WEBVTT - TechStuff Shreds on Fender Guitars 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.640 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:16.479 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:20.000 how Stuff Works in love all Things tech, and several 0:00:20.040 --> 0:00:23.240 months ago, I did a few episodes about the history 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:27.440 of Gibson guitars, which had to file for Chapter eleven 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:31.200 bankruptcy protection not too long ago, and tech Stuff listener 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:34.320 Greg asked if I could do a similar treatment for 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.919 another famous guitar company, Fender, And so today we're going 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:41.320 to look at the history of Fender guitars and what 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:47.000 differentiates Fenders from Gibson guitars. Specifically, we're gonna look at 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:51.199 the difference between the classic Guitar Showdown, and there are 0:00:51.200 --> 0:00:53.159 a lot of different guitars that Gibson has made. There 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:55.120 are a lot of different guitars that Fender has made. 0:00:55.760 --> 0:00:59.400 But generally speaking, when you were talking about Fender versus Gibson, 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:05.600 most to people, I think mean stratocaster from Fender versus 0:01:05.600 --> 0:01:09.400 the less Paul from Gibson. So what the heck makes 0:01:09.480 --> 0:01:12.000 us so different? I'm going to tell you, but not 0:01:12.120 --> 0:01:14.679 right now, because you know how I do. I started 0:01:14.680 --> 0:01:18.760 off with history, So let's talk about the history of Fender. 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:25.640 So the founder of Fender was Clarence Leonidas Leo Fender. 0:01:25.680 --> 0:01:29.160 He was born on August tenth, nineteen o nine, which 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:32.560 was a little bit more than a decade after Orville 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:36.319 Gibson had produced his first musical instrument, which, as I recall, 0:01:36.440 --> 0:01:39.480 was a mandolin. And it was also seven years after 0:01:39.640 --> 0:01:45.120 Kalamazoo businessman form the Gibson Mandolin Guitar manufacturing company back 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:48.160 in nineteen o two. So by the time Fender was born, 0:01:48.840 --> 0:01:51.400 Gibson was already on its way to becoming a thing, 0:01:51.440 --> 0:01:56.480 although obviously the the era of the electric guitar battles 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.760 was decades away. Uh. Also, Leo was never a musician, 0:02:01.040 --> 0:02:04.120 or at least not a guitarist or a luthier. Uh 0:02:04.280 --> 0:02:08.519 from by trade. Like, he didn't come from a musical 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:13.920 instrument making background. He kind of fell into that. His parents, 0:02:14.160 --> 0:02:17.600 Monty and Harriet, owned an orange grove in a ranch 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:22.240 in California, and he went to school in Fullerton, California. Fullerton, 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:25.560 by the way, is not too far away from Anaheim. 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.600 It's southeast of Los Angeles. When he was eight years old, 0:02:30.280 --> 0:02:34.400 Leo lost his left eye. He got a glass eyes 0:02:34.440 --> 0:02:38.720 a replacement. One biography I read said that he lost 0:02:38.760 --> 0:02:41.920 his eye do to an injury that he suffered in childhood. 0:02:42.240 --> 0:02:44.880 Another one said that he had actually developed a tumor 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:49.000 behind that. I uh, I don't know which was the 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.960 actual cause, but I do mention it because him losing 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:56.440 an eye actually plays an important part in his story, 0:02:56.480 --> 0:03:01.000 beyond just coping with you know this this change, uh 0:03:01.040 --> 0:03:04.600 it actually is. You could argue the fact that he 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:06.760 lost an eye when he was a kid might have 0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:09.440 been what made it possible for him to get into 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:14.359 making electric guitars. He also attended Junior College in Fullerton. 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:17.359 He majored in accounting, and in fact, he had no 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.480 formal training and electrical engineering at all, but he did 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:23.839 have a very keen interest in the subject, and much 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.960 of that interest actually came from working with his uncle, 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:31.760 whose name is John West or was John West West 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.200 was an auto mechanic, and he also had built his 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:39.080 own radio, and he was interested in ham radio. So 0:03:39.200 --> 0:03:42.720 Fender became fascinated with radios and began to learn how 0:03:42.760 --> 0:03:45.800 they work, and how do you build a simple radio, 0:03:45.840 --> 0:03:49.080 how are more complex radios built, how do you repair them? 0:03:49.320 --> 0:03:52.000 And He got so good at putting radios together or 0:03:52.080 --> 0:03:55.080 figuring out how to fix a broken radio that he 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.800 ended up opening out a small business in his home 0:03:58.800 --> 0:04:00.760 while he was still in high school. He had a 0:04:00.800 --> 0:04:03.240 little home shop he would work in and just kind 0:04:03.280 --> 0:04:07.760 of take commissions from locals to build or fix radios. 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.000 He took piano lessons as a kid, uh, and later 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.200 he switched to the saxophone briefly, but music really wasn't 0:04:15.280 --> 0:04:19.120 his passion, at least not not producing it himself, so 0:04:19.160 --> 0:04:21.560 he never learned to play guitar, and legend hasn't that 0:04:21.600 --> 0:04:24.040 he didn't even really know how to tune a guitar properly. 0:04:24.839 --> 0:04:28.960 When he graduated in nineteen thirty the country was in 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.560 pretty bad shape. The Great Depression had begun the previous year, 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.400 and so it was a tough time for people to 0:04:37.480 --> 0:04:41.680 get work and to keep work. Fender originally found work 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.720 with a company called the Consolidated Ice and Cold Storage 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:48.839 Company in Anaheim, California, which sounds like a pretty cool gig. 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.440 That's a pun. In nineteen thirty four, he married a 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:56.279 woman named Esther class Key. They would stay together until 0:04:56.480 --> 0:05:01.360 she passed away. Uh. He also switched jobs to work 0:05:01.520 --> 0:05:06.719 for the California Highway Department in California, obviously, but government 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:10.400 budgets would lead to layoffs and his job was one 0:05:10.440 --> 0:05:12.200 of the ones affected. He was one of the people 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:16.200 who was let go during that that era. So he 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.120 went around looked for another job, and he got one 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:23.200 as an accountant for a tire company, but that job 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:25.840 only lasted six months before the tire company also had 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:29.920 to layoff employees, including Fenders. So while that was going on, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.320 he was still pursuing his interest with electronics. You know, 0:05:33.360 --> 0:05:36.320 it wasn't working in that field, but we're still interested 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:40.280 in it. A local band leader in Fullerton had asked 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:42.680 Fender to build out a p A system, a public 0:05:42.760 --> 0:05:45.760 address system, so that it could be used for dances. 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:49.360 And these were dances that were taking place in clubs 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.280 and dance halls in Hollywood. So Fender took the job 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.359 and he built out the p A system, and the 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:58.680 guy was impressed and it ended up leading to some 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.200 other commission work. And once he lost his position at 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:04.200 the tire company, when he was no longer able to 0:06:04.200 --> 0:06:06.960 be there accountant, he decided he was going to take 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:09.160 a risk and go into business for himself. I mean 0:06:09.200 --> 0:06:12.360 after all, he had gone through three different jobs over 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:14.919 the past few years and felt that maybe it was 0:06:14.960 --> 0:06:18.239 time for him to try and do this on his own. Also, 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:20.919 by this time it was nineteen thirty nine. It was 0:06:20.920 --> 0:06:24.520 almost a decade after he had graduated, and nine nine 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:27.680 is sort of the end of the Great Depression. The 0:06:27.720 --> 0:06:30.880 Great Depression, the major downturn was in the first few years, 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:34.440 like twenty nine to thirty three, and then thirty nine 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:37.120 was towards the very end of the recovery period where 0:06:37.160 --> 0:06:39.600 the economy was finally getting to the point of pre 0:06:39.680 --> 0:06:43.000 depression levels. So Fender took out a loan for six 0:06:43.080 --> 0:06:46.640 hundred dollars and he set up a company, a little 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:50.400 store called the Fender Radio Service. It was a repair 0:06:50.440 --> 0:06:54.400 shop in Fullerton, California. He specialized in repairing small electronic 0:06:54.440 --> 0:06:59.279 products like radios, amplifiers, public address systems, but also like 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:03.000 phonograph some other stuff like that. He began to carry 0:07:03.040 --> 0:07:06.320 records after a while, as in vinyl albums, because he 0:07:06.360 --> 0:07:08.480 saw that there was a market for it and there 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:11.960 weren't really any record shops in Fullerton, so he said, well, 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.760 you know, I sell this equipment. I offered to repair 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:18.800 this equipment I should sell the media as well, so 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:21.800 he did, and that started bringing more customers in, and 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.640 then he began to carry other types of products like 0:07:24.680 --> 0:07:28.560 phonographs and and actually sell a lot more radios. Originally 0:07:28.800 --> 0:07:31.080 he was just repairing them, and over time he built 0:07:31.080 --> 0:07:34.560 out public address systems and offered them for rental or 0:07:34.600 --> 0:07:37.400 for sale. There were still a lot of local dances 0:07:37.480 --> 0:07:40.360 and banned performances going on in the area, and so 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.360 that ended up being kind of a regular source of 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:47.560 income for him. Then he began to build amplifiers, and 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:51.160 again he had received no formal schooling in any of this. 0:07:51.600 --> 0:07:54.120 He was learning by doing. He was learning by tinkering 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:58.360 in his shop, putting things together, seeing if they worked, 0:07:58.480 --> 0:08:01.800 adjusting them. It was very interesting to see that this 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:06.200 guy was largely self taught, so he had developed his 0:08:06.240 --> 0:08:09.920 expertise through experience and through studying what other people had 0:08:09.920 --> 0:08:13.280 built and figuring out how it worked. At this point, 0:08:13.280 --> 0:08:16.640 America was entering World War Two, in fact that it 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:19.120 did so after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that happened 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:24.920 in December. Fender, however, was ineligible to be conscripted for 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.360 military service because he had lost an eye. He had 0:08:29.360 --> 0:08:32.120 a glass eye, and it was in this period when 0:08:32.160 --> 0:08:35.480 he would first start working with developing electric guitars. So 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:41.520 you could argue that it's possible Fender was able to 0:08:42.320 --> 0:08:46.720 pursue his interest in electronics and to start fiddling around 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:50.520 with working on electric guitars because he had lost his 0:08:50.600 --> 0:08:53.080 eye as a kid, and if he hadn't, he would 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:55.920 have been conscripted for the United States military and sent 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.440 to fight in World War Two, and who knows what 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:00.719 would have happened. Then maybe he would have come out 0:09:00.720 --> 0:09:03.000 of it fine, but he might not have taken on 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.040 a job that would have involved electronics after coming back 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:08.640 from the war, So it's an interesting thing to think about. 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.760 In the early nineteen forties, Finder began to work with 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:14.280 one of his regular customers, who is a guy who 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:17.760 also owned a radio repair shop. That guy was Clayton 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:23.000 Doc Kaufman. Kaufman had brought an amplifier for Finder to 0:09:23.080 --> 0:09:25.440 fix at one point, and the two struck up a friendship. 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.959 Doc Kaufman had already made some important contributions to music himself. 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.600 In ninety eight, he applied for a patent. That patent 0:09:33.640 --> 0:09:38.319 has the title Apparatus for producing Tremolo Effects or tremolo 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:43.040 effects if you prefer tremolo is a wavering effecting whoo 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:47.120 boo in a musical tone. And so this was a 0:09:47.120 --> 0:09:51.080 patent for a type of tremolo bar sometimes called a 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:55.280 whammy bar. More appropriately we should call it a vibrato bridge. 0:09:55.960 --> 0:09:58.840 That's the lever that some electric guitars and some other 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:02.720 instruments have that that the purpose of that lever is 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:07.880 to introduce this wavering effect. And Kaufman designed a movable 0:10:07.920 --> 0:10:11.440 tail piece that would increase or decrease the tension on 0:10:11.480 --> 0:10:15.800 a string. So when you'd string this musical instrument, and 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.839 it would go through to the bridge at the base 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:23.480 of the musical instrument, this bar had a little spring 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:27.480 loaded system connected to that bridge where if you press 0:10:27.559 --> 0:10:31.600 down on the bar, it would increase tension on the strings, 0:10:32.040 --> 0:10:35.800 which would increase the pitch of the string. When it 0:10:35.880 --> 0:10:40.360 was vibrating, it would actually vibrate at a faster frequency. 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:43.560 If you pulled up on the lever, it would reduce 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.400 the amount of tension on the string and it would 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:49.440 vibrate more slowly and thus decrease the pitch of the 0:10:49.559 --> 0:10:54.760 vibrating string. Uh So, moving the lever either closer to 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:56.760 or further from the face of the instrument. You can 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:59.480 slightly change the tension of the string without having to 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.760 change the tuning, and that's where you get that wavering sound. 0:11:03.400 --> 0:11:07.440 And um, this is where I need to make that 0:11:07.480 --> 0:11:12.360 pedantic clarification. Technically speaking, you create a tremolo effect by 0:11:12.440 --> 0:11:16.040 changing the amplitude of a sound, by changing the volume 0:11:16.200 --> 0:11:18.120 of a sound, by moving the volume up and down 0:11:18.760 --> 0:11:21.400 over time, mike, so kind of like turning up and 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:25.720 turning down the volume rapidly as a note plays. That's 0:11:25.720 --> 0:11:31.360 technically tremolo. Vibrato is changed by uh, is that wavering 0:11:31.360 --> 0:11:34.360 effect by changing the pitch slightly of a sound, so 0:11:34.400 --> 0:11:39.640 the frequency, not the amplitude. And that's what these these 0:11:39.679 --> 0:11:43.920 apparatus would do. They change the pitch of the of 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.480 the string, and so they were That's why we should 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:50.360 call him vibrato, not tremolo. But everyone calls him tremolo 0:11:50.559 --> 0:11:53.480 or wammy bars, so it doesn't really matter. I guess 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.920 it ultimately matters what people use as the term, but 0:11:58.000 --> 0:12:02.640 technically speaking, it's not correct. Kaufman had also worked with 0:12:02.679 --> 0:12:06.479 the company Rickenbacker, which was the company that had pioneered 0:12:06.480 --> 0:12:09.920 electric guitars, though these were meant to be lap steel 0:12:10.040 --> 0:12:13.040 electric guitars. Uh. And they were hollow body guitars. They 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.440 weren't solid body guitars, so they weren't the Spanish style 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:18.840 guitars we typically think of. Those are the ones that 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:21.600 you know, you would typically have a shoulder strap on 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:25.680 them and you play it standing up. Uh. The lap 0:12:25.720 --> 0:12:28.200 steel guitars, obviously, as the name suggests, those you would 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:30.000 play you would sit down. You would have the guitar 0:12:30.080 --> 0:12:31.640 sitting on your lab and you play it as a 0:12:31.640 --> 0:12:35.440 steel guitar. Kaufman and Fender worked together to design a 0:12:35.440 --> 0:12:38.240 phonograph record changer, and they were able to sell that 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:43.920 design for the Burnsley some of five thousand dollars, and 0:12:43.960 --> 0:12:46.240 with that they decided to go into business together and 0:12:46.280 --> 0:12:50.359 started a new company. They called it K and F Manufacturing. 0:12:50.880 --> 0:12:53.720 Fender continued to operate his radio repair shop at the 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.720 same time, and then the moment of truth. At some point, 0:12:57.840 --> 0:13:00.880 Kaufman and Fender began to discuss the systems that made 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.680 electric guitars work, and the too decide they were going 0:13:03.720 --> 0:13:07.280 to give it a shot. What happened next, I'll tell 0:13:07.320 --> 0:13:10.560 you right after we take this quick break to thank 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:20.960 our sponsor Now, the part of an electric guitar that 0:13:21.160 --> 0:13:25.800 makes it electric ultimately is the pickup. There's some other 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:30.560 circuitry that's also technically connected to pickups for most electric guitars, 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.040 but the pickup is really the element at play. And 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:37.640 I talked a bit about these quite a bit actually 0:13:37.640 --> 0:13:39.640 in the Gibson episodes, but I'm gonna go over it 0:13:39.679 --> 0:13:43.760 again here because it is in fact the important element 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:49.520 of any electric uh stringed instrument. And besides, fenders, pickups 0:13:49.720 --> 0:13:53.600 are different from the pickups that Gibson used. Now, the 0:13:53.640 --> 0:13:56.720 pickup is the part of an electric guitar that creates 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:00.080 the electric signal that can ultimately be sent out to 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:03.280 an amplifier and then on two speakers. And there are 0:14:03.320 --> 0:14:08.480 two prevailing theories about what is going on with pickups, 0:14:08.760 --> 0:14:12.160 and they're very similar, but there is a slight distinction 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:17.840 between the two. Both of the theories say that basically 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.480 the electric guitar pickups work because of electromagnetism. That is 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.640 absolutely the case. It has to be. The pickup has 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:27.880 one or more permanent magnets with a coil of copper 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:30.920 wire wrapped around the magnets on a frame that we 0:14:30.960 --> 0:14:33.800 call the bobbin. The purpose of the bobbin is to 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:36.480 keep the coil stationary with respect to the body of 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:39.520 the guitar, and a typical bobbin, if you're looking at 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:44.760 your average electric guitar, has a base plate that attaches 0:14:44.800 --> 0:14:47.840 to the guitar body by some way, typically by screws. 0:14:48.200 --> 0:14:50.960 You have a little plate that screws into the face 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:54.040 of the guitar and that sits as the base that 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.120 then holds the magnets in place. And then you have 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.880 a top plate that fits on top of those magnets, 0:15:00.920 --> 0:15:03.640 and then this acts as the frame around which you 0:15:03.680 --> 0:15:07.600 can wind the copper coil. Some pickups, like the ones 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.120 Fender would use in the Strato caster, have an individual 0:15:11.320 --> 0:15:15.640 cylindrical magnet under each of the six strings, so each 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:19.560 string has its own little cylinder underneath it that is 0:15:19.680 --> 0:15:23.040 a magnet um. They look like little poles when you 0:15:23.080 --> 0:15:25.480 take them out of the pickup. Other pickups might have 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.440 a bar magnet. The Gibson P ninety pickup has is 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:32.320 a bar magnet pickup. Rick and Bocker had horseshoe magnets 0:15:32.320 --> 0:15:35.400 for some of their pickups, but we often see these 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:39.560 individual cylindrical magnets in most electric guitar pickups, I would 0:15:39.560 --> 0:15:42.760 say at least the ones that Fender made. Anyway, electric 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.280 guitars have metal strings as well, and those strings are 0:15:46.320 --> 0:15:49.840 made out of nickel and steel. Those are feral magnetic materials. 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.280 That means those metals are attracted to magnets. If you 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:57.800 stick a magnet to a guitar string, you'll feel that 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.240 there's that connection, right, that they're attracted to each other. 0:16:01.640 --> 0:16:06.160 The prevailing explanation about how pickups work says that strumming 0:16:06.160 --> 0:16:10.080 a string causes it to disrupt the magnetic field around 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.920 the pickup, and that in turn induces current to flow 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:17.560 through the coil technically and induces a difference in voltage, 0:16:17.560 --> 0:16:20.480 which then causes current to flow through the coil. That 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.200 current can be sent out to an amplifier and then 0:16:23.200 --> 0:16:26.640 boosted to go to speakers which play this back. They 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:32.640 convert that electric signal back into an analog physical uh sound, right, 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:36.240 the the speakers convert that electric signal into physical movement. 0:16:36.720 --> 0:16:40.720 That then we can hear that physical movement being the 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.680 movement of the drivers inside the speaker. But then there's 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:48.960 a secondary explanation. It gets a little more precise, and 0:16:49.000 --> 0:16:51.760 this is one that's put forth by organizations like the 0:16:51.840 --> 0:16:55.800 National High Magnetic Field Laboratory. It goes a little further. 0:16:56.280 --> 0:17:02.000 That theory states the strings themselves become magnetized because they're 0:17:02.040 --> 0:17:04.680 so close to a permanent magnet and they are ferro 0:17:04.720 --> 0:17:08.880 magnetic material. So maybe you've done the little experiment where 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.360 you take something like a needle and um, it's made 0:17:12.359 --> 0:17:15.040 of a ferro magnetic material, and you rub the needle 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:18.560 several times against a permanent magnet, and then you move 0:17:18.600 --> 0:17:21.800 the needle over some other ferro magnetic material, maybe other 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.080 needles or pins, and it picks them up. It's kind 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:29.520 of like that. So according to this explanation, when you 0:17:29.560 --> 0:17:33.280 strum a string, you're really moving a magnet quickly near 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.439 a coil of conductive wire, which is the basis of 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:40.680 electric motors and dynamos. Right like you you have conductive 0:17:40.680 --> 0:17:43.080 wire and a permanent magnet, and when you move the 0:17:43.160 --> 0:17:46.040 two in relation to each other, it's the same as 0:17:46.040 --> 0:17:49.919 having a fluctuating magnetic field near a conductive wire, and 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.119 that again induces that change in voltage and current to flow. 0:17:53.480 --> 0:17:57.360 Whether you subscribe to the first explanation or you say no, no, no, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:17:59.760 this second one is much more correct. Because of that 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:05.479 magnetic strings explanation, the result is the same. The result 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:10.000 is that strumming a string causes this electrical signal to 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:13.280 pass through the pickup and then move on ultimately through 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.560 the output jack on an electric instrument. Now, I'll talk 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:19.960 more about pickups and how they play a part with 0:18:20.000 --> 0:18:23.199 harmonics later on in these episodes, because that's a very 0:18:23.240 --> 0:18:26.600 important element in what differentiates a stratocaster from say a 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.920 less Paul Gibson guitar. I was during that first year 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.920 of K and F manufacturing when the two founders produced 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:40.560 their first electric guitar. Typically it's referred to as the 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.160 Radio Shop guitar. It was a prototype is just meant 0:18:44.200 --> 0:18:47.040 to prove be a proof of concept to make sure 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:49.840 that they could do this. They were working with a 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:52.480 very different pickup design. This one was one in which 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.080 the guitar strings would actually pass through the magnetic coil. 0:18:56.720 --> 0:18:58.760 And this was very hard for me to visualize, but 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:03.920 fortunately there are are uh pictures. There's there's illustrations from 0:19:03.960 --> 0:19:06.760 the patent application for this thing. So I pulled those 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:08.960 to take a look at them, and one of those 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:11.840 illustrations shows that the guitar has a kind of a 0:19:12.400 --> 0:19:16.679 raised frame that is is attached to the face of 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:18.480 the guitar. Think of it's like a it's almost like 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.119 a little raised box that's on the face of the guitar, 0:19:22.160 --> 0:19:24.639 and the strings can pass under the top of that 0:19:24.720 --> 0:19:26.919 box and out the other side. Because the box itself 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:28.679 on the center, it looks kind of like it's hollow. 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:33.439 In reality, that boxes housing the pickup, so the strings 0:19:33.440 --> 0:19:37.400 are just passing through the pickup, not overtop the pickup 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:40.480 as it would in a normal electric guitar. And the 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.080 reason that Fender and Kaufman did this was that they 0:19:44.119 --> 0:19:47.960 said it would produce notes with greater fidelity. You would 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:52.480 have less interference, less less of a kind of crunchy sound. 0:19:52.520 --> 0:19:55.080 You would be able to hear each note much more 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:59.240 clearly and distinctly, so you would get a clear, chiming 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:04.920 kind of note instead of more of, uh, a high 0:20:05.000 --> 0:20:07.480 gain kind of sound. This is also where he gets 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.520 really complicated to try and explain the differences in sound, 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:16.960 because we don't necessarily have very quantitative ways of describing them, 0:20:17.160 --> 0:20:19.159 but they are certainly you can when you hear it, 0:20:19.200 --> 0:20:22.000 you can definitely tell the difference. Well, this radio shop 0:20:22.040 --> 0:20:25.200 guitar was again improof of concept. They did not plan 0:20:25.320 --> 0:20:28.200 to go forward and make more of these and sell them, 0:20:28.640 --> 0:20:31.280 but they would use it as the basis for a 0:20:31.560 --> 0:20:35.560 Hawaiian style lap steel guitar, and they started selling those. 0:20:35.600 --> 0:20:40.520 They also started building and selling vacuum tube amplifiers and 0:20:40.560 --> 0:20:43.840 they did that for three years. But by nine six, 0:20:44.119 --> 0:20:47.000 World War two had come to an end, and Kaufman 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:50.240 was nervous. He thought this fledgling company wouldn't be able 0:20:50.280 --> 0:20:53.280 to survive in a post war environment, and that there 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:55.320 was gonna be way too much competition, and that there 0:20:55.359 --> 0:20:57.879 weren't weren't enough customers to go around, so he was 0:20:57.920 --> 0:21:01.159 afraid he would lose his shirt, so he decided to 0:21:01.200 --> 0:21:04.080 bow out. But he and Fender would remain friends for 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:06.480 the rest of their lives, so there were no hard feelings. 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:09.399 But he needed to He felt like he wasn't really 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:12.560 sure this was the right thing for him. Fender, however, 0:21:12.600 --> 0:21:15.119 would stick with it, and he renamed the company the 0:21:15.240 --> 0:21:19.600 Fender Manufacturing Company. And this tends to be when most 0:21:19.760 --> 0:21:23.720 company histories for Fender guitars say this is the birth, 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.120 the nineteen forty six that's the real beginning for Fender. 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.640 Now there's no official documentation to verify the story I'm 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:34.800 about to say, but the general belief is that the 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:39.200 first guitar to ever have the Fender f logo on it, 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:44.760 which is a famous trademark now, it was a custom 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:49.119 lap steel guitar Fender UH and it was built for 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:54.720 Leo Fender's friend Noel Boggs in nineteen six. Boggs was 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:59.400 a steel guitarist lap lap guitar player. He he took 0:21:59.400 --> 0:22:04.240 inspiration from a jazz guitarist named Charlie Christian. Charlie Christian 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:07.919 actually helped make Gibson guitars famous. He was using a 0:22:08.000 --> 0:22:11.480 Gibson electric guitar and that was a hollow body Gibson 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.280 electric guitar that that Christian was using, and he was 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.399 popularizing this concept of electric guitars. Boggs like the sound 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:24.040 of the Fender guitars, so he started to take the 0:22:24.080 --> 0:22:27.600 sound of the Fender guitars and the technique of Christian 0:22:27.760 --> 0:22:31.199 and incorporate that. And it was interesting, you know. Charlie 0:22:31.240 --> 0:22:35.879 Christian he worked in the jazz genre of music, whereas 0:22:35.920 --> 0:22:39.960 Noel Boggs was more of a country and Western musician. 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:41.879 But he started to take some of those techniques from 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:44.680 jazz music and incorporated into western and that's sort of 0:22:45.040 --> 0:22:50.359 helped really push a genre called Western swing. Boggs was 0:22:50.400 --> 0:22:53.280 not the only person doing this, but he he really 0:22:53.520 --> 0:22:57.680 was one of the pioneers of that genre. It was 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:00.679 around this time when an old friend Offenders named Don 0:23:00.800 --> 0:23:04.240 Randall played a real important part. Randall had once worked 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:08.720 for a radio supply shop called Howard Taylor Wholesale Radio 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.640 and that I had often worked with Fenders Radio repair shop, 0:23:11.880 --> 0:23:15.919 and then in Randall went and bought the store he 0:23:15.960 --> 0:23:19.280 worked for, but he ended up selling off that business 0:23:19.680 --> 0:23:22.919 once he got drafted for World War Two, and in 0:23:22.960 --> 0:23:26.240 World War two he served in the Army UH For 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.399 a while he was part of the Army Corps of Engineers, 0:23:28.440 --> 0:23:30.160 and then later on he was part of the Army 0:23:30.240 --> 0:23:33.960 Air Corps, which would of course later evolve into the 0:23:34.000 --> 0:23:37.520 Air Force. When Randall got out of military service in 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:40.560 nineteen forty six, he got back into the radio business 0:23:40.600 --> 0:23:44.560 as a manager for a shop called Radiotel T E. L. 0:23:45.359 --> 0:23:49.879 And Randall convinced the shop's owner F. C. Hall and 0:23:50.000 --> 0:23:53.960 his friend Leo Fender that they should form a partnership 0:23:54.080 --> 0:23:58.159 that Radio Hotel should become a distributor for the guitars 0:23:58.200 --> 0:24:02.120 and amplifiers that Leo Finn There was building. Randall would 0:24:02.160 --> 0:24:05.080 become a salesman in charge of this account, and much 0:24:05.119 --> 0:24:09.440 of Fender's early success can be traced to Randall's management 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:15.080 of sales and distributions. So Leo was making good products, 0:24:15.560 --> 0:24:18.240 but Randall was the one who was marketing and selling them, 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:22.879