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FENDER ELECTRIC GUITARSWhat more can be said in praise of Fender electric guitars that hasn’t already been said over the half century since their introduction?Where would you begin? The signature brilliance of their sound? The all-pervading coolness implicit in their look? Their status as an American design classic and model of elegant ergonomic simplicity? The versatility that makes the same guitar feel right at home in the green hands of a beginner or the sure grip of the world’s most acclaimed artists? Or the innate rightness that has allowed them to flourish basically unchanged for well more than 50 years?One thing is for sure: Had Clarence “Leo†Fender done nothing else—had he not changed popular music by inventing the world’s first commercially successful electric bass guitar or affixed his name to any among a stable of legendary guitar amplifiers—his place in musical and cultural history would be comfortably assured with either of his two famous electric guitars, the Telecaster® (1951; along with its single-pickup version, the Esquire®) and the Stratocaster® (1954).Leo Fender could’ve easily stopped to rest on the six-string laurels of one or both instruments, but that wasn’t how he worked. His watch atop the company bearing his name went on to produce still other electric guitars with a sky-high coolness factor, most notably the Jazzmaster® (1958) the Jaguar® (1962) and the Mustang® (1964).The music made on these guitars evokes so many names that’s it’s impossible to begin to list them all. Any short list would certainly include rock royalty who delivered sounds from them that Fender’s founding fathers never dreamed of—Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, Vaughan, Gilmour; to say nothing of Keith Richards, Rory Gallagher, the Edge, Robin Trower, Roy Buchanan, Merle Haggard, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Bob Dylan, Prince, Mark Knopfler, Eric Johnson, George Harrison, Andy Summers, Vince Gill, Yngwie Malmsteen, Chrissie Hynde, Buddy Guy, Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Springsteen and so many others.And those are just the famous ones. The same Fender guitars all those stars play are the same Fender guitars found in garages, basements, bedrooms, nightclubs, schools, churches and pretty much everywhere else all over the world; the ones played all over the world.Fender electric guitars know no musical boundaries, used as they are (and always have been) to fuel boundless creativity in those who play them regardless of genre. Fender electric guitars have proven their immense worth over time across the musical spectrum, whether it be on a classic rock song, a blues song, a metal song, a punk song, an indie pop song, a country song, an R&B song, a funk song, a jazz song, an Americana song, a Latin song, and just about any other genre conceivable.Fender has racked up successes over the decades with other electric guitar models, but it’s the big four—the Telecaster, the Stratocaster, the Jazzmaster and the Jaguar—that continue to embody the great sonic and cultural legacy of Fender electric guitars. The Telecaster and Stratocaster in particular are poised to continue leading the electric guitar’s way into the future, just as they always have. Fender guitars looked, felt and sounded great in the post-war late 1940s; their 21st century descendants look, sound and feel better than ever in the digital-age 2000s, for student and star alike.
