the Stratocaster’s future was by no means guaranteed in late 1959. So too with the great Fender amps of … In that period, there was basically one Stratocaster and its evolution followed a … Photo by John Peden. 1956 - Below is a patent poster for the Stratocaster used to advertise the new features. Which is the Right Neck Shape for You? By the close of the 1950s, players were well aware of an unintentional peculiarity of the Stratocaster’s electronics: the two “in-between” switch positions. Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/embed/ARbNfEMxkME?rel=0. Unfortunately, this led to a period of cheapening the materials, including: Most notoriously, they introduced a large headstock design which allowed for a larger logo text (to make the Fender brand was more prominent on TV promotional campaigns and billboards). Since the now front-installed truss rod could now by set into a channel routed into the top of the neck and then covered by the glued-on fingerboard, this design rendered the “skunk stripe” on the back of the neck and the “teardrop” plug on the headstock unnecessary. A triple-pickup configuration wasn’t the Stratocaster’s only first. The double horned body nobody had seen before, nor the straight headstock which – although it changed over the years in size – contributed to the Strat’s tone. He's a multi-instrumentalist and loves researching, writing, and geeking out about music. Among Strat connoisseurs, the ‘57 model sunburst finish is considered a vintage thanks to the V-shaped neck.

fender stratocaster history timeline

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