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In todays vintage guitar collections the vintage Fender Telecaster happens to be one of the most sought after vintage guitars. Reason being that it was the first major solid bodied electric guitar to be produced. Sure there were a lot of prototypes of the electric guitar since the 20′s, but the Fender Telecaster was the one that set the standard in solid bodied electric guitars.

Over 17 years of trial and error Leo Fender would put together the guitar better know as the “Tele”. The first real “prototype” of the Telecaster was the Esquire. 1950 was its big debut and 1950 was its death. Due to manufacturing problems only around 50 guitars even made it off the self, just to be called back. Leo, however, analyzed his mistakes and pushed forward.

He updated the guitars features and re-released it later that year and renamed it the Fender Broadcaster. Once again luck would not be on Leo’s side and the Gretsch Company would complain Leo violating their copy righted “Broadkaster” line of drums.

Leo once again not set back by this failures renamed his guitar the Fender Telecaster. Some people often ask, why the “Telecaster” or the “Tele”, thats an easy question. He named his guitar after the newly popular medium the television. Just like what it was named after the guitar was wildly popular and effected the music industry forever. Leo had altered music history.

With the release of the Telecaster the new players not only like the sound, but liked the way that the guitar was put together. It was rather simple to fix. The components were not individually constructed like most guitars at the time, but were mass manufactured. You would think with such a strategy that the performance of the guitar would suffer, but it did not. The Telecaster was sawed and routed from slabs, not hand-carved, necks were bolted and not glued, and the fretboards was a single piece with the neck not separate. Just a few examples of many neat features…

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