Thursday, 10 April 2008
Leo Fender of California, United States of America was born in the August of 1909. Leo became interested in electronics at a young age and could often be found building radio's during his school years. Once graduated from college he started his own business but quickly became interested in the guitar and decided that he was going to make a solid body, stream line electric guitar along with his partner George Fullerton. It was 1950 and Fender had produced the Esquire and the Broadcaster, with the Precision Bass coming a year later, guitars but the Gretsch music company had a line of drums called the Broadkaster and so Leo changes the Broadcaster to the Telecaster and a legend was born.
The early fifties saw the birth of the Stratocaster. This fender guitar was named such to reflect the dynamic of a jet plane, which was slick and futuristic. The guitar was created for comfort and playability. On the back of the guitar there was a smooth cut away shape the enabled the guitar to nestle into the players torso, instead of a hard edge and the arm rest sloped back gradually so that there would no noticeable contact to the players are, instead a smooth platform on which to rest. Where the body meets the fret board Fender decided to make the body a double cut away making it easier to get access to the higher frets opening scales for more notes. The Strat also featured three single coil pickups, each one with staggered magnetic poles controlled by a three way selector switch, one volume knob and two tone controls. All of this gave the Stratocaster great versatility, you can get so many different sounds out of one that they were destined for greatness.
Some of the worlds greatest guitarists have used the Fender guitar, most famously, Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton. Jimi Hendrix was known for his amazing ability on the guitar, a left handed man who could flip a right handed guitar around and play better than most is something to be marvelled at. Hendrix's musical roots were founded in blues and soul, he added some rock and psycadelia and a whole new sound was born. Jimi favoured the Stratocaster because the slim neck suited his slick hand speed and enabled his huge hands to play rhythm and lead parts at the same time. Through Hendrix's residency in the United Kingdom, the Fender guitar became popular with British musicians and friends of Jimi, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton.
Under the influence of Hendrix, Clapton decided to take the fender guitar and make his own version by a hybrid the parts of different Stratocasters to make his perfect model and played this guitar until nineteen ninety when it finally packed up. In nineteen eighty eight for his service to the Stratocaster, Fender and Clapton developed the Eric Clapton signature series, the first of it's kind.
You can click here to see the selection of
Fender Guitars that we have in our online catalogue.
Labels: acoustic, fender, guitar, stratocaster, telecaster
