Fender Telecaster, the solid-body electric guitar

In 1950 Leo Fender, a radio repairman in Fullerton, California, began selling the first commercially produced solid-body electric guitar. It was first called the Esquire, then the Broadcaster, and renamed the Telecaster in 1951. It had a flat slab of ash for a body, a bolt-on maple neck and two pickups, and it was cheap to make and easy to repair. Fender, who never learned to play the guitar himself, built it for working musicians who needed an instrument that was loud and rugged.¹

Guitars had struggled to be heard in loud dance bands, and from the 1930s makers used pickups, which turn string vibrations into an electrical signal, and vacuum tube amplifiers to make them louder. Jazz players such as Charlie Christian used amplified hollow guitars in the late 1930s, but hollow bodies howled with feedback at high volume and were slow to craft. A solid body avoided both problems, and Fender's factory methods turned out guitars with interchangeable parts. Gibson introduced the Les Paul in 1952 and Fender's Stratocaster arrived in 1954. The Telecaster's bright tone became a staple for country players such as James Burton and for rock guitarists such as Keith Richards, and its design has changed little in seventy years.¹