Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Here, Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm
Speaker 1: your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works and I love all things tech, and today
Speaker 1: we are continuing our story about Fender, and I spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time in the last episode kind of
Speaker 1: setting the foundation, leading all the way up to the
Speaker 1: first solid body electric guitar that Fender ever released, the Esquire,
Speaker 1: and then I hinted a little bit about the Telecaster,
Speaker 1: the follow up to the Esquire, the first electric guitar
Speaker 1: that Fender made that had two electric pickups, not just one.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk more about the Telecaster and of course
Speaker 1: the Stratocaster, and then I'm going to just be frank
Speaker 1: with you guys. I'm going to be speeding through kind
Speaker 1: of the years after Fender was purchased by a major
Speaker 1: media company up through to today. Uh, because it's kind
Speaker 1: of a sad story in many ways, and also it
Speaker 1: just gets to be one of those things. It's like
Speaker 1: any tech company where I start feeling like all I'm
Speaker 1: doing is listing off all the different variations of the
Speaker 1: product they came out with, So like if I were
Speaker 1: doing the Apple story and then they came out with
Speaker 1: the Apple five like that gets tiring after a while.
Speaker 1: So the same sort of thing holds true here, all right,
Speaker 1: So talked about the Esquire guitar, the single pick up
Speaker 1: electric guitar, and then the double pickup Esquire with a
Speaker 1: trust rod became the Fender Broadcaster, but nine one that
Speaker 1: had to change names and it became the Telecaster. So
Speaker 1: the telecasters two pickups change things quite a bit, which
Speaker 1: in the end means these guitars produce a different sound
Speaker 1: than Esquire guitars do. Now note I did not say
Speaker 1: they produce a better sound. It's different. I think both
Speaker 1: guitars produce really good tones if they're paired with the
Speaker 1: right amplifier and they have a good musician playing them.
Speaker 1: But they are different. So why would you even include
Speaker 1: two pickups instead of just one? Why would you have
Speaker 1: one of those pickups near the bridge, you know, at
Speaker 1: the base of the guitar's face, and another one near
Speaker 1: the neck of the guitar where where the neck joins
Speaker 1: the face of the body of the guitar. How does
Speaker 1: that change the nature of the sound. Well, think of
Speaker 1: how a guitar string is anchored right, So on one
Speaker 1: end of a guitar string, you have the nut, that
Speaker 1: is the end at the end of the neck, right
Speaker 1: where you go where a string goes over the nut
Speaker 1: and then it goes to the tuning pegs or the
Speaker 1: respective tuning peg. On the other side, you have the
Speaker 1: bridge on the body of the guitar, and those are
Speaker 1: the two anchor points. Pickups react to string vibrations, so
Speaker 1: if the pickup is close to an anchor point for
Speaker 1: those strings, those strings are not moving with as much
Speaker 1: variation as they would closer to the middle of the string.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just if you the closer you are
Speaker 1: to an anchor point, the less movement you're going to see. Overall,
Speaker 1: the anchor points become what we call nodes, and the
Speaker 1: points that have the greatest variation in movement, the points
Speaker 1: where the string moves the most, not faster, still moving
Speaker 1: at the same frequency, but it's it's covering more ground.
Speaker 1: You might say those are anti noodes. So again the
Speaker 1: frequency remains the same. Otherwise you would have a string
Speaker 1: that's playing different notes along different links of it. Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll get a little bit more into that with harmonics
Speaker 1: in a second um. But harmonics are really complicated. In fact,
Speaker 1: let's let's do it now, because I've already introduced the concept.
Speaker 1: A vibrating string has harmonics or overtones. So if you
Speaker 1: plug a string, the frequency you'll hear most prominently is
Speaker 1: what we call the fundamental frequency of that string, and
Speaker 1: as determined by factors like the strings eight or its
Speaker 1: mass if you prefer, the tension that the string is under,
Speaker 1: and how long the string is. But there are also
Speaker 1: harmonics present. So for example, if you strum an open string,
Speaker 1: meaning you're not you don't have your fingers under any
Speaker 1: of the threats, You're just strumming an open tuned string.
Speaker 1: The second harmonic is an octave higher than whatever note
Speaker 1: the string is playing. So if you're playing a G
Speaker 1: note on an open G string, then the second harmonic
Speaker 1: is G, but it's the octave higher than what the
Speaker 1: open string is. That harmonic represents the funnel mental frequency
Speaker 1: you would have heard if you held down the G
Speaker 1: string halfway down its length and then played it again,
Speaker 1: you would then have that higher octave G. So we
Speaker 1: perceive all of these harmonics as a single note when
Speaker 1: it's played on a string like this, the higher the harmonic,
Speaker 1: the lower the amplitude is amplitude being volume. So that's
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why we don't perceive this as
Speaker 1: a bunch of different notes all played at once. We
Speaker 1: have a fundamental frequency that's played at twice the amplitude
Speaker 1: of the second harmonic. So those harmonics shape the tone
Speaker 1: or timbre of a note, but they don't uh determine
Speaker 1: the actual frequency. So positioning a pickup near the neck
Speaker 1: of a guitar emphasizes certain harmonics more than others because
Speaker 1: if you look at those harmonics, they all look like
Speaker 1: little sign waves, and the points where the sign waves
Speaker 1: cross over the center part those are your nodes. That's
Speaker 1: where the string is not really moving at those locations.
Speaker 1: And then the peaks and valleys those are the anti
Speaker 1: noodes where the string is moving the most. So by
Speaker 1: positioning your pickup at a different point along the guitar,
Speaker 1: you are putting it underneath certain areas that might be
Speaker 1: nodes for one harmonic or anti noodes for another harmonic.
Speaker 1: That means those harmonics will either be suppressed in the
Speaker 1: case of nodes, or enhanced or at least passed through
Speaker 1: in the case of anti noodes, and this is what
Speaker 1: shapes those sounds. And it means that if you have
Speaker 1: two pickups on your guitar and there are you know,
Speaker 1: two very different locations where you're going to have a
Speaker 1: different sample of harmonics, Switching between those pickups is going
Speaker 1: to produce a very different sound, even if you're playing
Speaker 1: the exact same note, or maybe it's not very different,
Speaker 1: it is different, and again also depends upon the quality
Speaker 1: of the amplifier you've plugged the guitar into. So uh,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things that determine the qualities
Speaker 1: of this sound, and a lot of that has to
Speaker 1: do with build quality. Now, I would love to go
Speaker 1: into a full explanation of harmonics and physics, but frankly
Speaker 1: it's beyond me. I mean, if I'm being honest, I
Speaker 1: can grasp the basic concepts behind harmonics, but I've never
Speaker 1: really taken any classes in acoustics. I haven't really studied
Speaker 1: harmonics in uh in a deep way. I've very kind
Speaker 1: of a cursory way. So it quickly gets away from
Speaker 1: me after that. And and there's some subtleties there that
Speaker 1: are in both in physics and in music theory which
Speaker 1: are very closely related, and I am not an expert
Speaker 1: in either. So rather than bolm my way through there
Speaker 1: and make terrible mistakes along the way and and really
Speaker 1: discourage all the musicians out there, I'm just going to
Speaker 1: admit this is the point where my my knowledge ends.
Speaker 1: I get it up to there. But the important thing
Speaker 1: to remember for electric guitars is that the location of
Speaker 1: the pickup means the magnets will detect certain harmonics more
Speaker 1: than they would others, and that shapes the quality of
Speaker 1: the sound we hear. So we still hear them as
Speaker 1: single notes for each string, but the timbre of that
Speaker 1: note will change based upon which harmonics are coming through
Speaker 1: and which ones are not because of the pickups location. Now,
Speaker 1: your standard telecaster has a three position switch, and if
Speaker 1: you listen to my last episode, you know that the
Speaker 1: Esquire the single pickup. It was a single coil pickup
Speaker 1: and it only had one of them, also had a
Speaker 1: three position switch. But the telecaster is different. The original
Speaker 1: telecaster switch had three positions that did different, very different things.
Speaker 1: The first position would let you choose both the bridge
Speaker 1: pickup and the neck pickup together in parallel to send
Speaker 1: a signal out to the rest of the guitar being
Speaker 1: the volume knob and the tone knob, and then the
Speaker 1: output jack. The second and third position, uh, we're for
Speaker 1: the neck pickup alone. So there was no position that
Speaker 1: would let you play just the bridge pickup. For the
Speaker 1: original telecaster, if you had in position one, it was
Speaker 1: the bridge pickup and the neck pickup. If you had
Speaker 1: in position two or three, it was just the neck pickup.
Speaker 1: Um And the difference between positions two and three for
Speaker 1: the neck pickup had to do with extra capacity. The
Speaker 1: neck pickup had a chrome cover on it, and this
Speaker 1: sapped some of the capacitants from the circuitry, and it
Speaker 1: meant that you lost some bass when you switched to
Speaker 1: the regular position. To going to position three would add
Speaker 1: an extra capacitance, so you get a little more base
Speaker 1: in the sound that you would play, So the actual
Speaker 1: quality of the sound would change. But again there was
Speaker 1: no way to have just the bridge pickup in the
Speaker 1: original nineteen fifty one Fender Telecaster. The nineteen fifty two
Speaker 1: model change this so that you had one bridge pickup
Speaker 1: selection and then two different neck pickup selections, but there
Speaker 1: was no setting that would let you use both pickups together.
Speaker 1: So the only big difference there was that instead of
Speaker 1: having position one the bridge and neck, position one was
Speaker 1: just the bridge. Otherwise it was pretty much the same
Speaker 1: as the original telecaster. The different positions allow some harmons
Speaker 1: to come through to the signal or prevent those harmonics,
Speaker 1: depending upon the specific harmonics in which pickup you're going with,
Speaker 1: and that would change the quality of the sound. Uh.
Speaker 1: You get a very twangy sound typically with a telecaster,
Speaker 1: at least if you're playing it without the volume turned
Speaker 1: all the way up. You know, the more volume you
Speaker 1: crank up on the guitar when you're sending it out
Speaker 1: to the amplifier, the more distortion you're going to get.
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're careful with that volume knob,
Speaker 1: you can get that nice twangy telecaster sound, the very
Speaker 1: very signature sound for the telecaster. The telecaster also had
Speaker 1: knobs for volume and for tone, and the telecaster, by
Speaker 1: the way, sold for one nine dollars and fifty cents
Speaker 1: in nine, so that's like a thousand and eight dollars
Speaker 1: or so in today's money, so again not unheard of
Speaker 1: for Fender electric guitars. By this time, Fender was spending
Speaker 1: his hours Leo Fender, the man was spending his hours
Speaker 1: tinkering and tweaking electronics, which I suspect is what made
Speaker 1: him the most happy about his job, since that's what
Speaker 1: he was doing all the way up till the day
Speaker 1: he died. He handed off management, like day to day
Speaker 1: management of Fender to a guy named George Fullerton in
Speaker 1: Fullerton had been a machinist at Lockeyed Aircraft before he
Speaker 1: joined Fender, and like Leo Fender himself, Fullerton made significant
Speaker 1: contributions that made the telecaster possible. Fender continued to work
Speaker 1: on new designs. He actually worked on a design that
Speaker 1: led to the first electric bass guitar, called the Precision Base.
Speaker 1: Before the introduction of the Precision Base in nineteen fifty one,
Speaker 1: bands were depending upon the upright double bass to provide
Speaker 1: those notes. This is an enormous upright stringed musical instruments, huge,
Speaker 1: very cumbersome and bulky, and like the guitar, it was
Speaker 1: facing the problem of the fact that it did not
Speaker 1: produce as much volume as some of the other instruments
Speaker 1: in these big bands, so it was becoming hard to
Speaker 1: hear it, and it was on the danger of becoming
Speaker 1: obsolete because if you can't hear any notes that are
Speaker 1: being played, why lug this enormous thing around. Bender decided
Speaker 1: to try and do for the double bass what he
Speaker 1: had done for the guitar. The precision bass was the result.
Speaker 1: It's in a guitar form factor. So you know you've
Speaker 1: seen electric bass guitars. They look like regular guitars, except
Speaker 1: they have four strings, not six strings. Your standard guitar
Speaker 1: has six strings. And the precision bass had some other
Speaker 1: elements to it that made it look more like a
Speaker 1: guitar and less like an upright bass. It had frets
Speaker 1: on the neck of the guitar. The double bass doesn't
Speaker 1: have frets, So you still change the notes on a
Speaker 1: double bass by pressing down on a on a string
Speaker 1: at a certain point around the neck, but you didn't
Speaker 1: have frets to guide that or to really cut off
Speaker 1: the notes. This is why he called it a precision bass,
Speaker 1: because the freds made it easy to create precise notes,
Speaker 1: not approximations. That did change the quality of the bass
Speaker 1: notes a musician would produce, and not just because of
Speaker 1: that precision. The electrical nature had a different sound to it,
Speaker 1: but that sound would become one of the most important
Speaker 1: components in modern music across tons of genres from country
Speaker 1: to rock to punk to funk music, and literally contributed
Speaker 1: to changes in music and rhythm, creating opportunities for musicians
Speaker 1: to explore new sounds. The precision base of today has
Speaker 1: a split single coil pickup, so the wiring is split
Speaker 1: in two, so you have the top two strings for
Speaker 1: the base sharing one half of this single coil pickup
Speaker 1: and the bottom two strings sharing the other half, and
Speaker 1: they're offset. The two halves of the coil pickup are
Speaker 1: offset from each other, a coined offender. This creates quote,
Speaker 1: big beefy sound, more tonal versatility, and balanced output across
Speaker 1: each string end quote. Bass strings are of a much
Speaker 1: heavier gauge than regular guitar strings, and I imagine they
Speaker 1: disrupt the magnetic feel to pick up more dramatically than
Speaker 1: the strings of their guitar cousins. So this split pickup
Speaker 1: is probably to help account for that, or to to
Speaker 1: accommodate that. And music was changing around this time, so
Speaker 1: in the thirties and forties, popular music span genres like blues, jazz, gospel,
Speaker 1: big band music, folk music, African American influences in music
Speaker 1: were really growing at this time, and black musicians were
Speaker 1: synthesizing African musical traditions with musical instruments that could trace
Speaker 1: their ancestry back to Europe. This music, which in its
Speaker 1: early days really shaped jazz and swing and blues, uh,
Speaker 1: we're later adopted for, or maybe we should say it
Speaker 1: was appropriated by white musicians. Uh, and they began to
Speaker 1: take those same sort of techniques and apply them to
Speaker 1: music for their audiences. Um. So goes the long history
Speaker 1: of popular music in the United States, and the styles
Speaker 1: were evolving, with new techniques shaping the sound, giving rise
Speaker 1: to newer genres like rhythm and blues and then rock
Speaker 1: and roll. Electric guitars and bass guitars would end up
Speaker 1: playing a pivotal role in those genres, and so while
Speaker 1: Fender Leo Fender was largely focused on accommodating musicians who
Speaker 1: worked in in the genre of Western swing as his
Speaker 1: target audience, he would find out his guitars would soon
Speaker 1: become the foundation for entirely new movements and music. The
Speaker 1: telecaster and some esquires were a part of that, but
Speaker 1: the real game changer would be Fender's next electric guitar,
Speaker 1: the strato Caster, which I'll tell you more about in
Speaker 1: just a second, but first let's take a quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor, not before I get to the
Speaker 1: strat which is what we call the stratocaster. I feel
Speaker 1: like a poser saying that. I guess I am a
Speaker 1: poser saying that, but it gets tiring saying it's stratecaster
Speaker 1: and Telecaster over and over. It was in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when Fender was offering the Telecaster that things
Speaker 1: turned sour with the Radiotel company. That was the company
Speaker 1: that that Fender had been using to distribute his guitars.
Speaker 1: He felt Radiotel was focusing on the lap steel guitars
Speaker 1: at the expense of the Telecaster and the Esquire. You know,
Speaker 1: those were the Spanish style guitars, and Fender was feeling
Speaker 1: like the company wasn't taking him seriously with those models.
Speaker 1: And there was even a point where Fender the company
Speaker 1: was forced to reimburse dealers who had bought Esquire and
Speaker 1: Telecaster guitars, only to discover that those guitars were full
Speaker 1: of termites. Had turned out that Radiotel had stored the
Speaker 1: solid body guitars in a garage and hadn't really taken
Speaker 1: good care of them before shipping them out, so Fender
Speaker 1: was forced to write off about five hundred guitars. Because
Speaker 1: of that, Leo Fender made the decision to end the
Speaker 1: agreement with Radio Hotel, and in nineteen fifty three he
Speaker 1: created a new distribution company called Fender Sales. Donald Randall,
Speaker 1: the salesman who had come from Radio Hotel, would head
Speaker 1: up that distribution company, and other Radio Hotel salespeople and
Speaker 1: executives actually came over as well. So I guess the
Speaker 1: guys that came over must not have been any of
Speaker 1: the ones that had anything to do with that bug situation.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, let's get to the stratocaster. In the
Speaker 1: world of modern music, I would say there are two
Speaker 1: guitars general guitar models that tend to rise to the
Speaker 1: top of the heap when you're talking about the musical
Speaker 1: instruments that defined rock and roll, and they are the
Speaker 1: Gibson Les Paul and the Fender Strato Caster. The two
Speaker 1: guitars are very different, both in circuitry and the sounds
Speaker 1: they produce. And again I'm not going to tell you
Speaker 1: which one is better. I don't believe either one is
Speaker 1: better than the other. They're different and they make very
Speaker 1: different sounds, and I love the music that both of
Speaker 1: them can create. It all to pends upon the effect
Speaker 1: you want. The differences in sound come down to a
Speaker 1: few factors, and they depend on more than just the
Speaker 1: electric pickups, although that is a big part of it.
Speaker 1: So one of those is that the Gibson less Paul
Speaker 1: has special pickups called humbuckers, and I talked about this
Speaker 1: in the Gibson episodes. They're called humbuckers because the design
Speaker 1: of those pickups is meant to eliminate the hum you
Speaker 1: get from electrical interference getting picked up by your electrical
Speaker 1: pickup and your guitar. Because remember, electrical pickups essentially are
Speaker 1: working on the principles of electromagnetism, So if they are
Speaker 1: anywhere close to anything that's generating an electric field or
Speaker 1: a magnetic field, you can start getting this hum interference.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, once you amplify that, that comes
Speaker 1: through and it goes through to the speakers and you
Speaker 1: can hear it on the speakers. The Gibson guitars had
Speaker 1: these special humbucker coils, UH kind of had like these
Speaker 1: coils that were wired with opposite polarity, so that the
Speaker 1: collective interference the coils would pick up would actually cancel
Speaker 1: each other out. It's it's like they were out of
Speaker 1: phase with each other. And it's like a sound wave.
Speaker 1: If you have a sound wave and then you produce
Speaker 1: a sound wave that has equal and opposite peaks and valleys,
Speaker 1: so that the peaks and valleys of one sound wave
Speaker 1: match up with the valleys and peaks of another sound wave,
Speaker 1: they cancel each other out. I explain more about that
Speaker 1: in the episodes about Gibson guitars, so you can go
Speaker 1: listen to that if you want to learn more about it.
Speaker 1: But speaking of humbuckers, I should mention Fender actually attempted
Speaker 1: a few times to create systems that could emulate the
Speaker 1: humbucker sound without actually using humbucker pickups. The Baja Telecaster
Speaker 1: was such an instrument. Unlike the other telecasters, this model
Speaker 1: actually had a four positions switch. The other ones were
Speaker 1: all three position switches, and that fourth position would cause
Speaker 1: the neck and bridge pickups to work in series, not
Speaker 1: in parallel. So if you remember the original telecaster, if
Speaker 1: you had it in the first position, both the neck
Speaker 1: and the bridge pickups would send signals, but they sent
Speaker 1: them in LLL, so both sets of signals would go
Speaker 1: to the output jack. The serial approach meant that the
Speaker 1: signal one of the pickups would pick up the signal
Speaker 1: and send that to the second pickup, which would then
Speaker 1: add it to its signal and then move that to
Speaker 1: the output jack. That does change the nature of the music,
Speaker 1: and it made the two pickups act kind of like
Speaker 1: a humbucker does. That's the Baja telecaster. So back to
Speaker 1: the stratocaster. The strato caster has three single coil pickups.
Speaker 1: There's one that's near the bridge, the bridge pickup, there's
Speaker 1: one that's called the mid pickup, and then there's the
Speaker 1: neck pickup, so the mid pickup is in between the
Speaker 1: bridge and the neck. Uh. Then there's the scale length
Speaker 1: of the strato caster versus the Gibson less Paul. Scale
Speaker 1: length is the length of the strings measured from the
Speaker 1: nut to the bridge. The Gibson less Paul has a
Speaker 1: shorter scale length. The string measures twenty four point seven
Speaker 1: five inches from nut to bridge. The stratocaster scale length
Speaker 1: is twenty five point five inches. It is three quarters
Speaker 1: of an inch longer than the less Paul that changes
Speaker 1: not just the tone of the strato caster, but also
Speaker 1: the playability of it. So remember the strings frequency, the
Speaker 1: note that's going to produce when you pluck it depends
Speaker 1: upon the thickness of the string or it's gauge, the
Speaker 1: length of the string, and the amount of tension on
Speaker 1: the string. Once you string a guitar, it's pretty hard
Speaker 1: to change the thickness or length of that string, but
Speaker 1: you can change the tension either through the tuning pegs
Speaker 1: or if you have a vibrato bar like the strato
Speaker 1: caster does. More on that in a second. You can
Speaker 1: do it that way, or you can change it just
Speaker 1: by you know, again, tuning very slowly. So if you
Speaker 1: want to tune a less paul in the strato caster
Speaker 1: to the same tuning, you want both guitars to have
Speaker 1: the exact same tuning, you actually have to put more
Speaker 1: tension on the strato caster strings because it has a
Speaker 1: larger scale length, and the longer scale also means the
Speaker 1: space between frets on a stratocaster is larger, So that
Speaker 1: might mean that if you have small hands, that playing
Speaker 1: a stratocaster is more of a challenge to you than
Speaker 1: it would be with a less Paul because the frets
Speaker 1: are further apart from each other than they are in
Speaker 1: a less Paul. The longer strings on a strap make
Speaker 1: it a bit easier to bend the strings, so you
Speaker 1: can start to shape notes that way. And the longer
Speaker 1: scale is also one of the contributing factors to making
Speaker 1: the sound of a stratocaster sound like a mel It
Speaker 1: chimes almost. It's very clear when you have the settings
Speaker 1: um properly set and a and a good amplifier and
Speaker 1: it it can be a little more jangly and clean
Speaker 1: than a less Paul. You can pick out those notes
Speaker 1: much more easily. But a less Paul creates a pretty
Speaker 1: iconic rock sound frequently used in harder rock, metal, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. The strato caster became incredibly popular guitar
Speaker 1: for all sorts of other types of rock, especially things
Speaker 1: like of music. I always think of the stratocaster in
Speaker 1: relation to surf guitar. That's that jangly music you'll hear
Speaker 1: on those instrumental surf rock albums, stuff like Dick Dale
Speaker 1: and the Dell Tones, or the Woggles or the Hate
Speaker 1: Bombs or manner Astroman or Low Straight Jackets. They all
Speaker 1: are using guitars that either are stratocasters, they are copies
Speaker 1: of stratocasters, or they are built on similar principles to stratocasters,
Speaker 1: and more frequently than not, they are actual Fender stratocasters.
Speaker 1: The stratocaster today has a five position switch to choose
Speaker 1: which pickups you want to use. Remember there are three pickups,
Speaker 1: but originally it did not have a five position switch.
Speaker 1: Originally it only had a three position switch because Leo
Speaker 1: Fender really liked the idea of isolating each pickup so
Speaker 1: that you were only going to hear the bridge, or
Speaker 1: you're only going to hear the mid, or you're only
Speaker 1: gonna hear the neck. That that was kind of his aesthetic,
Speaker 1: and so each position corresponded with one of the three pickups.
Speaker 1: But musicians found that if you position the switch between
Speaker 1: two real positions, like between the bridge and mid positions,
Speaker 1: you could actually get a new sound because it was
Speaker 1: combining the input from both pickups simultaneously, and so they
Speaker 1: were doing things like shoving stuff in their their toggle
Speaker 1: switches to hold the position there and get this sound.
Speaker 1: Fender would finally respond to this in nineteen seven by
Speaker 1: creating a five position switch so that people wouldn't be jamming,
Speaker 1: you know, match books into their switches anymore. So the
Speaker 1: rear most position is for the bridge pickup. You go
Speaker 1: up one. Now you're at the bridge and mid together.
Speaker 1: You go up another. It's the mid pick up all
Speaker 1: by itself. Go up another, it's mid and neck pickups.
Speaker 1: Then you go up to the last one. It's just
Speaker 1: the neck pickups. So each setting shapes the sound in
Speaker 1: a different way. Then again it's because of those harmonics.
Speaker 1: Now you can you start to get a very clear
Speaker 1: and crisp sound towards the bridge and a more mellow
Speaker 1: some would call it kind of a either warmer or
Speaker 1: muffled sound towards the neck. And again that also depends
Speaker 1: upon you having other really good equipment, you know, a
Speaker 1: good amplifier when you're plugging in. Otherwise the differences can
Speaker 1: be too subtle to tell if you don't have a
Speaker 1: really good amplifier. The strat also has two tone controls
Speaker 1: in addition to a volume control. Cranking the volume up
Speaker 1: creates a really high gain sound, and you know, you
Speaker 1: can get this really crunchy rock sound of a strato
Speaker 1: caster if you turn that volume knob on the guitar
Speaker 1: very all the way up, but if you're saying it
Speaker 1: at a lower volume, you create these very clean tones.
Speaker 1: And it's so interesting that this one dial, just a
Speaker 1: volume dial, the the amplitude of the signal you're sending
Speaker 1: out to the amplifier can have such a dramatic effect
Speaker 1: on the sound coming out of that guitar. I watched
Speaker 1: videos of a guy going through this and it was
Speaker 1: really amazing. You would just tweak the volume knob a
Speaker 1: little bit and generate very different sounds. The two tone
Speaker 1: knobs are meant for various pickup positions. Uh. One tone
Speaker 1: knob is really just for the neck pickup alone. So
Speaker 1: if you're using the neck, you would just use tone
Speaker 1: knob number one. If you're using the neck and the
Speaker 1: mid together, then you need both tone knobs to roll
Speaker 1: off the trouble, and for the mid down to the
Speaker 1: bridge pickup, you would just used the second tone knob. Um,
Speaker 1: So the second tone knob commands the the trouble for
Speaker 1: the bridge in the mid, and the first tone knob
Speaker 1: for just the neck pickups. The Strato caster debuted in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, and the body has curves called cutaways
Speaker 1: near the neck which like the Esquire and the telecaster,
Speaker 1: allows musicians to get access to those upper frets so
Speaker 1: they can do their squiggly li dus. The strato caster
Speaker 1: also had a synchronized tremolow bar or the whammy bar.
Speaker 1: It's more appropriately called a bra. I talked about that
Speaker 1: in the last episode. That would let a player dynamically
Speaker 1: change the amount of tension on a string, which allows
Speaker 1: the player to affect the tone of the note, the
Speaker 1: pitch of the note, to increase or decrease the pitch
Speaker 1: to bend the note using this thing. Fender thought that
Speaker 1: the Leo Fender he thought the stratocaster was going to
Speaker 1: replace the telecaster, so he's like, well, this is an upgrade.
Speaker 1: The telecaster is gonna go obsolete, and that Fender as
Speaker 1: a company would just phase out the telecaster. But the
Speaker 1: stratocaster one did not catch on immediately, and some musicians
Speaker 1: just legitimately loved the sound of the telecaster, and it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily easy to replicate the telecaster sound using a stratocaster,
Speaker 1: and some people just developed this love of that telecaster sound.
Speaker 1: So there was still a demand for the telecaster even
Speaker 1: after the stratocaster came out. One guy who really did
Speaker 1: help boost the profile of the stratocaster was a rock
Speaker 1: star and unlikely one named Buddy Holly, or that's what
Speaker 1: we all call him. Some of you may not know
Speaker 1: who that was, and I don't judge you for it.
Speaker 1: Buddy Holly was an early rock and roll musician who
Speaker 1: brought he got a stratocaster way back in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: five and Lubbock, Texas. He borrowed some money from his
Speaker 1: brother in order to buy it, and like the telecaster,
Speaker 1: the strat was mostly known as a musical instrument that
Speaker 1: was used by people who were making country and Western music.
Speaker 1: But Buddy Holly grew up in Texas and that was
Speaker 1: the kind of music that was all around him, and
Speaker 1: he drew a lot of inspiration from that style of
Speaker 1: music when he started to put together his own band
Speaker 1: and create a new sound, which I'll talk about a
Speaker 1: little bit more in just a second, but first let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break to thank our sponsor. Buddy Holly
Speaker 1: and the Crickets created a sound that put a nearly
Speaker 1: equal emphasis on lead guitar and rhythm, and by ninety eight,
Speaker 1: his music, his band's music was at the top of
Speaker 1: the charts, and his guitar of choice was influencing many
Speaker 1: others to take a close look at the strato caster,
Speaker 1: particularly bands in England like the Beatles, who named their
Speaker 1: band partly because you had Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
Speaker 1: Holly would die in a tragic plane crash around one
Speaker 1: am on February third, nineteen fifty nine. That plane also
Speaker 1: had Ritchie Valen's and J. P. Richardson, who is better
Speaker 1: known as the Big Bopper in it. Together those three
Speaker 1: musicians had made some of the most popular music in
Speaker 1: the early rock and roll era, and that day became
Speaker 1: known as the Day the Music Died. It's also the
Speaker 1: subject of the song American Pie, the song, not the
Speaker 1: movie series. Putting tragedy aside. Buddy Holly really helped Fender
Speaker 1: sell a lot of strato casters, and the company created
Speaker 1: a new line of guitars and amplifiers that they were
Speaker 1: aiming for the budget conscious musician under a new brand
Speaker 1: called White that was a tribute to Forrest White. He
Speaker 1: was a Fender's production manager. So now you have a
Speaker 1: much larger customer base coming to buy guitars. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the rock and roll emergence had inspired tons
Speaker 1: of kids to get into making music, and the strato
Speaker 1: caster became one of the guitars of choice for a
Speaker 1: lot of those musicians. Fender the company tried to diversify
Speaker 1: a bit. They added some other instruments to their line,
Speaker 1: including electric mandolins. They had an electric violin for a
Speaker 1: short while. They also started making acoustic guitars, but most
Speaker 1: of these lines, including the White brand, were ultimately discontinued.
Speaker 1: They just didn't take off quite as much and they
Speaker 1: were pulling a lot of focus from the electric guitars center. Now,
Speaker 1: they kept on making more models of telecasters and strato casters.
Speaker 1: You know, you typically call them by whatever year they
Speaker 1: came out, and some of them would tweak things so
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be exactly the same. So that's why you
Speaker 1: have musicians who talk about the the pros and cons
Speaker 1: of the various model years for telecasters, strato casters, that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Leo Fender also created a jazz guitar
Speaker 1: that got a lot of love in certain circles, but
Speaker 1: never reached the levels of popularity of the stratocaster, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty four, Leo Fender's health took a turn
Speaker 1: for the worst and he thought about retiring, so he
Speaker 1: offered to sell the company to Don Randall for the
Speaker 1: princely sum of one point five million dollars. Randall, however,
Speaker 1: didn't really have the scratch together to buy a company
Speaker 1: at that price, so he told Fender, hang on, let
Speaker 1: me see if I can find a buyer, and he
Speaker 1: found one. That buyer was the Columbia Broadcasting System better
Speaker 1: known as CBS. YEP that CBS. CBS had a subsidiary
Speaker 1: company called Columbia Records Distribution Corporation, and that was the
Speaker 1: subsidiary that Negotia. You had to acquire the Fender Electric
Speaker 1: Instruments Company for thirteen million dollars. They announced that deal
Speaker 1: on January five, nineteen sixty five. The new company was
Speaker 1: originally called Fender CBS, but in nineteen sixty six the
Speaker 1: company changed its name to CBS Musical Instruments because it
Speaker 1: was going on a bit of a buying spree with
Speaker 1: other musical instrument companies. So uh Fender as a brand
Speaker 1: and a division still existed, but it was no longer
Speaker 1: the name of the company. CBS started making big changes
Speaker 1: pretty early on with Fender. For one, thing. There were
Speaker 1: some issues over at Fender Electric Instruments. The company had
Speaker 1: been growing in a very haphazard kind of way since
Speaker 1: its founding back in nineteen forty six. By the time
Speaker 1: CBS acquired Fender, there were offices and factories and distribution
Speaker 1: centers in twenty nine different buildings scattered across Fullerton, California.
Speaker 1: That's not a very efficient way to run a company.
Speaker 1: So SEE has decided they wanted to consolidate that into
Speaker 1: a centralized facility. They made plans to build a huge
Speaker 1: facility hundred twenty thousand square feet in size, and it
Speaker 1: would cost more than a million dollars. They finished it
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixties six. CBS talted it as being a
Speaker 1: high tech, dust free manufacturing facility that could produce guitars
Speaker 1: at a much faster rate and meet demand. And you
Speaker 1: could argue that if you could do this, and if
Speaker 1: you can maintain quality, then you could bring the price
Speaker 1: down on guitars, right because if it costs less to
Speaker 1: make them, you can still get your profit and sell
Speaker 1: them at a lower cost, and that will also attract
Speaker 1: more customers, so you actually end up making more money
Speaker 1: in the long run. That's if you can keep the
Speaker 1: quality up. CBS also sent along analysts to Fender to
Speaker 1: study how efficient Fender employees were when they were making instruments,
Speaker 1: and that started rubbing people the wrong way because a
Speaker 1: lot of people consider themselves, you know, crafts and artists there.
Speaker 1: They take great pride in what they do and they
Speaker 1: don't want to compromise on quality for the sake of
Speaker 1: speed or efficiency. Forrest White, who I mentioned just a
Speaker 1: moment ago, would write in a book that the experts
Speaker 1: from CBS seemed to think that they had all the
Speaker 1: answers and they were kind of disregarding the opinions and
Speaker 1: UH and expertise of people who worked for Fender. Now,
Speaker 1: I should say that White comes across as very opinionated
Speaker 1: in the various things I've written, I've read that he
Speaker 1: has written, and UH, I don't know how unbiased his
Speaker 1: view was, but he certainly felt very strongly about this.
Speaker 1: White himself would leave the company a couple of years
Speaker 1: after CBS took over UH, and it was over a
Speaker 1: disagreement with an amplifier that CBS wanted to produce. White
Speaker 1: felt that that amplifier failed to live up to the
Speaker 1: name and a reputation of Fender, and rather than preside
Speaker 1: over the production of a product that he felt was substandard,
Speaker 1: he left the company. Fender continued to exist as a brand, obviously,
Speaker 1: and continue to manufacture guitars and various models, and would
Speaker 1: occasionally update those models over time with some new features.
Speaker 1: You know, I mentioned that five switch for the for
Speaker 1: the strato caster, or sometimes they would strip new features
Speaker 1: out if musicians gave feedback that said, this thing you've
Speaker 1: included on this guitar is terrible and it's pointless and
Speaker 1: you should take it out. Sometimes that did happen, but
Speaker 1: the updates and the new models were rather infrequent. You
Speaker 1: didn't see as much innovation coming out of the company
Speaker 1: once CBS took over, and some Fender employees worried that
Speaker 1: the quality overall was taking a hit. And in fact,
Speaker 1: you'll see a lot of forums out there about guitars
Speaker 1: written by musicians who say, yeah, Fender instruments in general,
Speaker 1: not just like a strato caster or a telecaster or whatever,
Speaker 1: but in general from that era are of a low
Speaker 1: or quality than the ones that preceded the CPS takeover.
Speaker 1: Don Randall would resign in nineteen sixty nine allegedly because
Speaker 1: he felt the politics of the company were too much
Speaker 1: to bear. It wasn't a question of the quality of
Speaker 1: the products for Randall, but it was more about how
Speaker 1: people would backstab each other and try to climb the
Speaker 1: corporate ladder, and he got tired of that. Leo Fender
Speaker 1: was retained as a consultant for many years, but he
Speaker 1: would leave Fender as well in nineteen seventy uh Forrest
Speaker 1: White said that CBS executives rarely gave Leo Fender very
Speaker 1: much attention or respect, and so Fender would go on
Speaker 1: to work with a company that eventually became known as
Speaker 1: music Man Incorporated. UM. He started sort of consulting with
Speaker 1: him in nineteen seventy four and building instruments and components
Speaker 1: for them back at that time, and music Man was
Speaker 1: founded by Forrest White and another former Fender employee named
Speaker 1: Tom Walker, who was the district sales manager over Fender
Speaker 1: before he left to to found this company. Leo Fender
Speaker 1: would also form a new partnership with George Fullerton, the
Speaker 1: man he had given management accountability to way back in
Speaker 1: the day. So this is in nineteen eighty and Leo
Speaker 1: Fender and George Fullerton create g N l Incorporated. That
Speaker 1: stood for George and Leo. Fullerton would cash out in
Speaker 1: nine six, but Leo stuck with it until he passed away,
Speaker 1: in working until the day he died, and including the
Speaker 1: day he died. But now let's get back to Fender,
Speaker 1: the company and brand. So he listened to the Gibson episodes.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a period during which Gibson employees
Speaker 1: were going through a very similar experience. There was this
Speaker 1: large company that comes in, acquires them and tries to
Speaker 1: create a more mass manufacturing approach to what they were doing,
Speaker 1: and that there as a result, some of the employees
Speaker 1: developed a lot of resentment, and there's a general feeling
Speaker 1: that the guitars that were produced in that era were
Speaker 1: of a general just a lower quality than the earlier ones.
Speaker 1: The explosive popularity of rock and roll in the sixties
Speaker 1: had led to an unprecedented demand for electric guitars, so
Speaker 1: companies like Gibson and Fender were making these instruments that
Speaker 1: were in really high demand. So in some ways this
Speaker 1: corporate move might have been necessary just to keep up
Speaker 1: pace with the demand for the products. However, that decrease
Speaker 1: in quality kind of balances things out, so those compromises
Speaker 1: made along the way made a lot of people unhappy,
Speaker 1: both in the company and customers of the company. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties, CBS was facing stiff competition from a
Speaker 1: new rival, not Gibson, but Japanese companies that were producing
Speaker 1: electric guitars for a lower cost than Fender or Gibson,
Speaker 1: and at first cbs solution was to shift manufacturing overseas
Speaker 1: to Korea, but the guitars that were being produced out
Speaker 1: of those facilities did not measure up to the quality
Speaker 1: Fender had established in the market, so they ultimately said, well,
Speaker 1: this isn't going to work. So then they changed the
Speaker 1: executive leadership at Fender. They got some new leaders for
Speaker 1: that division that would include William Schultz who became the
Speaker 1: president of the division and Dan Smith who became the
Speaker 1: director for marketing of Fender. John McLaren became the new
Speaker 1: head of CBS Musical Instruments that would be the subsidiary
Speaker 1: company that would oversee Fender, and that executive team found
Speaker 1: that Fender's reputation was really starting to suffer, that musicians
Speaker 1: were seeking out older models of telecasters and stratocasters instead
Speaker 1: of new models because they said the build quality was
Speaker 1: just better and the sound was better in those classic models,
Speaker 1: and so on close examination it appeared that they were
Speaker 1: onto something. Dan Smith would later say, quote, we were
Speaker 1: brought in to kind of turn the reputation of Fender
Speaker 1: around and to get it so it was making money again.
Speaker 1: It was starting to lose money, and at that point
Speaker 1: in time, everybody hated Fender. We thought we knew how
Speaker 1: bad it was. We took for granted that they could
Speaker 1: make strato casters and telecasters the same way they used
Speaker 1: to make them, But we were wrong. So many things
Speaker 1: had changed in the plant end quote. So he's not
Speaker 1: necessarily saying that they employees were at fault, but that
Speaker 1: the changes that had been made over the previous decades
Speaker 1: were such that it was now impossible to make the
Speaker 1: guitars the way they had been made, especially under the
Speaker 1: policies that CBS had created. In nine two, Williams. Schultz
Speaker 1: scaled back on Fender guitar production, focusing primarily on creating
Speaker 1: reissues of limited editions of class guitars from before the
Speaker 1: time when CBS bought the company, and Schultz also arranged
Speaker 1: for a new division within Fender called Fender Japan, which
Speaker 1: was a partnership with Kondo Shokai and Yomana Music as distributors,
Speaker 1: and a Japanese company called Fuji Genghaki got the license
Speaker 1: to produce Fender branded guitars, with the intent that they
Speaker 1: would only be sold in Japan, but the brand called Squire,
Speaker 1: named after the old Esquare guitar actually made in Japan,
Speaker 1: eventually became an export to the United States in nineteen
Speaker 1: eight three, so you can buy Square guitars in the
Speaker 1: States too. In March nineteen five, CBS was ready to
Speaker 1: offload Fender because CBS was trying to push off a
Speaker 1: possible takeover, and so they were looking to wait for
Speaker 1: ways to divest of certain things and really focus on
Speaker 1: protecting the company. So they chose to sell the Fender
Speaker 1: division to William Schultz and a group of investors for
Speaker 1: about twelve point five million dollars. That's actually half a
Speaker 1: million dollars less than what CBS bought the company for
Speaker 1: decades earlier, so when you factor in inflation, they really
Speaker 1: did take a loss from the purchase to the sale
Speaker 1: of that company. This new company became Fender Musical Instruments,
Speaker 1: but the manufacturing facility that CBS had bought. The hundred
Speaker 1: twenty thousand square foot facility was not part of this deal.
Speaker 1: The new company started its life deep in debt, with
Speaker 1: no real US base for manufacturing the only Fender guitars
Speaker 1: being made. Right after the deal, we're in Japan, Schultz
Speaker 1: would cut nearly nine percent of the staff at Fender,
Speaker 1: going from eight hundred employees to ninety. Schultz then made
Speaker 1: the Fender Custom Shop in Corona, California, and he began
Speaker 1: to lure big name musicians in with free or heavily
Speaker 1: discounted Fender instruments if they would in return up here
Speaker 1: in ads for Fender. And it took some time, but
Speaker 1: the company slowly began to build back up again, and
Speaker 1: they introduced the American standards model for strats and Telly's
Speaker 1: in and then Schultz would move the company headquarters away
Speaker 1: from its long time home of Fullerton, California, to Scottsdale, Arizona,
Speaker 1: and by the the a little bit later, the company
Speaker 1: was opening up a new manufacturing facility in Mexico and
Speaker 1: Korea and China. By ninety six, the Corona plant grown
Speaker 1: out of this little custom shop had grown up to
Speaker 1: six hundred employees. So Fender was kind of on the
Speaker 1: rebound here. Schultz would oversee the company until two thousand five,
Speaker 1: when he would retire. He had made a lot of compromises,
Speaker 1: but he also managed to return Fender's reputation to where
Speaker 1: it had been before the CBS acquisition. William Mandelo, who
Speaker 1: was part of the same group that made that purchase
Speaker 1: from CBS, would become the new CEO Offender. Since then,
Speaker 1: Fender has been able to get back on its feet,
Speaker 1: even while it's seeing its competitor Gibson have to file
Speaker 1: for Chapter eleven bankruptcy. But I covered that story in
Speaker 1: the previous episode, so you can go listen to that
Speaker 1: if you want to find out why that happened. Fender
Speaker 1: also has guitar models that I didn't really get into
Speaker 1: in these episodes, but I feel like I should acknowledge
Speaker 1: the fact they do exist. It's not like it's just
Speaker 1: the strato Caster and the Telecaster and the Esquire. There's
Speaker 1: like the jazz Master. There's the Jaguar, which also was
Speaker 1: another important surf rock guitar, and they didn't quite approach
Speaker 1: the level of reference given to the strato Caster. But
Speaker 1: they're still important and you can still buy Fender guitars
Speaker 1: to this day. One of these days I am going
Speaker 1: to have to get one. I think I really like
Speaker 1: the Fender sound. I love the Gibson sound too. I
Speaker 1: love them both. But there's something about the Fender that
Speaker 1: strato Caster that has always really appealed to me. And
Speaker 1: that concludes these episodes. I know that I really flew
Speaker 1: through the last two decades of Fender, but that's because, again,
Speaker 1: the story would have essentially been a new model of
Speaker 1: strato Caster comes out and nobody likes it, because people
Speaker 1: felt that the the models that were produced under the
Speaker 1: CBS ownership were substandard, and it took quite some time
Speaker 1: for that reputation to be repaired. But I would say
Speaker 1: that these days it has largely been repaired. I would
Speaker 1: also say that musicians still to this day try to
Speaker 1: seek out those vintage models when they can. You have
Speaker 1: a lot of collectors out there, and you have a
Speaker 1: lot of musicians who just swear by those early early
Speaker 1: Telecaster and strato Caster models, and that's all they want.
Speaker 1: They don't want to replica, you know, they want to reissue.
Speaker 1: They don't want a later model, they want the original.
Speaker 1: But you got to shell out huge amounts of money
Speaker 1: for those. If you guys have any suggestions for future
Speaker 1: episodes of tech Stuff, whether it's a company, a technology,
Speaker 1: a person in tech, send me a message. The email
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