It was another remarkable innovation from Fender: the world’s first commercially-made electric bass guitar. It looked like a long-necked version of the Telecaster, but it had four strings, tuned an octave below the lower four strings of a guitar. When Fender introduced a solidbody electric bass guitar at the end of 1951, no one knew what to make of the strange new hybrid. It was soon renamed Broadcaster and finally, in 1951, became the Telecaster. This 1950 ad was the very first to feature and name the Fender Esquire, Fender’s earliest solidbody electric Spanish guitar in its one-pickup pre-production form. Jimmy Wyble of Spade Cooley’s band plays a rare early Fender Esquire in this 1950 ad (right).
Columbia in the US had issued the very first in 1948.
12 foundation colorguide merle norman scribd tv#
In 1946 the US had seven TV stations by the end of 1950 there are 107.ĭECCA issues the first long-playing (or LP) records in the UK. TELEVISION viewing matches radio listening in New York. The conflict will last until 1953.ĭINERS CLUB card is devised by American salesman Frank McNamara. THE KOREAN WAR starts in June this year, when North Korean troops invade South Korea.
Main guitar: This Fender Broadcaster was made in 1950. However, time would reveal the Fender Broadcaster as one of the most historically significant musical instruments ever made. It was not an auspicious start for the solidbody electric guitar. A salesman trying to sell one in San Francisco was offered in exchange the electric train-set of a potential customer’s son.
Prototypes taken to a music show were laughed at and disparagingly called canoe paddles or snow shovels. It did not prove immediately easy to sell. By November, despite serious cash-flow problems, the guitar had a truss-rod and two pickups, and a new name: the Fender Broadcaster. Production of the instrument began at Fender’s two small steel buildings on Pomona Avenue in Fullerton, Los Angles, during the first half of 1950. It had a slanted pickup mounted into a steel bridge-plate carrying three adjustable bridge-saddles, and the body was finished in a yellowish color known as blond. Everything was geared to easy production. It had a basic, single-cutaway, solid slab of ash for a body, with a screwed-on maple neck. The guitar was originally named the Fender Esquire and then the Fender Broadcaster, and it first went into production in 1950. As we shall see in this book, the design is still very much alive today. Leo Fender’s new solidbody was the instrument that we know now as the Fender Telecaster, effectively the world’s first commercially successful solidbody electric guitar. And in 1948 in Downey, California – just 15 miles or so from Leo Fender’s base – Paul Bigsby made a solidbody through-neck guitar for country artist Merle Travis. Around 1940 in New Jersey guitarist Les Paul built a test-bed electric with a solid central block of pine. Rickenbacker had launched a semi-solid Bakelite-body electric guitar in the mid 1930s. It would be without the annoying feedback often produced by amplified hollowbodies, and allow louder playing. Some musicians and guitar-makers had been wondering about the possibility of a solidbody instrument. Rickenbacker in California was the first with a pickup employing the electro-magnetic principle since used on virtually every electric guitar, and Gibson set the style for the best hollowbody electrics, offering models such as the fine ES-175 of 1949.
But, crucially, his would be the first commercially available.Įlectric guitars had been around since the 1930s, at first mainly steel guitars for playing on the lap, but soon joined by regular hollowbody guitars with crude, early pickups screwed on. Leo Fender was not entirely alone in his desire to create a solidbody electric guitar. One of the first players to embrace the new Fender was ace West Coast sessionman Jimmy Bryant (above), but it wasn’t long before guitarists everywhere would crave Fender electric guitars. This became the Esquire, then the Broadcaster, and then the Telecaster. Origination and print by Regent Publishing Services Limited, Chinaġ0 11 12 13 14 5 4 3 2 1 Table of Contentsįender’s first decade was one of brilliant design, the foundation upon which much of the company’s subsequent success has been built.įender’s electric lap-steel guitars and amplifiers (highlighted in this 1950 catalog, right) enjoyed limited local success, and Leo Fender considered a solidbody electric guitar. For more information you must contact the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission, except by a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review. Volume copyright © 2010 by Outline Press Ltd. SIX DECADES OF THE GREATEST ELECTRIC GUITARSįirst edition (as 50 Years of Fender) 2000ĭevised and produced for Backbeat Books by