My wife made a mistake. For my birthday in February, she bought
me a calendar from the Fender Custom Shop. I hung it on the wall
directly behind my desk, right in my range of vision, and I have
been gazing longingly ever since at beautiful guitars. My longing
stayed within reason until I turned the page to April, and saw the
Engraved Thinline Telecaster in flame maple. The clumsy copy below
the calendar proper says “both nice to look at and a dream to
play.”
“A dream to play” has been ringing in my head ever since, the
way a phrase from ad copy will do. And two weeks ago, I drove to
the nearest Guitar Center and sat down and started playing electric
guitars for the first time in 30 years.
Beautiful Telecaster notwithstanding, I played only
Stratocasters on that first visit. I have always been a Strat man.
Here is a picture of a very nice one, from the current Fender
website.
MY PARENTS BOUGHT ME MY FIRST STRATOCASTER when I was in junior
high school, in about 1961. Those of you who know the marque will
share my chagrin that I do not still have that model, now known as
a “vintage” Stratocaster, and much desired. It had belonged to a
country western musician, whose big belt buckles had torn up the
sunburst finish on the back. I got a Fender Concert Amp with it,
and instantly became a popular guy with the two other serious
guitar players in my school, Roger Johnson and Bob Cohen. They used
to invite me to play with them, mainly so they could use my amp,
which was bigger and better than the ones they had.
We once played “Rebel Rouser” for a solid half hour in one of
the boys’ bathrooms in our school.
The credit for inventing the solid body electric guitar gets
claimed by both Les Paul and Leo Fender. Whoever did it, it
happened in the late 1940s or early 1950s. The idea was simple, as
Fender told me in an interview I did with him in 1970: “I think if
you put the headstock of the guitar in your ear and you pluck the
string, why, that’s the prettiest sound you can hear. It’s the pure
sound of the string.”
In fact, a solid body improved the electric guitar a
hundredfold, making it a totally different instrument from the
former hollow body guitar with pickups which had been used in jazz,
pop, and country music. Hollow bodies can add resonance. They can
also limit how loud a guitar can be played, by introducing feedback
and overtones.
Solid body electric guitar design settled into a certain form
where it has stayed ever since: Two pickups (generally), one near
the fingerboard for a mellow sound, one near the bridge for a
twangier sound; a switch to select one pickup or the other (or
both); a volume and a tone knob.
REMARKABLY, THE FOUR MAIN ELECTRIC GUITARS in use by about 1956
have stayed, in outer appearance and fundamental design, exactly
the same. These are the Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, and the
Gibson Les Paul and ES-335. The Stratocaster achieved its
preeminence in part because of a design feature — three pickups
instead of two — and in part because of an accident: players
discovered that you could get the selector switch to stick between
the click settings for the forward and middle, and the middle and
bridge, pickups, creating a different sound, with the two engaged
pickups being out-of-phase. A five-position pickup switch is now
standard.
And one more thing: The Strat’s volume knob lies very close to
the right hand, when you’re playing, so you can curl your right
little finger around it and roll it on after plucking a string,
getting a steel or Hawaiian guitar effect.
Fender types and Gibson types constitute two branches of the
same tribe — though big-time guitarists play both. There is
certainly a difference in sound, the Gibson offering a bigger,
broader tone, more violin-like, and Fender distinguished by its
percussiveness. In addition, Gibsons are short-scale guitars, 24
7/8 inches between nut and bridge (string length, in other words).
Fenders, long-scale guitars, measure 25 1/4 inches. Plus — another
difference in the amplified sound characteristics — Fenders have
single coil pickups, Gibson, double-coil.
A REVOLUTION TOOK PLACE in Fender and Gibson guitar manufacture at
about the same time, in the mid-1960s — an unfortunate one. Leo
Fender sold his company to CBS, and Gibson was sold to Norlin.
Manufacturing standards slid palpably downhill. Everybody who was
anybody would play only old, or “vintage” Fenders and Gibsons. Many
players still insist on old instruments, and will pay the thousands
of dollars such instruments command. Entire dealerships have sprung
up to deal in such classic electric guitars.
Thankfully, both Fender and Gibson have since been taken over by
more dedicated and interested instrument manufacturers, and quality
today is very, very good in both lines. Fender guitars are made in
Mexico, Japan, and the U.S., and are labeled by point of
origin.
To my ears and my fingers, the new Fender guitars sound and feel
very good. I’ve spent a several long sessions so far playing both
the model called “the 60s Strat,” made in Japan, and “the American
Strat,” made in the U.S.
When or if it comes time to buy, however, I will retire from the
noisy main showroom of Guitar Center (or whatever other retailer),
and ask for a practice room to myself, where I can lay an ear
against the guitar’s body — my version Leo Fender’s “stick the
headstock in your ear” — and listen to the pure sound of the
string. I’ve owned a number of these guitars. Inevitably, the
best-sounding ones have the solidest joint between body and neck,
and the clearest, singingest sound of the unamplified string.
Find that, plug it in, and you just get a bonus.
