The Fender Telecaster started out in 1943 as a pickup testing bench so that Leo Fender could test pickups he was manufacturing for the acoustic guitars of day.

Country music was popular at the time and Leo Fender’s customers would ask to borrow the “test bench” proto-Telecaster because they liked its unique bright clear sound. What would soon become the Fender Telecaster, or Tele, was the first American solid body electric guitar.

While the contour of the Tele’s body borrowed ergonomics from acoustic guitars, the front and back are completely flat. The Telecaster also has a fixed bridge, though some models can be seen with Bigsby tremelos as in the pic above.

The Telecaster is known for its ability to produce both bright, rich, cutting tone or mellow, warm, bluesy tone depending on the selected pickup, respectively “bridge” pickup or “neck” pickup.

At the same time, a capacitor is fitted between the slider of the volume control and the output, allowing treble sounds to bleed through while the mid and lower ranges are damped.

A semi-hollow thinline version called the Thinline appeared in 1968/69, designed by German guitar maker Roger Rossmeisl.

The market generally refers to the guitar as the “1972 Custom”, indicating the year this model was originally released.

The Telecaster Plus was designed to restore Fender’s reputation after a group of employees led by William C. Schultz took over ownership from CBS in the early 1980s.

Later models (post 1994 or so) used three Gold Lace Sensors or a Red/Silver/Blue set in a Strat-like configuration, as well as low-friction roller nuts, locking synchronized vibrato bridge and tuners and a bound contoured alder body with ash veneers.

The Fender Tele Jr. is a variant of the Fender Telecaster electric guitar, produced in a limited run of 100 units by the Fender Custom Shop in the early 1990s. While its body shape and scale length are those of the Telecaster, many of its construction and electronic features, for example its set-in neck are more similar to those of a Gibson Les Paul electric guitar.

Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine uses a stock 80′s Telecaster to create some of the unusual sounds that he is famous for.

It is a black stock 1982 Standard Telecaster, his main guitar for use in drop-D in Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and Street sweeper social club. He got this guitar in a trade with his roommate.

Even though the Telecaster is more than half a century old, and more sophisticated designs have been coming out since the early 1950s (including Fender’s own Stratocaster), the Telecaster has remained in constant production. There have been numerous variations and modifications, but a model with something close to the original features has always been available.

Fender currently offers forty different models of the Telecaster.

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