After its shock closure last year, G&L guitars have returned to the market through Musical Instrument Reclamation Corp. (MIRC).

The Leo Fender-founded guitar makers, of whom Jerry Cantrell is their biggest endorsee, quietly met their fate last year. Soon after, Fender moved to purchase the Leo Fender trademark in order to prevent it being used elsewhere, but sadly did not take on the full G&L operation.

As one ex-employee told Guitar World, the firm’s dissolution left many questions unanswered. But when a firm pulls the shutters on its production, existing stock has to go somewhere, and that’s where MIRC comes in.

As Herin, IL store, the Zombie Guitar Company explains in a new YouTube video, “they bought everything that G&L had. Everything that is a guitar, and everything that could be a guitar.”

That includes finished pieces, as well as finished and unfinished bodies, necks, and parts, which are now shipping out from MIRC’s Franklin, TN, facility.

Having secured the entirety of G&L’s stock, MIRC has began contacting retailers, with the Zombie Guitar Company gleefully snapping up a score of electric guitars, including a maple neck Tribute Series Legacy, ASAT T-type, and an SB-2 bass.

So, while it is most definitely not a comeback – the firm really is disappearing quietly into the night – there is now a fleeting final chance for players to get their hands on the final G&L models ever made.

“G&L is back for a short time,” the store says. “They [MIRC] have a warehouse full of them.”

MIRC usually works with independent retailers to provide quality used guitars to their stores. So, don’t expect these to pop up in the big stores (though we’ve spotted a few G&L Deluxe models at Guitar Center still) – more likely, the stock will be exclusive to independent stores and used dealers.

It’s a muted end to the legacy of a brand that has powered Alice in Chains’ music from practically day one, and also counted David Gilmour, Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt, and Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard as its biggest supporters.

Cantrell says he “fell in love” with G&Ls the moment he picked one up, with his riff-slinging career with Alice in Chains fueled by his trusty “Blue Dress” G&L Rampage, which briefly went missing in 2024.

A customer walks into a shop. Nothing unusual about that, did you say? Well, the customer talks to the man behind the counter. And that man is Leo Fender. The customer has an acoustic guitar but wants to be able to plug it into an amp. He’s heard Leo might be the guy to make it happen.

This apparently unimportant event happened around the start of the 1940s at Leo’s Fender Radio Service store in Fullerton, Los Angeles. But this walk-in would result in a guitar with a retrofitted pickup – in other words a customised guitar. And all this happened many, many decades before the Fender company opened an official Custom Shop, and indeed a number of years before the Fender company even existed.

Of course, Leo himself wouldn’t have described that instrument as a ‘custom guitar’, not least because the term hadn’t been invented yet. However, he did create a special piece for a specific customer, which is where the term ‘custom’ originates from.

What makes a guitar a custom guitar? It has to be individual, set apart from regular production models. There’s an emphasis on the handmade aspects of guitar making, and sometimes personal attention from a named builder.

Sadly, there will also be a difference when you come to pay the bill. But let’s get back to Fender, a company now under way and gradually picking up business as the ’50s loomed ahead.

Customarily Colourful

As Fender began to grow into the early ’50s, and with the addition of the Tele, P-Bass and Strat expanding beyond the firm’s original steels and small amps, the emphasis remained firmly on production of a set line of distinct models. Each of those models was offered in a standard finish, either blonde or sunburst.

Any notion of customising at Fender in the ’50s was largely confined to non-standard colour finishes. This happened on a casual basis, and sometimes it was for local musicians who deserved something special.

For example, Bill Carson and Rex Gallion, who helped with the advent of the Stratocaster, were awarded splendid red-finish Strats for their trouble, while Eldon Shamblin of the famous Western swing band led by Bob Wills landed an even more impressive gold-finish model.

As the ’50s rolled on, Fender began to hint publicly yet discreetly in its catalogues and price lists at the availability of colour options, at first at “an additional five per cent cost”. You may want to sit down for the next piece of information. That small price uplift meant a gorgeous brand-new Custom Color Strat could have been yours in 1957 for a few cents short of $288.

There was more. First seen on an early ’57 price list was a “Stratocaster (with tremolo) in Blonde with 14 Carat Gold-Plated Hardware” and a price of $330. This was the model that became known as the Mary Kaye, thanks to the Detroit-born singer and guitarist who appeared with just such a blonde-body/gold-hardware Strat in a series of photos that ran in Fender promo material.

Kaye appeared in the movie Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!, released late in 1956 and with three featured performances where she played that now-famous Strat – a guitar she never possessed for longer than a few hours at a time.

Beyond these rare early sightings, Fender eventually came up with a defined list of officially available Custom Colors, and in the ’60s, when the firm was making many more coloured guitars, it issued colour-chart pamphlets to publicise and help select the various shades, from Dakota Red to Shoreline Gold Metallic, Daphne Blue to Teal Green Metallic. It was an early sign that custom choices could be made to work for a mass-production maker.

Custom Preludes

Long before Fender had its own official Custom Shop, some guitars were nothing like production Strats, Teles, Jags or Jazzmasters, and therefore qualify as early examples of Fenders that might deserve the custom name.

One such was a Jaguar specially built by Fender for a ludicrous 1963 movie called Bye Bye Birdie. In it, a rock ’n’ roll star briefly strums a luscious black-finish Jag that sparkles with gold fittings and has a body decorated to incorporate his (fictional) name – Conrad Birdie. 60 years and more later, however, we are still awaiting a Conrad Birdie signature Jag.

Later in the decade, Fender’s maverick designer Roger Rossmeisl was let loose on the short-lived Montego and LTD, introduced in 1968. They were archtop electrics, quite the antithesis of Fender’s regular fare, although both kept the customary bolt-on neck. Rare and unusual – so certainly candidates for early custom models.

CBS had been Fender’s new owner since 1965, and evidence of the new overseer wringing every drop of potential income from the factory came with the Swinger and the Custom. That’s right: one of them was called the Custom, the first time Fender had used that word as a model name since the double-bound Custom Tele and Esquire of 1959.

Following pressure from CBS to stop wasting spare parts, Fender’s product manager created the Swinger by teaming unused Musicmaster or Bass V bodies with unpopular short-scale Mustang-style necks, and the Custom (aka Maverick) by converting disused Electric XII necks, bodies and pickups.

Both were shortlived, but the idea that it’s possible to rearrange existing materials and styles into something new and potentially successful would become central to at least one strand of custom building.

Fender’s UK distributor

CBS/Arbiter opened the Fender Soundhouse superstore in London in 1973, and the boss, Ivor Arbiter, invited a sculptor friend Jon Douglas to come up with something unusual. He made a replacement Strat body from cold-cast bronze, with a metallic layer over a fibreglass shell.

A small batch of these Rhinestone Stratocasters was offered for sale at the Soundhouse in ’75, but a fire destroyed the premises soon afterward. Apparently, two had already sold, but the rest probably perished in the flames.

Douglas would make fresh moulds for a further small run in the early ’90s, but the originals were arguably the first of Fender’s “art guitars”, a category that would later find a suitable home at the Custom Shop.

What We Need Is A Custom Shop

At the start of the 1980s, CBS management needed fresh blood to energise Fender. The brand’s income had climbed spectacularly – in 1980, it tripled 1971’s figure of $20 million – but reinvestment in the company had wavered and Fender’s reputation for quality was in poor shape.

In 1981, CBS headhunted an experienced team from the American musical-instruments division of Yamaha – Bill Schultz, Dan Smith, John McLaren and Roger Balmer – who joined Bill Mendello from the existing setup, all charged with guiding the firm to better things.

The following year, the new team created Fender Japan, a joint venture with two Japanese distributors. Fender USA licensed Fender Japan the right to have Fender guitars built in Japan – initially only for sale on the Japanese market – which led to the first Japanese Fender vintage reissues and the Squier line of guitars.

However, the improvements were not enough for CBS, and in 1984 it put the Fender name and business up for sale. There were several bidders, but the Mendello/Schultz/Smith/Balmer team won, and in January ’85, almost exactly 20 years since the corporation had acquired it, CBS confirmed it would sell Fender to “an investor group led by William Schultz, president of Fender Musical Instruments”.

It was during the months and years of upheaval and uncertainty following the management buyout that Fender’s official Custom Shop was born. The intention at first was for a facility that would build one-offs and special orders for players with the money and the inclination.

Dan Smith said that in the absence of the Fullerton factory, which was sold separately from the Fender name and business, the buyout team reckoned their limited resources would stretch perhaps to making just 10 vintage reissues a day at their small new premises in Corona (about 20 miles east of the defunct Fullerton site).

Meanwhile, the revived Fender operation’s primary source of production guitars was from the Japanese Fuji-Gen Gakki factory via the Fender Japan deal. “So we were going to start a Custom Shop at Corona to build special projects for artists,” Smith explained, “to make certain that the prestige was still there for the company.”

Artist Specials

George Blanda was the guitar builder hired by Fender in 1985 to make special guitars for artists, effectively starting the idea of a Custom Shop. An early job led to one of Fender’s first signature guitars, the Eric Clapton Stratocaster.

Clapton had discovered that his faithful old ‘bitsa’ Strat, Blackie, was coming to the end of its useful life, and he began discussions with Fender about a modern replacement.

“The big thing was the neck shape that Clapton wanted,” Blanda recalled. “Dan Smith and I made about a dozen neck samples for him to play. He ended up liking two and couldn’t quite decide between them: one was like a pre-war Martin he had, with a very deep V shape; the other was a kind of soft ‘rounded V’ like Blackie, whose neck had become pretty thin through so many refrets.”

Fender had given Clapton one of its Elite Strats a few years before, and he liked the sound of the guitar’s active circuit. He wanted something similar but with more boost, which he called compression. With all this in mind, Blanda and Smith delivered prototypes to Clapton in 1986.

“Then he was on the road for some time, over a year, and we didn’t hear much back,” Blanda said. “At some point, he had a problem with the prototype he had been playing most, the one with the neck like the Martin with the deep V, and he sent it back to us to be fixed.

“We had done all our drawings and tooling and were ready to make this deep-V guitar for him, but then he started playing the other one, like Blackie – and said, ‘Yes, I like this a lot better.’ So we ended up changing back to that for the signature model! It was a very long process because he was on the road so much – his career was having a renaissance.”

The final design eventually went on sale to the public in 1988 as a regular Fender factory model, the Eric Clapton Stratocaster. Clapton retired Blackie around this time and soon began playing his new signature models. (An actual Custom Shop Clapton Strat would have to wait until 2004, when it joined other Custom Shop signatures such as the Albert Collins Tele and the Ritchie Blackmore Strat.)

At Last: A Custom Shop!

George Blanda moved to R&D and that left the idea of a Custom Shop up in the air. Fender had discussions with guitar maker Michael Stevens and with Fender’s former R&D man John Page, who had left the company a year earlier to concentrate on his music.

The result was that in January 1987 Stevens and Page joined up to properly start Fender’s Custom Shop, gaining space later that year in an area within the Corona factory and later moving to various separate Corona buildings nearby.

One of the Shop’s first official orders was to make two left-handed guitars for Elliot Easton of The Cars, a Thinline Tele in Foam Green and a ’57 Mary Kaye Strat.

The order was placed at the end of February 1987 and completed by John Page later that year. Other guitarists who lined up for the Shop’s work in its early months included Robert Cray, Steve Cropper, Jerry Donahue, Robben Ford, Eric Johnson, Yngwie Malmsteen, Cesar Rosas, Arlen Roth and Keith Scott, along with a slew of switched-on Fender dealers.

The Shop turned out its first numbered limited edition, the 40th Anniversary Telecaster, in 1988 (a few years early – vintage lore knew no better at the time).

Another historic moment marked by the Shop was the Pine Telecaster & Amp set, issued in a limited edition of 50 in 1996 to celebrate the 50th birthday of the Fender company. The set recreated the original solidbody prototype, with its steel-like headstock shape and angled control plate, alongside a replica of an early Model 26 amp.

More guitar builders were added to the Shop’s growing staff. Fred Stuart’s Egyptian Telecaster, made in 1994, was the first Custom Shop art guitar. Stephen Stern took responsibility for the D’Aquisto hollowbodies when they moved that same year from Japanese production to the Custom Shop. And around the same time, Larry Brooks helped Kurt Cobain create the Jag-Stang from cut-ups of his fave Jag and Mustang.

The expansion of the Custom Shop’s business prompted various moves, notably in ’93 to new buildings still close to the Corona factory, providing extra space and a shift to better efficiency. When Fender’s new plant on Cessna Circle in Corona was unveiled five years later, the Custom Shop moved there.

Ageing Gracefully

JW Black had started at the Custom Shop in 1989, and one day he saw a Strat that a friend of his, Vince Cunetto, had made with an aged finish. He showed it to John Page and they agreed it was interesting. Black suggested offering aged replicas, called Relics, as a regular line in the Custom Shop catalogue.

“It started almost as a tongue-in-cheek thing,” Page said, “like worn-in Levi’s or something. It would look cool – and in the first three rows, it would look like you’re playing a valuable Nocaster. But only you know that it’s not really. That was how it started.”

Black and Cunetto set about making a couple of aged ’50s-style guitars as samples. One was a Nocaster, the transitional Broadcaster/Telecaster with removed model logo, the other a Mary Kaye blonde-and-gold-metalwork Strat.

Fender took them to the winter ’95 NAMM Show and displayed them like works of art. Page said: “Visitors would come along and say, ‘Oh, that’s really cool: you brought original ones as a tribute.’ And we were saying, ‘Er, yeah – how many do you want?’ People went nuts! It was amazing.”

Back at the Custom Shop, plans were quickly under way to offer an initial line of a Relic Nocaster and a few ’50s and ’60s Relic Strats, and this soon expanded to include a ’60s Jazz Bass and options of various sunbursts and colours.

Cunetto and a small team started work in the summer of ’95 at his workshop in Missouri, receiving bodies, necks and parts from Fender, shooting nitrocellulose lacquer and then setting about the ageing processes. The pieces would then be returned to the Custom Shop for final assembly and setup.

Fender moved everything in-house and introduced the Time Machine series in 1999: the Relic (heavily worn); the Closet Classic (as if played a few times and then forgotten in a cupboard); and the NOS (New Old Stock, as if bought in the ’50s or ’60s and then magically transported to today).

By now, the Shop had a growing catalogue of regular items, aside from the one-off work, and in 1996, as well as four Relics, it comprised 12 Namesake (signature) guitars, six Set Neck and Contemporary models, and no fewer than 28 vintage-style Custom Classics, plus six amps. At the start of the 90s, the Shop built about 2,500 guitars a year; by ’96 that had risen to 7,000.

What’s The Difference?

Custom Shop boss John Page talked to this author in the early ’90s about the types of instruments his team were producing at the time. “There are the absolute vintage reproductions,” Page said, “and we’ve found that people want everything just so. Obsessive, almost. But great, you know?

“One example: Elliot Easton had a ’62 or ’63 left-handed Burgundy Mist Strat that was, like, priceless. He wanted to play it, but he didn’t want to play it – you know what I mean? So we duped the guitar for him and he liked it so much better that he sold the original.”

Next up in our ’90s chat about Custom Shop categories were what Page called quasi-exact reproductions. “Anything where the guy doesn’t necessarily want to be exact – he wants it to be close and he wants that vibe. He wants to stand on stage and make it look like it’s a ’50s Esquire, but he wants a fatter neck, hotter pickups… so that’s another vein.”

As for the Shop’s one-offs, Page reckoned the sky was the limit. He recalled leather-tooled body covers, checkerboard binding, B-Benders, a 30-inch-scale Telecaster, an electric banjo with pedal-steel tuners on the floor, eight-string Strats, quilted-maple Jazzmasters with Floyd Roses, bizarre headstock inlays, and many, many more examples in out-there territory.

“Oh, and did I mention the Rocketcaster? That was a three-tone Jazzmaster that looked like an old ’50s Oldsmobile, all the brass handmade, lots of chrome strips, and the knobs off a Rocket 88 cigarette lighter.”

Page left the Custom Shop in 1997, and Mike Eldred took over the running of the place. But one of the questions Page had to answer regularly when he was there concerned the difference between a factory Fender and a (much more expensive) Custom Shop Fender.

“Normally, I tell people if they can’t tell the difference when they pick up and play the guitar, then they should buy the cheaper one,” Page said, smiling.

But he knew that for people who could tell the difference, it was like night and day. “I had a couple of gentlemen here yesterday that I was showing an instrument to,” Page said in that ’92 interview. “They were asking what we were doing on a particular model – they were businessmen, not players. They took a look at the guitar, and I can tell in their eyes it’s like, ‘Well, this looks like everything else.’

“And yet two days before that, I had a couple of players in here, and they asked the same question. I handed them the guitar and they just about creamed themselves. They couldn’t quit playing it.”

• This article first appeared in Guitarist. Subscribe and save.

Since Leo Fender and George Fullerton properly launched G&L in 1980, the brand has been associated with high-quality instruments – but has primarily lived in the shadow of Leo’s first and namesake firm, the almighty Fender.

In the years since, G&L has dropped a string of models like the ASAT, S-500, Skyhawk, Nighthawk, Climax, Legacy and Jerry Cantrell’s beloved Rampage, which can be seen being brandished by the grunge gunslinger in Alice in Chains’ Man in the Box music video.

Along with those models came Leo’s remarkable MFD pickups, Dual Fulcrum Vibrato, Saddle Lock Bridge and many more mad-scientist inventions. This, along with the fact that Leo and George used to partake in quality control – even signing the neck pocket of early G&L guitars – had Leo feeling closer than close to his latter-day creations when he passed away in 1991.

But that’s not all G&L is about. Just ask Steve Araujo, G&L’s director of sales who also happens to manage artist relations and the firm’s growing-by-leaps-and-bounds Custom Shop.

Araujo has been with G&L for more than seven years and, in that time, has watched the company’s instruments slowly but surely infiltrate the market.

In the name of championing where G&L has been and where it’s going, Araujo dialed in with GW to run through homegrown business practices, innovative gear and G&L’s commitment to quality.

The level of quality sets G&L apart from the pack – especially coming out of the Custom Shop, which seems to be picking up steam.

“The Custom Shop is relatively new; it started in maybe 2017. It was this tiny snowball, and like you said, in the past year, it has exponentially grown. Our status as a smallish company is actually an advantage because when a new model comes out, we can walk down and say, ‘Okay, here’s one of them. We need to shift this; this isn’t right.’”

For a long time, people saw G&L as almost an extension of Fender, which is understandable since the ASAT looks like a Tele, and the Legacy looks like a Strat. Has the Custom Shop allowed you to flex what you can do?

“Yes! It’s smallish, but it’s powerful, and it’s growing. In the last year, it went from literally one or two orders a month to where I’m getting orders for five builds a week. Our build time is pretty short now, at maybe 10 to 12 months for the Custom Shop, which is good compared to other companies.”

The price point for G&L guitars is more digestible compared to others of similar quality.

“You’re looking at maybe three thousand and up, depending on what you want. Then we have what’s called our Build to Order, which is basically a production model you can customize. It’s like ‘Custom Shop light,’ and those are around two thousand. We’re guitar nerds, and it’s the ultimate nerd-out when I get to help somebody build a custom guitar.”

Leo called these the best instruments he ever built. How seriously do you take that?

“We have a moniker, and it’s centered around the idea of the spirit of Leo. Everything here is still almost a Leo Fender Custom Shop instrument. I think this is the way Leo would be building guitars if he were still alive.

“Leo sold Fender in 1965 and consulted with them for another five years. He started G&L in 1980 or ’79 – but really 1980 – and we’re celebrating our 45th anniversary, so in our eyes, G&L is more ‘Fender’ than Fender actually is, you know? Leo was really happy that he [still] created post-Fender.”

One big thing that makes G&L stand out from a sonic perspective is the MFD pickups, unruly yet glorious beasts that people confuse with P-90 pickups.

“Regular pickups are usually Alnico, right? If you look at a regular Alnico pickup, the pole pieces, which are these little magnets, look pretty standard and don’t move. It’s just bobbin wire wrapped around, and it’s standard. But with MFDs, it’s an actual bar, a ceramic magnet that goes on the bottom of the pickup, which covers a bigger magnetic field.

“That’s where the MFD name comes from – Magnetic Field Design. They naturally have more output and are cleaner throughout the whole spectrum. They don’t reach the saturation and breakup point that Alnico pickups do; they remain super-clean.

“So Leo’s MFDs are a whole different beast because you can dial them in there where they sound like single-coils, humbuckers and even P-90s.”

I mentioned the ASAT and the Legacy, but there’s also the Rampage, which Jerry Cantell made famous. Are more designs on the way?

“Everyone associates the Rampage with Jerry, and we’ve had that for a while. The big one we’re going to be making on a larger scale is a 24-fret version. We’d never done a 24-fret guitar, so the latest incarnation is the Rampage 24.

“It’s got the Floyd Rose, and there’s an ivory one, a black one and one with maple and ebony. But we’re coming out with a two-pickup version and one with a Kahler [tremolo] because the real diehard Cantrell fans want that.

“Beyond that, we’re going to have a run of artist models, some of which will eventually become production models. We’re excited about that.”

G&L remains relatively small. You mentioned that you see that as an advantage, but considering how competitive the space is, it must come with challenges.

“It’s important to always remind people of how close Leo is to G&L. These guitars are crafted in the spirit of Leo, and all our dealers are stoked about that. They love that we can make stuff quicker for them than many companies.”

What’s the key to G&L gaining a better foothold moving forward?

“Our social media has improved a lot. The messaging about Leo and G&L together is important for getting younger players to understand what we are and getting popular influencers to be involved.

“The more we showcase the connection to Leo, the better off we are. We have so many legacy players, like David Gilmour, Kenny Aaronson and Tom Hamilton, and newer players are starting to notice.

“We’re smallish, but we’re still growing and won’t have to expand beyond this same space. I don’t think we’ll ever move away from Fender Avenue. This is the building. Leo built all of this; this is Leo’s home.

“We’ll keep doing what we do and won’t get in over our heads. But production-wise, we’re going to hit it hard. We’re at the point now where we’ll keep growing like we have.”

• This article first appeared in Guitar World. Subscribe and save.

“I don’t know how to play a goddamned scale. I don’t know what a 13th is, or an augmented ninth. I could give a shit. All I do is make the guitar scream with pain or pleasure.”

So said the late Dick Dale to Guitar World's Alan di Perna a number of years ago.

The late surf guitar king was not a man of technical prowess, but he didn't need to be. The song that launched him to six-string immortality, Misirlou, was led by an iconic riff that was less a song-starter than a hell-raiser – the sort of guitar buzzsaw that Johnny Ramone (a big fan of Dale's) would perfect a decade and a half later.

The Stratocaster was Dale's weapon of choice, and subsequently became the sword with which the vast majority of self-respecting surf-rock guitar-slingers armed themselves.

Indeed, Dale was not only a Fender man to his bones, he had a close working relationship with Leo Fender himself.

Dale was fast to adopt the Strat, which hit stores in 1954, and said that it was Leo Fender who turned him onto it.

Having met Leo at Fender's headquarters – then located in Fullerton, California – Dale recounted of their first meeting, “I said, ‘Mr. Fender, I’m Dick Dale. I’m a surfer and I have no money. Can you help me?’ He looked at me and said, ‘Here, try this guitar.’

“I grabbed it, and when I turned it around, held it upside-down backwards and started playing ukulele chords, Leo almost fell off his chair laughing.”

And the close collaboration didn't end there.

As Dale's popularity grew in the early '60s, and he found himself playing to ever-larger packs of rowdy teens, the Fender amps at Dale's back began to buckle under his demands.

To the rescue, once again, came Leo Fender.

The groundbreaking inventor tasked the groundbreaking guitarist to essentially stress-test ever-updated versions of the company's Showman amplifier, which had initially been released in 1960.

It's said that Dale went through around 100 speakers before the JBL D130F 15-inch speaker finally proved strong enough to handle the guitarist's abuse.

And so went guitar amplification from there...

The following story was originally published in the July 2004 issue of Guitar World.

On its 50th birthday, which arrives this year, the Fender Stratocaster is looking even more youthful, cool, and ultramodernist suave than David Bowie did on his 50th.

The Strat remains the ultimate playing machine – ergonomic, responsive, sexy.

A young guitarist who picks one up for the first time today experiences much the same thrill players felt in 1954. The thing fits like a glove.

Before your mind even thinks to look for the volume knob and the tremolo bar, your fingers are already caressing them, and before you quite know what’s happening, your hands are producing “that Strat tone.”

It is one of the most distinctive sounds in all of guitardom – crystalline and translucent as clear running water, whether the guitar is plugged straight into an amp or channeled through a shimmering labyrinth of chorus, echo, and reverb. And even under the heaviest, filthiest distortion, that clarity is somehow still there.

“In my opinion, no instrument cuts across as many musical genres as the Stratocaster,” says Richard McDonald, Fender’s Vice President of Marketing. “An amazing body of music has been made on the Stratocaster. And if you’re inspired by that music, if you want to replicate it or if it’s just part of your musical background and learning, the sound of the Stratocaster guitar is embedded in your being.”

The list of legendary guitarists closely associated with the Strat is awe-inspiring; it includes Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, David Gilmour, Frank Zappa, Mark Knopfler, Yngwie Malmsteen, Bonnie Raitt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, to name just the cream of the crop.

What started as a guitar model in 1954 has become an industry in its own right. Fender currently produces some 20 signature-model Stratocasters, and the complete Fender/Squier line embraces more than 100 Strat variations.

Fender Senior Vice President of Market Development – and noted industry wag – Ritchie Fliegler declines to say how many Strats Fender were sold last year, but he offers, “It’s somewhere between a shitload and a fuckload. I can tell you that.”

The genesis of the Strat coincided almost miraculously with the birth of rock and roll. Three months after Fender’s April 1954 announcement of the Stratocaster, Elvis Presley released his first single, That’s All Right, on Sun Records.

Some six months after the first Strats rolled off Fender’s assembly line, in October ’54, the film Blackboard Jungle jolted America and the world with the rebellious new sound of mid–20th century youth gone wild.

All of which meant little or nothing to Clarence Leo Fender, a hardworking guy then in middle age who always said he preferred country music.

Even if he hadn’t invented the Stratocaster, Leo’s place in guitar history was already assured by 1953, when work on the Strat is generally thought to have begun. By this point, Leo had already given the world the Broadcaster (1950), which of course evolved into the Telecaster (1951), the first mass-produced solidbody electric Spanish-style guitar.

It was the instrument that introduced such landmark innovations as the bolt-on (as opposed to glued-in) neck, the one-piece maple neck, six-on-a-side tuning pegs, and distinctively bright-sounding single-coil pickups. Many of these design epiphanies would be carried over into the Stratocaster.

Place a Telecaster next to a Stratocaster, however, and it immediately becomes clear that Leo made a quantum leap between ’51 and ’54.

So what happened? Let’s start with what is arguably the Stratocaster’s most distinctive feature – its contoured body. The general outline is an outgrowth from another major Leo Fender innovation, the world’s first electric bass guitar, the Precision Bass, which had been introduced in 1952.

The PBass was the first Fender instrument to sport a double-cutaway body with extended “horns.” The horns were provided to help balance the instrument, which had a larger headstock than any previous Fender guitar. The Strat body represents an elegant refinement of this concept.

But that’s just the silhouette.

For a true and complete appreciation of the Strat body's beauty, it is necessary to examine it in three dimensions.

While the Tele is a flat slab of wood, the upper bout of the Strat body is rounded and gracefully contoured, scooping dramatically inward at the back, where the guitar meets the player’s torso, and curving more gently at the front, where the guitarist’s forearm rests. It looks like some surfboard designed to ride the rings of Saturn. But it’s all eminently practical.

The Strat’s body contours are the result of input Leo Fender received from professional guitarists working in and around Fullerton, California, the Los Angeles backwater that has long been Fenderland.

A guitarist named Rex Gallion is thought to be the first musician to tell Leo that the back of the Tele’s body dug painfully into the player’s rib cage. This observation was loudly seconded by country-and-western picker Bill Carson, who was to become a key member of the Strat design team.

“We respected [Carson’s] playing and leaned on him for advice,” Leo Fender told one journalist. “He was kind of our favorite guinea pig for the Strat, because we needed somebody who was dedicated to getting the job done.”

Helping Leo interpret the wishes and dreams of his guitarist consultants were Fender staff members George Fullerton, Forrest White, and Freddie Tavares. It was Tavares who first took pencil to paper and made the first sketches of what would become the Stratocaster body.

Guitar historians have a tendency to chase their own tails adjudicating who did what in designing the Strat. But what often goes overlooked is the credit due to the zeitgeist.

While it still looks astonishingly contemporary today, the Stratocaster is a quintessential piece of Fifties Moderne design. Its lines echo the contours of Charles Eames’ epoch-defining molded plywood chairs, of Heywood-Wakefield living room suites, or the coffee shops in the Southern California “Googie” style of architecture.

In his office at Fender’s current Scottsdale, Arizona, headquarters, Ritchie Fliegler fishes in his top desk drawer and pulls out an old Fifties drawing template.

“There isn’t a line on the Stratocaster that can’t be found on this,” he announces.

In our current era, when even squirt guns are designed using thousands of dollars’ worth of CAD/CAM software, this is a point well worth remembering.

The Stratocaster is the product of a more simple and idealistic era – a time when people felt they could change the world with paper, pencil, and maybe a few hand tools. While the Telecaster came out a few years after World War II, it still smacks of wartime attrition in many ways, which is why it’s such a cool, boxy, “commando” type of guitar.

The Strat, however, is an icon of post-WWII prosperity and optimism. It shares the confident flare of a full-length Fifties pleated skirt, the unstoppable thrust of a Cadillac tail fin. This can readily be seen when one compares the Tele and Strat headstocks. The former is small and cramped, like a tenement flat; the latter is spacious and opulently contoured, like a luxe house in the suburbs.

“That Telecaster peg head was very small,” George Fullerton once acknowledged, “and people used to make fun of it – ‘Looks like a bare foot,’ and so on – but there was a reason for doing that.

“Supplies were scarce in those days. We used to buy maple wood, and a lot of pieces were fairly narrow, so we designed a way we could get two [necks] out of it by having one end one way and the other end the other way. That wouldn’t work with the wider Strat peg head, so we had to spend more money on it.”

The Strat headstock seems to have been influenced by the machine head on an earlier guitar, designed by Southern California luthier Paul Bigsby for the legendary picker Merle Travis. Another Bigsby contraption – his vibrato arm tailpiece, which was starting to appear on guitars made by Gibson and Gretsch – may have provided the impetus for the Strat’s own whammy system.

This feature was roundly championed by another key player in the Strat story, Fender marketing manager Don Randall. With a keen eye to what the competition was doing, it was Randall who pressured Leo Fender to come up with a guitar that could join the Telecaster in forming a complete line of Fender electric guitars – a range of products that could be offered for sale in music stores.

In 1952 Gibson had introduced the Les Paul solidbody electric guitar, the company’s upmarket response to the Telecaster’s popularity. Randall felt a clear need for Fender to have its own “classy” instrument. Hence, when the Stratocaster was released, it sported a two-tone Sunburst finish redolent of fine woodworking, and up-to-the-minute features like a whammy bar.

Like many great cultural moments, the Stratocaster arose from the union of art and commerce. Another staunch endorsee of the idea that the Strat should have a vibrato arm was Bill Carson, who felt he could earn double scale on session dates if he had a device that would enable him to imitate the glissando of a pedal steel guitar.

Carson was the driving force behind much of the Strat’s distinctive hardware. He was the one who insisted that the instrument have six individual, adjustable string saddles – a first in guitar design.

Leo had gone halfway there by endowing the Telecaster with three saddles, with two adjacent strings sharing each saddle. But with this system, as Carson pointed out, it was impossible to intonate the instrument perfectly.

Carson also had a lot to do with the Stratocaster’s pickup configuration.

“I wanted a whole bunch of pickups,” he told one interviewer: “four or five. But Leo said they wouldn’t fit.”

And so the Strat was invested with its now-classic three-pickup array.

The bridge pickup was placed at an angle so as to coax more treble out of the high strings, but it also lends tremendous aesthetic appeal to the instrument, forming a graceful angle that leads the eye to the Strat’s constellation of three control knobs. The latter are placed within easy reach of the player’s picking hand – a virtual invitation to incorporate volume swells into one’s technique.

The decision to give the Strat no more than three pickups may have also been determined in part by the limited range of selector switches available on the mid-Fifties parts market.

“The switch on the Strat had three positions,” Leo Fender has noted, “and that helped decide the third pickup – and I think that Carson was agreeable that this would be a good idea.”

But players quickly discovered that extra sounds could be wrested from the Strat by jamming the switch between positions. This could be accomplished by inserting a matchbook cover or some other object into the switch. Thus, two pickups could be on at once, and select frequencies from each pickup would cancel one another out.

While the term is, strictly speaking, not technically correct, these sabotaged switch positions have come to be known as the Strat’s “out of phase” sounds. Over time, they’ve become an indispensable part of the instruments’ timbral palette.

When the Stratocaster – Don Randall came up with the name – first hit the market in late 1954, it was only available with a two-tone Sunburst finish and one-piece maple neck.

Several minor details of these first Stratocasters differ from the Strats we know and love today.

A different kind of plastic was used for the pick guard, for instance, and the lower part of the tone knobs, called the skirt, was smaller and less flared, hence the term “mini-skirt” knobs. But it was essentially a Strat, possessing the same distinctive tonal qualities and visual appeal of today’s Stratocasters.

Where the Telecaster was very much a country-and-western guitar, the Strat was a rock and roll machine right from the start.

In the hands of early rock and roll pioneers like Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, the futuristic Strat seemed custom-made for this exciting new form of music. Meanwhile, early sides by Buddy Guy and Otis Rush showed the Strat’s stinging blues potential to great advantage.

By 1959, the Stratocaster had undergone a few significant changes.

Fender temporarily retired the one-piece maple neck for the Strat and introduced a two-piece design with a rosewood fingerboard mounted on a maple neck. The rosewood fingerboards produced a slightly warmer tone and found favor with many players.

The one-piece maple neck would be reinstated in ’67, giving Strat enthusiasts a choice of flavors. By ’59, the original two-tone Sunburst finish had evolved into a three-tone Sunburst with more of a reddish luster. More dramatically, Fender had introduced bold new custom color options like Fiesta Red. These DuPont Duco automotive paint colors further enhanced the Strat’s “hot rod” image.

As the Sixties dawned, the Strat became the official guitar sound of a new style called surf music, as pioneered by Dick Dale, the Ventures, and the Beach Boys. With the arrival of the British Invasion in late 1964, however, the Strat underwent a temporary eclipse in popularity.

The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and other top groups were more often seen with Rickenbackers, Gretsches, Voxes, and Gibsons in those days. Coincidentally, Leo Fender suffered a health problem around this time, and in 1965 sold the company to corporate giant CBS for a then staggering 13 million dollars.

It was the end of the Strat’s first era, but the dawn of an extremely colorful second act. 1965 was also the year Bob Dylan shocked the folk community by “going electric” at the Newport Folk Festival, signaling the birth of folk-rock and the start of what many regard as rock music’s most fertile and expansive period.

The instrument Dylan chose to play on that momentous occasion was a Stratocaster. And by ’66 or so, the Who’s Pete Townshend – initially a Rickenbacker man – was using the more durable Stratocaster for the group’s violently explosive live shows, wresting a wild array of feedback and overdriven tones from his Marshall stacks, then a brand-new innovation.

All this wasn’t lost on the man who was to become perhaps the single greatest Stratocaster icon of all time.

The first album by the Jimi Hendrix Experience was issued in 1967, the same year that the group made its stunning American debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in the hippie haven of Northern California.

A lefty who played right-handed guitars turned upside down and restrung for left-handed playing, Hendrix virtually reinvented the Stratocaster, pushing the instrument to its limits, creating sounds Bill Carson never dreamed of. Hendrix was a pivotal figure in the invention and popularization of psychedelic music, but his music has transcended the era that first brought him to fame.

As the sun rose on the Seventies, heavy metal blossomed as one offshoot of the amped-up Strat style that Hendrix helped forge. One of the music’s first and most enduring guitar heroes was the Strat-wielding Ritchie Blackmore.

By the early Seventies, Eric Clapton had also become a conspicuous Strat player, having previously used Gibsons for much of his Sixties tenures with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Cream.

Clapton’s switch to Strats coincided with his leadership of Derek & the Dominos, whose 1970 album Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs was one of Slowhand’s greatest commercial successes. His ax of choice during this period was “Blackie,” a hybrid instrument assembled from the parts of several vintage Stratocasters.

In 1976, Jeff Beck also went over to Strats, just in time for the making of Wired – one of the best-selling instrumental albums of all time and one of the most precious gems in the entire Beck canon.

It is significant that not one but two of rock guitar’s foremost heroes forged their mature styles on Stratocasters. The Strat seemed to bring out the introspective side of Clapton’s blues classicism. And Beck’s use of the Strat whammy bar is every bit as revolutionary as Hendrix’s. Both Clapton and Beck have been closely associated with the Stratocaster ever since the Seventies.

In 1977, the five-position pickup switch finally became a standard Strat feature. Coincidentally enough, the following year saw the debut of a man whose name would become synonymous with the Strat’s “out of phase” pickup tone.

Leading Dire Straits, Mark Knopfler forged a lyrical, legato style that was far removed from the overdriven frenzy of Beck or Hendrix, but no less expressive.

But while the Seventies witnessed some of the greatest Strat playing of all time, the actual instruments produced during this era are not particularly popular with guitarists or collectors. Among other things, this was the era of the infamous tilt neck, held in place with three bolts, instead of the traditional four. But even these Strats have their aficionados, including Billy Corgan during his Smashing Pumpkins years.

The early Eighties saw a revival of interest in the blues, spearheaded by two towering giants of the Stratocaster, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Robert Cray. The decade will also be forever associated with shred mania, a genre whose patron saint, Yngwie Malmsteen, has always been a devotee of vintage Strats equipped with scalloped fingerboards.

At mid-decade – in March 1985, to be precise – Fender was purchased by a consortium of investors headed by Bill Schultz, a musical instrument industry vet who’d been acting as a consultant to Fender since ’81.

One of Schultz’s prime directives was to restore the Stratocaster to the pristine glory of its earlier years.

To this end, Fender instituted the American Standard Series, which combined classic Strat styling with features, such as the five-position pickup selector, that had become de facto standards through the years. Meanwhile the Fender Custom Shop, also established in ’86, launched a series of meticulously crafted vintage reissues, starting with ’57 and ’62 “Mary Kaye” models (blonde finish with gold hardware, named for guitarist Mary Kaye, an early Fender endorsee).

At the same time, Fender’s new owners sought to bring the Strat and other classic models into the future, forging relationships with innovative designers like pickup guru Don Lace and hardware mavens Trev Wilkinson and Floyd Rose.

The advent of the Stratocaster equipped with a Floyd Rose Tremolo system is what brought Frank Zappa into the fold. This was what Frank used on much of his highly virtuosic latter day work, up until his death in ’93.

The Strat cut a figure on the Nineties grunge scene thanks to the aforementioned Billy Corgan and Pearl Jam's Mike McCready. More recently the Stratocaster has become the instrument of choice for the pop-punk boom.

“Probably the biggest trend in Stratocaster bands over the last few years is guys like Tom DeLonge of Blink-182,” says Fender's Richard McDonald. “Look at all the bands where guys are downstroking on a Strat. And that goes back to Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day.

“Also recently we've had bands like the Vines and the Strokes using Stratocasters. I'm not sure what category you'd throw them in – just good old rock and roll, I guess.”

Meanwhile, the Strat continues to evolve. Recent design refinements include a contoured neck heel – probably the only surface on the thing that hadn't previously been contoured – and the S-1 pickup system. The latter is particularly cool.

By means of a two-way switch built into the volume pot, any of the five selectable pickup configurations can be wired in either series or parallel. It's an innovation that opens up many new tonal subtleties.

Fender is planning to celebrate the Strat's 50th birthday in grand style. The Fender Custom Shop will issue a limited-edition 1954 replica Strat, meticulously detailed down to specially retooled knobs and tremolo arm tips to match the quirks of the very first Strats.

The company will also issue a limited-edition 50th Anniversary American Deluxe Series Stratocaster and 50th Anniversary American Series Stratocaster, instruments that combine the look of the original '54 model with modern features such as the aforementioned S-1 switching. Beyond this, there will be everything from star-studded concerts to Strat-emblazoned commemorative Miller beer cans.

A fitting tribute, considering that the Stratocaster is the ultimate baby boomer. Born in the Fifties, it refuses to grow up. Having participated in many of rock history's greatest moments, it's still running with the young punks.

Richard Fortus believes Jimi Hendrix inadvertently fixed two glaring issues with Leo Fender’s Stratocaster design, and they’re mods he’s since made to some of his own electric guitars.

In a recent interview with Total Guitar, the Guns N' Roses and Dead Daisies guitarist said that Hendrix's flipped playing – which saw him employ a right-handed Strat as a leftie – actually helped improve the guitar's tone.

According to Fortus, by flipping the guitar upside down and therefore reversing the angle the bridge pickup sits at, and also reversing the headstock – a novelty some believe improves tuning stability – Hendrix vastly improved the guitar’s design.

Aerosmith’s Joe Perry, who Fortus spends much of the interview waxing lyrical about, noticed how those quirks impacted the guitar’s tone and promptly followed suit. In doing so, Fortus believes both players “corrected” Leo's original design with such simple tweaks.

“I think it probably came from his love of Hendrix,” Fortus ponders. “But having a left-handed headstock, you’ve got more string length on low strings where you want it, which is probably why Hendrix had such a piano-like low-end.

“I think Joe figured out that if you have a left-handed headstock, it increases the tension on the low strings and the top strings are going to be easier to bend. A lot of the photos that you see of Joe, he’s using either a left-handed Strat or a left-handed neck.”

As a fan of both Hendrix and Perry, Fortus also decided to take up the trend. It was especially influential when designing his Strat-style James Trussart Steel-O-Matic signature guitar – an instrument that gets plenty of stage time with the Dead Daisies.

The Stratocaster celebrates its 70th anniversary in 2024, but despite the instrument’s longevity, Fortus asserts: “Leo Fender sort of got it wrong, and Jimi Hendrix corrected it. Reversing that angle of the bridge pickup makes a big difference. It makes more sense.”

Crafting his signature axe with Trussart, then, provided the opportunity to rebuild a Strat-style guitar from the ground up. He believes the improvements that such minor tweaks deliver speak for themselves.

“It gives me a lot more brightness on the low end, more attack,” he believes. “The low end is tighter and thumpier, and so we did that on this guitar. We reversed the bridge pickup, and also up here I put a left-handed headstock on it so the tension is on the low strings, really where you want it.”

Not all of Fortus’ Strats have received this treatment. Discussing his 1960 Strat with MusicRadar in 2019, he said its vintage Unicorn pickup was “the best-sounding Strat bridge pickup I’ve ever heard”, and therefore no such modification was made.

The Les Paul is arguably the most recognizable and iconic electric guitar to ever feature in Gibson’s lineup, but had history panned out slightly differently, it might not have been a Gibson model at all – it could have been a Fender.

That sounds totally wild on paper – especially given the fact Gibson and Fender are two of the biggest brands out there, and two historical competitors – but the ‘Les Paul Fender’ actually came rather close to happening… sort of.

In an old 2009 interview recently resurfaced by MusicRadar, Les Paul himself recalled how Leo Fender had approached him and proposed partnering with one another to work on Paul’s design for a solidbody electric guitar.

At the time, Paul – who was friendly with Fender and other innovators of the era – was well underway developing and experimenting with his guitar prototype, “The Log,” which would pave the way for the Les Paul as we know it today.

And before Gibson finally agreed to work with Paul on the concept, Leo Fender spotted a window of opportunity that he tried to take.

"At that time Leo wanted me to be partners with him – for it to be the Fender guitar: the Les Paul Fender,” Paul recalled. “When he approached me with the idea, he brought over a guitar and he gave it to me and I have it here.”

Despite Fender's credentials in the guitar makers circle, he famously didn’t actually play the guitar, and so Paul was unconvinced that Fender represented the best opportunity for him and his guitar designs.

Instead, he wanted to go with a more historic establishment: Gibson, which was perceived by Paul as “the biggest company in the world.” 

“I thought, if I'm gonna do this I'm going to go with the biggest company in the world: Gibson,” he continued. “Why should I fool around with some guy who is not a musician – I should go to the Gibson people.”

However, those Gibson people weren’t initially too fussed on Paul’s proposition, and it took a while before The Log, its maker, and the prospect of developing a solidbody electric guitar had convinced the brand to come aboard and get behind the project.

By all accounts, it was actually the work of Fender – who had since gone on to produce the Broadcaster – that finally prompted Gibson to give credence to Paul’s design and vision.

The rest, as they say, was history, and it wasn't long before Paul's Number One was produced with the help of Gibson and Ted McCarty.

“The Gibson people turned it down and they continued to turn it down all the way to 1950,” Paul concluded. “Then in 1950, they called me and say, ‘Would you bring that gadget in?’”

The tonewood debate is one of guitardom’s most hotly contested conversations. While one school of thought asserts the tonewood of a guitar has a formative impact on its overall sound, the other camp would say the difference is negligible.

According to a new interview published by Reverb, Leo Fender – the man who helped pioneer the electric guitar as we know it today – sat in the latter category.

In the piece, Reverb sat down with Tim Bailey, a guitar player who befriended Forrest White (the VP at Music Man) in the mid 1970s, when Fender was helping fund the company. By the onset of the ‘80s, Fender had established the G&L brand, and Bailey was invited on a tour of the workshop.

There, Bailey saw the early prototypes of what became G&L’s first instrument, the F-100 – and was given the opportunity to quiz Fender over his guitar-building philosophy.

“I was very much a detail nerd and was interested to know why he chose particular things,” Bailey said, “which I guess he enjoyed being asked because he was forthcoming in his responses.”

One of those “particular things” Bailey asked about concerned the choice of tonewoods. On that subject, the two guitar fans were in agreement: Fender thought different body woods in solidbody electric guitars made minimal difference in tone.

“That’s why he used whatever wood was available for his body blanks,” Bailey recalls. “Over the years, Leo made his guitars out of pine, alder, ash, poplar, mahogany, and so on. When I asked why, he said he preferred what was readily available – and affordable. 

“And when he measured responses on his scope, he didn’t really see differences between woods. Remember, Leo was partially deaf by then, and he never learned to play a guitar, which may have influenced his feelings on the subject. However, I still agree with him.”

Bailey’s revelation might come as something of a surprise, but it seems Fender’s own thoughts occupy a middle ground in the tonewood debate. Indeed, while he didn’t see tonewood as a make-or-break tonal factor, he seemingly acknowledged a difference did exist – just not a difference large enough to encourage him to compromise on cost or material availability.

That differentiates from the views of modern guitar makers, such as Paul Reed Smith, who is one of the biggest champions of the tonewood school of thought.

Speaking to the Dipped In Tone podcast in 2022, Smith said, “I've heard it over and over and over and over again that the tonewoods don't make any difference whatsoever. It's just not true.”

More recently, Smith spoke to Guitarist, and discussed how tone is ultimately “a complicated equation that tonewoods are a part of”.

“His designs are some of the most identifiable in history, the tones some of the most iconic. Always in flux, always looking forward.” Dave McLaren of G&L guitars confirms Leo Fender was an even bigger genius than we thought.

This is a brief history of G&L Guitars, Leo Fender's swan song and a coda to the legacy he left to the music industry.

Calling Leo Fender the “godfather of guitar” doesn’t do him justice. The inventions and innovations he introduced to the community through his involvement in various companies continue to be a gold standard more than 80 years later.

“Leo was never one to rest on laurels,” says Dave McLaren, Owner and CEO of G&L. “He wasn’t just a trailblazer at the beginning, he symbolized continued evolution in guitar and amp manufacturing. A desire to always improve things.” 

Throughout shifting styles, tastes, and technology, Leo’s designs endure. One of his driving forces was that he was never satisfied. Always chasing the next great idea, the next big thing. And while he was undisputedly a generational innovator, he relied heavily on one person: George Fullerton.

An electronics engineer at heart and by trade despite no official training, Leo, George and the Fender Instruments team rolled out their creations at a breakneck pace. They were revolutionary, and were the first company to mass produce guitars and amplifiers.

To get the right context of where Leo ended his career, it’s important to examine the genesis of G&L.

After dealing with a serious health issue, Leo felt it was time to move on. He sold Fender to CBS in 1965. But due to the changes they enacted and the decline in quality, he was determined to get back to his craft and create instruments worthy of his name and efforts.

In the early 1970s, Leo was approached to finance a startup that would become Music Man Guitars, and in 1975 he became president of the company. But by the end of the decade the relationship soured.

That’s where the G&L story begins.

New beginnings… and new innovations

With the partnership between Leo and Music Man’s management at a breaking point, Leo decided to found a new company. In 1979, he and George Fullerton founded G&L (short for George & Leo) with Dale Hyatt, a sales guru that worked with them during the Fender era.

The inception of G&L was born out of the desire to craft electric guitars and basses that improved on Leo’s previous work. He wanted this new line to fit any musical style and be tonally versatile enough to appeal to every player. Specific focus points were key aspects like upgrading electronics and bridge/vibrato systems, and it’s clear a lot of G&L instruments are modeled after some of Leo’s all-time classics. 

All G&L instruments are manufactured in the same Fender Avenue facility in Fullerton, California where Music Man Guitars began and still remains. His private workshop, the epicenter of his creative spark, is still fully intact and toured by people from all over the world.

G&L’s instrument production is a combination of CNC machining and guitarcraft that allows a level of attention to detail and customization that’s much more difficult with larger-scale production.

Leo’s genius is on full display when it comes to the company’s manufacturing processes. He left no potentiometer unturned, and G&L introduced a number of novel guitar technologies to the industry.

His MFD (Magnetic Field Design) Pickups are constructed with special magnets and height-adjustable pole pieces. They aimed to provide what guitarists and bassists were seeking: sustain and tonal flexibility with reduced noise. 

As guitarists were demanding more flexibility with electronics, Leo engineered the PTB (Passive Treble and Bass) tone control. It allows the player to dial in low and high end frequencies independently. And the Tri-Tone preamp system offers pickup selection between active and passive modes in addition to volume, treble, and bass controls.

Building on a previous design is the Dual-Fulcrum vibrato system, an evolved version of Fender’s Synchronized tremolo. Using two large pivot points instead of the traditional six wood screws, it promises better feel, smoother shift, more tuning stability, and can shift pitch up and down. It provides a lot of the features of a locking system without the upkeep headaches.

The saddle-lock bridge enhances string vibration transfer to the body and allows for more sustain, resonance, attack, and reduces string wear. Via an adjustment screw, the saddles can be compressed against each other, reducing side-to-side movement. This makes them act as a singular unit and aims to reduce or eliminate sustain killing lateral vibration.

Leo and Dale noticed the ’80s trend of vibratos with locking nuts and fine tuners catching on, and some of G&L’s mid-’80s models used Kahler tremolos while Leo worked on his own design. In 1989, he created a “patent pending” tremolo called the Leo Fender with Fine Tuners. It was compact and didn’t use energy-siphoning roller saddles that were common at the time.

Leo’s legacy

Over the years, G&L instruments struck a chord with artists across all genres – from rock players like Jerry Cantrell of Alice in Chains, Tom Hamilton of Aerosmith and Ben Gibbard of indie darlings Death Cab for Cutie to Eddie Willis of Motown legends The Funk Brothers, Daryll Hall, even John Salley of Beastie Boys. Leo’s latter-year designs continued to have wide appeal.

G&L has made a lifelong commitment to keeping Leo’s legacy alive. He respected his past work while always looking toward the future. His creed echoes his inventor spirit: “If it’s broken, fix it. If it’s not broken, make it better.” 

By the time he formed G&L, Leo’s accomplishments in the music industry were already etched in the history books. He passed away on a rainy day in March of 1991, the weather a fitting allegory to the loss of this titan of the guitar community.

Serendipitously, that was also the day he finalized his last prototype. The fact that Leo continued innovating to the very end of his life, even as his health was sunsetting, is testament to his immutable creative heart.

Always thinking forward, Leo wanted G&L to continue to grow after he was gone – to make sure his employees were taken care of and allow them the freedom to take his legacy forward.

McLaren and the G&L team are dedicated to preserving the storied history and rich legacy of Leo’s designs, continuing to refine things as he would have wanted.

“G&L will always be willing to make changes. Leo Fender was a symbol of change and evolution for the benefit of musicians,” says Owner and CEO Dave McLaren. “But for any changes considered, we ask ourselves, ‘Would Leo have wanted it this way?’ We always want to feel that Leo would be proud of today’s G&L”. 

Famously, Leo is quoted as saying, “G&L instruments are the best I have ever made.” And it’s clear that with the accomplishments he left behind, the legacy of his guitar designs is in safe hands.

Besides, who could outdo Leo but himself?

Ranked number 38 on our list of The 100 Greatest Bass Players of All Time, Louis Johnson, or ‘thunder thumbs,’ as he was also known, was one of the most enigmatic thumpers to ever pick up a bass guitar. His pioneering use of slap bass landed him on Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller albums – including the disco romp of Get On The Floor and the hit single Billie Jean – as well as George Benson’s Give Me The Night and Michael McDonald’s I Keep Forgettin' (Every Time You're Near).

Johnson also scored a number of hits with his brother George as part of The Brothers Johnson, whose funk anthems included Stomp!, Get the Funk Out Ma Face, and Strawberry Letter #23. He played with such power that he regularly blew his bass amplifier’s speakers.

Using his custom MusicMan Stingray – designed by Leo Fender himself – Johnson was able to produce a distinctively funky, slap sound, as seen in his two instructional videos, Louis Johnson Master Session 1, and somewhat inevitably, Master Session 2.

Watching videos of Johnson play slap bass is simply incredible; his hands move so fast it’s a wonder how he managed to control the bass and produce such a magnificent sound. While often expected to add his fast-paced, signature slap to every bassline, Johnson knew better – “I actually wear weight-lifting gloves to slow me down,” said Johnson in a 1997 interview for Bassist Magazine. “If you wear gloves when you play slap bass, it holds you back, which in turn makes you a better bass player. I sometimes play too fast when I don’t wear the gloves."

Bear in mind that it takes considerable strength to build up the stamina necessary for this technique. As Louis also warned. ”After a while your skin has to give against bass strings because it’s only flesh and blood! Often I would play and end up all bloody-handed, which is why I decided to make a thumb protector. I made all kinds of different protectors: metal and plastic, until I found that a nickel protector sounded best against the strings I was using.”

While weight-lifting gloves enabled Johnson to take back some control over his technique, while also adding some serious dynamics to his basslines, other well-known bass players have also embraced the trend, and for a number of different reasons. A genius bass guitar hack? Or a gimmick to avoid at all costs?

“I wear silk gloves because they keep my strings bright,” Cameroonian bassist Ettiene Mbappe told BP. “Without gloves you get sweat on your strings and that makes them sound dull. I’ve been playing with gloves for more than twenty years now and you know what? They are becoming more famous than I am with the not-so-easy-to-pronounce name, MBappé. Just say, ‘the bass player with the gloves’, and people will know. I even love the look!”

ScottsBassLessons founder Scott Devine was another early adopter of silk gloves. ”It’s nothing to do with tone,” explains Scott in this video. “I’ve got a neurological movement disorder called focal dystonia and the gloves are just something I have to wear to help me play bass.”

The Brothers Johnson Bass Book from Bassline Publishing is now available on Amazon.

G&L has added a new CLF Research edition of its Strat-style S-500 to its lineup of electric guitars.

In line with the ethos of G&L’s CLF Research line – which “represents Leo Fender’s legacy for continuous innovation” by combining original concept designs with “unique proprietary features”, the all-new CLF Research S-500 is touted as a “retro-futurist dream”, with features including Leo’s Magnetic Field Design pickup technology and a Dual Fulcrum vibrato system.

The guitar is an evolution from the company’s existing S-500 from an electronics standpoint; G&L’s John R McLaren has modified certain specs of the pickups, including length of pole pieces, wire turns and coil bobbin aperture. This results, G&L says, in a “softer, sparklier sound without losing the sense of smoothness and strength expected from an S-500”.

These pickups are controlled via G&L’s PTB (Passive, Treble, Bass) system – a three-knob system which allows for more precise tonal control – as well as a five-way selector switch and expander toggle, which offers an even greater range of pickup switching options.

Additionally, the guitar was developed taking inspiration from G&L’s fan communities on Facebook and Instagram. Interactions prompted the company to “draw together functional and styling elements prepared at CLF Research in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s”, including a three-ply black pickguard and machined CLF knobs.

Other features include a headstock based on an original G&L design – modified to fit Kluson tuners – as well as a bolt-on neck construction, 22 medium jumbo frets, and a 25.5” scale length.

“The CLF Research S-500 has a look, sound and vibe that takes us back to the golden age of Leo on Fender Avenue, home of what he considered his finest creations,” G&L says.

In terms of availability, the CLF Research S-500 comes in two configurations: Tobacco Sunburst with a Caribbean rosewood fingerboard, or Mocha with a maple ‘board. Both are priced at $1,999. For more info, head to G&L.

Bigsby vibratos were the must-have accessories for pioneering country pickers, rockabilly tearaways and 1960s psychedelic blues experimentalists. These days, they’re as popular as ever with indie rockers and ambient noiseniks.

That’s quite remarkable for a product that has remained essentially unchanged since 1951 – but Bigsby vibratos simply work because they work simply.

There was clearly demand for a mechanical guitar vibrato device long before Paul Bigsby turned his attention to it, and if you were a pro player then that probably meant a Kauffman Vibrola. 

Clayton Orr ‘Doc’ Kauffman came up with his design back during the 1930s when he worked for Rickenbacker, and he subsequently co-founded K&F Manufacturing Corporation with his close friend Leo Fender. 

Kauffman Vibrola users included Les Paul, Chet Atkins and Merle Travis, and it was Travis who first approached Paul Bigsby to repair the problematic Vibrola on his Gibson L-10. The repair wasn’t a complete success, so Travis encouraged Bigsby to design and build his own vibrato device instead.

How Bigsbys Work

Paul Bigsby was a ‘fix anything, build anything’ kind of guy and he started out designing and building parts for motorcycles. Much of his work involved casting and machining metal, and he was certainly influenced by Rickenbacker’s aluminium ‘frying pan’ guitar. 

When Bigsby moved into instrument manufacturing, he combined figured maple with tooled aluminium components. His vibrato design was largely derived from his biking background, but it also incorporates some elements of traditional instrument making. 

Prior to the solidbody era, electric guitar players were still playing big-bodied archtops. Strings were typically anchored on a tailpiece that folded around the edge of the body and was secured against the tailblock. Bigsby replaced the tailpiece with a solid casting that attached in the same way but rested on top of the body, rather than floating above it.

The Kauffman Vibrola rocked side to side, but Bigsby realised he could achieve a vibrato effect by allowing the string anchor points to rotate forwards and backwards. Of course, the ability to return to pitch accurately is a basic requirement for any vibrato system, and Bigsby employed a couple of common engineering components to achieve this.

He would have been more than familiar with bearings and springs from his work with motorcycles. Low friction is critical, so the main section of Bigsby’s vibrato has two large holes drilled into the aluminium casting to accommodate a pair of roller bearings. A bar with string-securing pins slots through these bearings and is secured at one end by a circlip.

Bigsbys have a robust spring to counteract the string tension. The main moulding incorporates a small cup for the spring to sit in and a bracket, attached to the string bar with a grub screw, rotates forward to cover the top of the spring.

With the strings tuned up to pitch, the tension keeps the whole assembly pressed tightly against the guitar body and the bracket applies sufficient downwards pressure to hold the spring in place. The spring is calibrated to counteract string tension, while remaining soft enough to compress when the handle attached to the bracket is pressed downwards. 

Ultimately, the Bigsby vibrato is a mechanical engineering solution to a musical problem. As such, it blazed a trail for many of the guitar hardware innovations that followed over the following decades. 

Model Variations

In the rapidly evolving electric guitar scene of the early 1950s, Paul Bigsby’s ‘one size fits all’ approach soon became unsustainable. For smaller semi-solid archtops, such as the Gretsch Duo Jet, Bigsby introduced a shorter version of the B6 with a scaled-down hinge called the B3.

For guitars with lower arches and flat tops, such as Les Pauls and various ES models, the B7 features a front roller bar to increase the string break angle over the bridge, and it has to be screwed onto the top.

The B5, nicknamed the ‘Horseshoe Bigsby’, also features a front roller but no hinge. Designed to be screwed onto the front of flat-topped guitars, it suits SGs, Telecasters, Juniors, Rickenbackers and Firebirds.

Bigsby even designed a vibrato specifically for Telecasters. With integrated bridge pickup mounting and a cutout for a drop-in bridge, the B16 is impressive, but it’s a big commitment and there are other options that preserve more of the authentic Tele tone and vibe.

During the 1960s, Bigsbys were so popular that production was farmed out to Selmer, who built them under licence in the UK. Bigsby also made branded versions for Gretsch and Guild. 

By 1965, health issues forced Paul Bigsby to sell his company to former Gibson president Ted McCarty. Fred W Gretsch purchased Bigsby in 1999 and two decades later Bigsby was acquired by its current owner, the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.

Modular Mods

The basic Bigsby design has remained unchanged, but as a modular system it’s possible to swap some components in order to modify the feel and enhance playability. 

For example, Bigsbys have been offered with a variety of handles, which are very easy to swap. Simply slacken off the grub screw that’s securing the bracket to the pin bar using an Allen key. Popular options include the Merle Travis, Chet Atkins/Wire Arm, Duane Eddy and vintage wide handles.

Some players, including Darrel Higham, prefer the original non-swivel-style fixed handle, but it comes down to personal taste. You can also adjust the ‘swivel-ability’ of your handle by tightening or loosening its fixing screw. But if it’s set too loose, the vibrato may feel less responsive and precise.

The spring’s height and stiffness affect the feel of the vibrato and the height of the handle. Again, it’s really a matter of taste, but some players prefer the softer feel of the Reverend spring.

Bear in mind that a softer spring may compress when you bend strings – just like a three-spring Strat setup. If you like the feel of your spring but would like your handle to be a bit higher, try placing a coin under the spring. It will need to be wider in diameter than the spring but narrower than the ‘cup’ that the spring sits in. 

Owners sometimes struggle to hook strings onto the pins of Bigsby-equipped guitars. In recent years, ‘pinless’ Bigsbys have been introduced to allow through-bar stringing. You can remove the pins and drill out the bar for through-stringing, but it’s safer and easier to retrofit a Callaham pinless bar or a Vibramate String Spoiler.

Elsewhere, some find that Bigsbys with front rollers have compromised sustain and frequency response. If you feel that way, check out the Callaham Front Roller upgrade kit. This direct replacement is made from stainless steel and is claimed to improve sustain and tuning stability.

Front rollers can induce a very sharp break angle over the bridge, which may prevent the strings from sliding freely over it. The BiggsFix Tuning Stabilizer mounts into the existing roller holes, but it’s raised up to soften the break angle and improve tuning stability.

If you want to retrofit a Bigsby to a stop tailpiece guitar but you’re reluctant to drill holes into the body, check out the Vibramate range of products. They offer non-destructive Bigsby-mounting systems for Les Pauls, SGs, ES models, Telecasters, Flying Vs and more besides. 

Also investigate the Towner product range, which includes a Down Tension Bar that mounts onto stop tailpiece bushings and enables the use of B3 and B6 Bigsbys on guitars that would otherwise need a front roller Bigsby.

It also offers a hinge-plate adaptor that allows solid fixing via the strap-button screwhole, plus spacer blocks for extra mounting options on various guitars, including Firebirds.

Maintenance Tips

So long as you understand their limitations, Bigsbys are reliable and stable. If you do experience tuning issues when using one, you can usually trace the problems to the bridge, bridge saddles, nut or tuners, rather than the Bigsby itself. You should also ensure the unit sits properly on top of the guitar and doesn’t rock from side to side. The use of additional felt spacer pads may be needed if it does.

Very old Bigsbys can stiffen up due to congealed grease, dried-up oil and dirt accumulation. It usually takes years (or even decades) for these issues to manifest, though, and plenty of ancient Bigsbys still work perfectly. 

Next time you remove your strings, try turning the pin bar and front roller (if you have one) by hand. Both should spin freely with no resistance, but if that isn’t the case, it’s clean-up time. You’ll need an Allen key to remove the grub screws securing the string pins, plus circlip pliers to release the pin bar. 

With the circlip and grub screws now removed, the pins can be pushed out of the bar and the bar will slide out of the casting. You’ll see roller bearings mounted in the casting, and these should be flushed out with naphtha (aka lighter fluid – so don’t forget to work in a well-ventilated area). 

Once they’ve dried off, apply fresh lithium grease to the bearings and wipe off any excess. The pin bar will most likely be sticky, too; if this is the case, you can clean it with naphtha or acetone. Follow up with some chrome polish in the areas where the bar contacts the bearings.

Front rollers are secured by a grub screw on the underside of the casting and you can use an Allen key to remove it. The central bar can be pulled out of the casting and separated from the roller tube, which has bearings at each end. 

Soak both parts in naphtha until all the old oil and grease can be removed, polish the bar and apply fresh grease to the bearings before reassembly. The whole process shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, and your Bigsby should be good for another decade or so.  

The Telecaster used to be quite an underrated guitar, but it seems like over the past few years, the wider guitar community has finally seen it for what it is, probably the most versatile guitar you can buy right now. Adding one of the best Telecasters to your arsenal is a move that will allow you to play pretty much any style, whether it’s country, blues, rock, punk, grunge, or even metal.

The reason the Telecaster is so versatile is because of its combination of pickups. On the one hand, you have an incredibly bright bridge single coil, which is partially due to it being attached to a metal plate. At the other end, you have a much darker neck single coil, which is in large part down to the chrome plate that covers it. Because of these two opposite ends of the spectrum, you can combine different configurations, leading to a vast array of tonal options. Add in a super stable hard tail bridge, and you’ve got an electric guitar that’s great for gigging and recording, too.

If you’re after the best Telecaster overall, I think it’s the Fender Player II Telecaster. It’s fantastic value for money, bridges the gap nicely between classic tones and modern playability, and is available in a huge array of colorways. If you need something cheaper, have a look at the Squier Affinity Telecaster, which is amazing value for money around the $330 mark.

If you’re buying your first Telecaster, be sure to check out my how to choose section. I’ve also answered loads of common questions around this uber-popular guitar in our FAQs section, and outlined any key terms you’ll need to know in a glossary of key terms.

Best overall

Overview

Fender’s Player Series sums up everything that makes Fender guitars so popular. Now in its second iteration, the Player II series has simplicity and quality at the heart, and the Player II Telecaster doesn’t disappoint.

Build quality

The gloss-finished alder body and bolt-on maple neck make for a classic combination, delivering plenty of that iconic Tele ‘twang.’ However, this refreshed series now offers more choices, including chambered ash and chambered mahogany bodies, available in an array of stunning new finishes such as Mocha and Aquatone Blue.

Playability

Perhaps controversially so, the Player II Series has 22 frets rather than the traditional 21 - but the Player II Telecaster isn’t built to stick to the rules. It’s here for people who want an all-new experience on a classic, simple, workhorse guitar.

The ‘Modern C’ neck profile is crafted for both performance and comfort, featuring a smooth satin finish that avoids the stickiness often associated with gloss lacquer. With the addition of rosewood fingerboards alongside maple in the Player II series, there’s now a style to suit every preference.

Sounds

The Player II series single-coils reaffirm that instantly recognizable tone, but are wound just that little bit hotter - keeping one foot firmly in the present day. That means you can get bags of that classic Tele spank for more vintage Tele tones, while it copes well with the higher gain demands of grunge and punk. The combination of bright bridge pickup and woolly neck tone makes it super versatile, allowing you to cover a range of light and dark tones.

Best budget

Overview

The Squier Affinity series is Fender’s answer to offering their unique designs and historic tones to the beginner electric guitar market. For those starting their journey in guitar, these instruments offer tremendous value for money, and though they can’t offer the full Fender experience, costing around a fifth of the cheapest American-made models, these guitars are virtually unbeatable within the sub-$350 end of the market.

Build quality

The Telecaster’s longevity can largely be attributed to its no-nonsense, straightforward build. It’s familiar, comfortable to play, and deceptively versatile, qualities that shine in the Affinity Series Telecaster. Its simple build means that there’s not much to go wrong here, and the Affinity model is very well put together indeed.

Playability

The satin 'C'-shaped neck offers exceptional comfort, and while it doesn’t feel quite as nice as some of the more expensive Teles with rolled fingerboard edges, it’s not a bad playing guitar either. The 9.5” radius offers a nice in-between point of traditional versus modern, and the Laurel fingerboard feels smooth and well finished.

Sounds

The ceramic single coil pickups lack the nuance of an Alnico variant, but they still do a pretty good job. There’s a bit of sharp high end here in the bridge position, which can be neutralized with careful EQ, but it’s only really noticeable when played clean.

Once you get into overdriven tones, this gets smoothed out, resulting in a very usable tone. The neck pickup is dark as you’d expect, but again, it’s more than usable, particularly for beginners who won’t have developed an ear to determine the nuances between different pickup material types.

Best Telecaster with humbuckers

Overview

After an increase in higher-gain players over the course of the 1960s, Fender hired former Gibson pickup guru Seth Love to help update their debut solid-body electric design. The fruits of the collaboration arrived in 1972 as the Telecaster Deluxe, the perfect Telecaster for those who can’t do without humbucker tones. The Fender American Vintage II 1975 Telecaster Deluxe features a pair of those wide-range humbuckers that are perfect for those who want a harder edge on their Tele.

Build quality

I really enjoyed the fact that it has a belly cut, which makes it a lot more comfortable when you’re playing standing up. Solid stainless steel saddles stand out from the more typical vintage-inspired brass ones you’d expect to see, while at the other end, a set of Schaller tuners handles those duties. It’s also got a double string tree where you’d normally expect to see just a single one.

Playability

70s-specific features include a slimmer-than-usual ‘C’ neck profile, making this a seriously comfortable instrument. It took me a little by surprise during my testing, but it was ultra comfortable thanks to an excellent out-of-the-box setup. A 9.5” radius works really well with the medium jumbo frets, feeling slightly more modern than the more vintage spec Teles in this article.

Sounds

Now, although the humbuckers were designed to help Fender compete with Gibson, they don’t quite deliver Les Paul tones. I found the Deluxe to deliver a more gritty, darker texture than that of a regular Tele bridge pickup, with excellent sustain and a really nice, controllable feedback at higher gain levels.

Balancing tones between the pickups and their individual tone controls gives you lots of options for experimentation, and they sound great clean, too. There’s plenty of nice clean clank here, but if you need it you’ve got more in the tank if you need it.

Best modern Telecaster

Overview

Initially launched in 2022, Fender's flagship American series, the Ultra, has evolved, and the Fender American Ultra II Telecaster represents the more forward-thinking arm of the company’s offering.

Build quality

Designed with the modern player in mind, this updated series features compound-radius fretboards, tapered heels, sculpted bodies, revoiced Ultra II noiseless pickups, locking tuners, and a selection of stunning new finishes, with Avalanche and Sinister Red being particularly mind-blowing. Completing the premium aesthetic, the Fender logo is rendered in elegant gold foil on the headstock.

Playability

The American Ultra II Tele wears these updates well. It has a compound 10”-14” radius that feels right, especially atop the new Modern D profile neck. It’s a profile that plays quickly but fills the palm in all the right ways, with its satin finish a super-smooth enabler for swift position shifts. The Luminlay side dots are also a nice touch, guiding you to safety amidst dark and dingy venues.

Sounds

For all the modern accouterments, the American Ultra II Tele is still a textbook Tele, with raunchy twang and more than a little snarl when you turn the gain up. The S-1 switch allied to the 3-way pickup position switching makes it sound a little like the greatest hits of Tele tone. That in itself is enough of a recommendation.

Watch our Fender American Ultra II Telecaster demo

Best vintage Telecaster

Overview

Designed to replicate the exact year of manufacture, Fender’s Vintera II ‘50s Nocaster is in my mind, the perfect vintage Tele. When the Tele as we know it today initially launched, it was called the Broadcaster. Unfortunately, Gretsch also had a drum kit named the Broadkaster, and as you can imagine, disputes ensued. Those models manufactured between the Broadcaster and 1951 when it became known as the Telecaster are often dubbed ‘Nocasters’ as they only bore the Fender logo on their headstock.

Build quality

History lesson aside, this guitar is vintage Tele through and through. It’s a barebones Tele very much in the vein of the original, with the classic plate-mounted bridge pickup and chrome-covered neck single coil alongside a three-saddle vintage-style bridge with brass saddles.

Playability

‘Vintage-tall’ frets that are narrow paired with a 7.25” radius and a chunky ‘U’ profile neck give the Nocaster a decidedly old school neck feel, one that could prove divisive for those used to more modern specs. It’s heaven if you love vintage guitars though, and coupled with a low action, we found barre chords came easily, as well as fast blues scale runs. It may seem initially hefty, but you get used to it quickly.

Sounds

In terms of tones, I found the bridge pickup to be beefier than you might expect, which gives you that famous twang when you dig in. It always manages to stay just shy of harsh, though, offering a cutting tone that’s adaptable to many styles. The bridge pickup is lovely and warm, and I found it to be really musical. Put both pickups on at the same time and play with the tone knob for a massive array of sounds. It’s a simple guitar, but you can coax so many great sounds out of it.

Best Telecaster for metal

Overview

As the guitarist in one of the most successful metal bands the world has seen, Slipknot guitarist Jim Root (aka #4) knows a thing or two about high-gain tones. If you want that classic Tele look but are after a guitar better built for heavy tones, then this signature model is a great shout.

Build quality

Jim’s signature Telecaster features some less-usual appointments, including an ebony fingerboard, locking tuners, black hardware, no tone control, a Hardtail strings-thru-body bridge, and his favorite active EMG pickup set. IT even has a mahogany body which is very unusual. It’s a simple machine that’s well put together, great for gigging guitar players.

Playability

The neck profile is probably the least unusual thing about this guitar, featuring Fender’s popular modern ‘ C’ profile. It’s not the shredder's neck you’d expect from the Slipknot guitarist, but it’s still ultra-playable whether you’re chugging riffs or ripping leads.

Sound

Probably the most un-Tele like Tele on this list, with an active pickup set, you can expect high-powered tones with bags of sustain. It sounds big and warm, miles away from the twang typical Telecasters are famous for. If you want to chug, this guitar will absolutely indulge you. The bridge pickup is all power, but the neck is a little lower output, giving you some great options for cleaner tonalities.

The result of this collaboration with Fender is a high-powered workhorse that will be able to cut through the mix and have no problem voicing the kind of lower tunings bands like Slipknot were responsible for popularizing. It’s not a classic Telecaster by any means, but it is one of the best metal guitars available right now.

Also consider

So those are our top picks, but there are many more great options to choose from that offer something a little different in terms of features and performance. We've selected some more of our favorites below.

How to choose

When you’re on the hunt for your perfect Telecaster, there are a few key things to keep in mind.

1. Tonewoods

First up, tonewoods matter. The Telecaster typically features ash or alder, which balances weight and sound. Ash gives you a slightly brighter tone, while alder offers a well-rounded frequency response – perfect for that classic Tele twang, but there are a number of different woods used, such as mahogany, and if you're George Harrison, then solid rosewood!

2. Pickups

Now, let’s talk pickups, which, of course, are crucial for shaping your sound. Most Teles come with single-coil pickups that deliver a bright and clear sound, often with that signature chime and clarity. If you want a beefier tone, you might want to check out models with humbuckers or those that mix both. This way, you can explore a broader range of sounds.

3. Hardware

Don’t forget about hardware; better quality tuners and sturdy components can seriously enhance tuning stability and sustain. And when it comes to neck profiles, it’s all about personal preference. Some players love thin necks for speed, while others prefer a thicker feel that's great for blues and rock.

Above all, trust your instincts. Sometimes, the right Telecaster just feels right when you pick it up. Use this guide to navigate your options, but keep an open mind. You might just stumble upon your dream Telecaster sooner than you think.

FAQs

Key terms

• Ash: A popular tonewood known for its bright tone and resonant qualities. It’s lightweight but strong, giving a nice balance to your sound.
• Alder: Another common wood for Telecasters, offering a warm, well-rounded tone. It’s a go-to for that classic Tele sound.
• Binding: The decorative strip that goes around the body of the guitar. It can add some flair and also protect the edges.
• Bridge: The part of the guitar where the strings attach to the body. It plays a big role in tuning stability and tonal character.
• Frets: The metal strips on the neck that help you change the pitch by pressing down the strings. More frets usually mean more notes to play!
• Humbucker: A type of pickup that uses two coils to cancel out noise, giving you a thicker, warmer sound compared to single-coils.
• Neck: The long part of the guitar where you play notes. Different neck shapes and woods can affect your playing comfort and style.
• Pickup: The device that captures the vibrations of the strings and converts them to an electrical signal. Different pickups can drastically change your sound.
• Rosewood: A popular wood used for fretboards, known for its smooth feel and warm tone. It can add a bit of richness to your sound.
• Saddles: The small pieces on the bridge that hold the strings in place. They can influence sustain and tone, as well as how easily you can adjust the action.
• Single-coil: A type of pickup known for its bright and clear sound. These are classic for Telecasters and are part of what gives them that signature twang.
• Squier: A more affordable brand under the Fender umbrella, offering budget-friendly versions of classic Fender models like the Telecaster, great for beginners.
• Tonewood: The type of wood used in the body, neck, and fretboard, which affects the guitar’s sound and overall vibe.
• Tuners: The tuners, or machine heads, that hold the strings in place and allow you to tune your guitar. Better tuners mean better tuning stability.

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Guitar World boasts over 44 years of expertise and stands as the ultimate authority on all things related to guitars. The magazine and website feature expertly written gear round-ups and top-quality, authoritative reviews penned by a team of highly experienced industry professionals.

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Furthermore, GuitarWorld.com continues this legacy online and serves as the hub of the world's foremost authorities on guitar playing. The site not only hosts content from Guitar World but also showcases articles from respected publications such as Guitarist, Total Guitar, Guitar Techniques, and Bass Player. With a reach extending to 3.8 million players each month, GuitarWorld.com is a go-to destination for guitar fanatics globally.

How we test

Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar-related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best Telecasters available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best Telecasters on the market right now.

Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.

”Fender amps are rooted in Leo Fender’s radio repair shop,” says Terry. “By 1940, he had a full-time business with several employees in Fullerton under the Fender name. It was very successful in the local area, and, according to Leo, they did over 10,000 repair jobs in 1943 alone. 

”Around that time, Doc Kauffman – a local professional musician and inventor – would often go into Leo’s shop, which also sold records and sheet music, and they struck up a friendship. Doc came onboard full-time in 1942 and they ended up patenting a pickup [called the Direct String Pickup], so Leo used his existing knowledge of radio to adapt an amp for it. That’s when Doc starts making lap steels and Leo starts making custom amplifiers. 

“They also invented an automatic record changer and could have made millions, but they sold the rights and used the money to start up K&F [Kauffman & Fender], building lap steel sets with amplifiers designed by Leo and his employee Ray Massie. 

”However, because of the war effort, it didn’t really get going until November 1945. They had distribution deals and it was a relatively successful start-up, but K&F didn’t last long; Doc was more risk-averse than Leo and they amicably parted ways in February 1946. Manufacturing then continued under the Fender brand.” 

1. Woodies (1946-1948)

“These are the earliest Fender-branded amps and although they existed prior to Doc and Leo splitting, Leo did advance the designs somewhat. By this stage, Leo had a line of amplifiers. There was the [4.5-watt] Princeton, which was a tiny student model with an eight-inch speaker. Then there was the single 10-inch [10-watt] Deluxe/Model 26 – it has often been said the ‘26’ is a reference to February ’46. And there was the [18-watt] Professional, which has a 15-inch speaker. 

“In terms of rarity, I’ve only seen a handful of Princetons and a handful of Professionals. Most of the woodies you see are the mid-line Deluxe/Model 26, so that was probably their bestseller. In early ’48, Leo introduced the [16-watt] Dual Professional, which is the very first Fender tweed amp. It’s got two 10-inch speakers and has an angled front with a vertical metal strip. Leo was constantly moving forward trying to improve his designs.”

2. TV-Fronts (1948-1953)

“This first full tweed line was easier to manufacture than the woodies. It meant they could use less expensive pine – rather than hardwoods such as maple and walnut – and the wood didn’t need to be finished. It was all about simple, elegant designs that were easy to service and replicate at scale. At this point in time, Leo’s radio shop was selling TVs, which was the next big thing, so Leo likely took inspiration from there. 

“The first TV-front samples went out in May ’48. In the TV-front line, there was still a Princeton and a [1x12] Deluxe, but the Professional became the Pro-Amp, and the Dual Professional was renamed the Super. That year, the line was expanded to include the [4-watt/1x8] Champion 800 student amp [superseded by the 3-watt/1x6] Champion 600 in ’49], and in ’52, the [26-watt/1x15] Bassman was released to accompany the Precision Bass.”

3. Wide Panels (1952-55)

“Leo was always tweaking his designs and moving forward. The look of the amps changed for the same reason things change now: how do you promote the new stuff? It’s got to look different from the old stuff. Fender were selling more amplifiers than electric Spanish guitars during this period. There are some great photos online of BB King playing Gibson guitars, but he’s using TV-front and wide panel Fender amps. 

“The new [15-watt/1x15] Bandmaster and [25-watt/2x12] Twin amps that were added to the line were directed at the professional musician. Audiences were getting bigger; the Western swing bands of the early 50s were playing dance halls packed with 5,000 people every night. It was big business in the South West and California. This new technology meant they could project the sound and make the same music with less people on stage, which made their business more profitable.”

4. Narrow Panels (1955-1964)

“The narrow panel line used less wood, but it was also another way of refreshing the look. The block logo, which appeared in 1946, is replaced by a Fender script logo in 1955, and the cloth grille is supplanted by a more robust plastic material. The narrow panels consisted of 11 amplifiers with the addition of the [10-watt/1x8 and 1x10] Harvard, [10-watt/1x10] Vibrolux, and [15-watt/1x12] Tremolux. The Tremolux came out in mid-1955 and was the first Fender amp with tremolo. 

“The top-of-the-line Twin changed as music changed, meaning it got louder, going from 25 to 50 watts, then 85 watts in ’58. This period from ’55 onwards is the rock ’n’ roll explosion. Smaller bands needed to be louder. Also, the Bassman went from 26 to 50 watts and the [5F6A] circuit became the basis for the first Marshall amp. The first [brown] Tolex amps appeared in ’59, but the Champ remained in tweed up to ’64.”

G&L hopes to pack a punch with its new short-scale bass guitar.

The Fallout Deluxe comes in response to the successful run of G&L's Limited Edition and Tribute Series bass guitars and updates the line of guitars and basses that George Fullerton and Leo Fender created back in 1980.

G&L claims the new Fallout, with its 30" scale length, is not only the "coolest short scale bass" in the biz but one of the most tonally flexible short-scale bass guitars currently available.

The alder body comes in four finishes: Jet Black and Two-Tone Sunburst with a maple fingerboard, and Shell Pink and Tangerine Metallic with a Caribbean Rosewood fingerboard. Each model has a bolt-on maple neck to maximize playability and ensure effortless transitions from low to high positions.

Under the hood, the Fullerton Deluxe Fallout features G&L's Magnetic Field design humbucking pickups wired to a three-way switch and volume and tone controls, opening up a number of distinct tonality options and combinations, some of which can be heard below.

Each model is complete with a C-shape neck profile, a 9 1/2" radius and Leo Fender-designed G&L Saddle Lock bridge.

The Fullerton Deluxe Fallout is available now. Visit G&L to find out more.

Here’s something you don’t see every day: Leo Fender’s Breadboard bass guitar, a rudimentary design that the legendary builder would use to test the pickups for his instruments.

Why was it called the Breadboard? Simply put, the slab body looks like the typical kitchen cutting board used for slicing bread or other food items.

The cool thing about the Breadboard bass, as discussed by Dave McLaren from CLF Research in the accompanying video, is that “it sort of touches all three brands” that Leo was involved with throughout his career – Fender, Music Man and G&L.

Leo first put the bass together in the 1960s while he was at Fender, and installed a traditional Fender bridge. Later on, he added a Music Man neck. 

Last but not least, he loaded it with single-coil MFD (Magnetic Field Design) pickups with large adjustable pole pieces, which he had developed for his G&L instruments.

“This is where you see the man’s personal journey transcend the brands,” McLaren states.

“We have the Fender brand beginnings, and then the Music Man brand and then finally the G&L brand. And it’s all kind of in one thing.”

That said, McLaren also stresses, “This is just a pickup tester. You can see this isn’t supposed to be a tone machine. But it’s an approximation. It’s a quick and dirty way to test pickups.”

As for how it sounds? Check out the video above and hear for yourself.

As McLaren states, “This is really cool piece of history. It’s not about how it sounds. We wanted to bring it to life, solder it up, and get it working again and show what it does. Just for kicks.”

The Music Man StingRay bass was arguably Leo Fender’s last great achievement. Introduced in 1976, the StingRay was the most successful instrument produced by Music Man, Leo’s first post-Fender venture, and was instantly embraced by a wide variety of popular and influential players. In essence, the StingRay was a modern update of the revolutionary Precision and Jazz Bass models Leo invented during the Fifties and Sixties, respectively, with much deeper bass, more aggressive and prominent midrange and brilliant treble that collectively produced bigger and seemingly three-dimensional tone that absolutely dominated a band’s bottom end.

The impact that the Music Man StingRay had on the world of bass cannot be understated, as it was instant and almost universal. Louis Johnson, one of the primary originators of funk slap bass technique, adopted the StingRay from the beginning, and his distinctive tone inspired players like Flea and Level 42’s Mark King to follow suit. Bernard Edwards’ prominent low-end Sting-Ray thump on Chic’s “Le Freak” influenced Queen’s John Deacon to adopt the StingRay (most notably for “Another One Bites the Dust”) along with Duran Duran’s John Taylor and many others. The StingRay also was a prominent fixture on hard rock concert stages, with dozens of players, including Aerosmith’s Tom Hamilton and Bad Company’s Boz Burrell, favoring its aggressive tone. The StingRay also was an important factor in the sound of new wave, disco, country, pop and even blues recordings during the mid Seventies through the Eighties.

The story of the StingRay bass easily could have ended in 1984 when the original Music Man company went out of business, but fortunately both the bass and the company were revived when Ernie Ball bought the business and paved the way for an entirely new and invigorated Music Man company. Ernie Ball Music Man CEO Sterling Ball was involved in the design of the original StingRay bass during the Seventies, providing Leo Fender and his cohorts valuable feedback and insight from a bass-playing musician’s perspective. His decision to purchase Music Man and take over production of the StingRay bass was as much a personal one as a business one.

“The StingRay was mostly the product of Leo and Tommy Walker’s engineering,” Ball says. “My constructive criticism helped them refine the final end product. I did beta testing for Leo, although we called it ‘bandstanding’ back then. I would play the StingRay at live gigs, and I’d also show it to different bass players to find out what they thought of it. Leo wasn’t a musician, so while his designs were often impressive from an engineering or structural standpoint, they didn’t always make the greatest sense from a player’s perspective. That’s what I brought to the StingRay’s design.”

The StingRay bass was the first instrument Ernie Ball Music Man produced, making its official debut in 1985. Initially the design of the StingRay continued where it left off, but soon Music Man introduced new refinements that further improved the StingRay’s performance and appeal. Some of those changes were brought about by Sterling Ball, designer Dudley Gimpel and Dan Norton, who built the first prototypes of the Ernie Ball Music Man StingRay, but many improvements and refinements were also brought about via feedback from artists.

“When we bought Music Man in 1984, my goal was to make tools for artists,” Ball says. “The StingRay bass was our first instrument, because that was the only Music Man product that musicians still accepted. I think Music Man’s success is mostly attributable to the fact that we really listen to the artists who play our basses and guitars. Trends constantly come and go in this industry. Music Man has survived two eras of pointy guitars and graphic finishes as well as the relic era. There are moments where the company was very hot, like we were with Keith Richards and Eddie Van Halen, and now we’re blazing hot once again with St. Vincent. But all through that we also always had close relationships with respected, timeless players like Steve Morse, Steve Lukather and John Petrucci. Over the years we have created the number one line of a living signature guitar player, and we’ve never discontinued a model.”

One of the most consistent supporters of the Music Man StingRay bass is Tony Levin, best known for his work with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson and hundreds of sessions. Levin first started playing a StingRay in 1979, and it has remained his main bass ever since. When Ernie Ball Music Man introduced the first five-string version of the StingRay in 1988, Levin was among the first to play it.

“During the Eighties I realized I needed a low C or low B more often,” Levin says. “I tried a bunch of different five-string basses, but I found the low E string didn’t sound as big or fat as I wanted it to, and I rely on that low E string a lot. The low B string sounded big and fat, but the E didn’t. When Music Man came out with the StingRay 5, they sent me one to try out. I was skeptical at first, but lo and behold the E string had the punch I wanted. I could play blues in E on the five-string and still feel very good about the way it sounded. I still have that first StingRay 5, which has a peach-colored finish, so I call it my Barbie bass. I use it on about 70 percent of the things I do, and my other StingRays on another 10 to 15 percent. The rest is either Stick or upright.

“The StingRay sounds like a rock bass to me,” Levin elaborates. “Almost all of what I do is rock of some sort, whether it’s progressive or soft rock. It has punch. To my ears and my sensibilities as a bass player, the StingRay just has that. You don’t have to work to get that. When you’re thrown into new musical situations, it’s great to have a bass that sounds great by itself. If it’s not right, it’s usually because it needs something else like my upright or Stick. The StingRay sounds like the bass you want to have when you’re playing rock.”

Today Music Man offers a wide variety of StingRay bass models, including the StingRay, Classic and Neck-Through, all also available in five-string versions, as well as the “Old Smoothie” model produced in celebration of the Sting-Ray’s 40th anniversary. In celebration of the StingRay 5’s 30th anniversary, Music Man is producing a special model featuring a select roasted maple neck and fingerboard, Trans Buttercream finish, Red Tortoiseshell pickguard and a special anniversary humbucking pickup with ceramic magnet and soapbar cover.

The continuous refinements made to the StingRay design have attracted new generations of bass players to the model over the years. One recent convert is Stefan Lessard of the Dave Matthews Band, who switched to StingRay four-and five-string models in 2016.

“I wanted a new StingRay because I wasn’t getting the slap sound I wanted from the custom basses I own,” Lessard says. “I’m not really a slap player, but we were starting to experiment with some songs that required some slapping technique on the bass. When Music Man first sent me the StingRay, I really loved the tone. It has a lot of power, and I could get this really nice, warm R&B tone out of it, which is what I really strive for from my tone. The neck is super easy to play and adjust. I then asked them to send me a five-string, and Music Man sent me a neck-through model with this beautiful burgundy finish. The tone of that bass is just awesome. I get lows out of it that I struggle to get from my other basses. I fell right into it. I like experimenting with a lot of different basses, but these are just great, reliable working instruments.

“I have a lot of different toys to play with,” Lessard continues, “but it can get very confusing to have to change basses often during a show. I have to work out what each bass is going to sound like before every show, and that can be a big challenge. Now I just play a four-string and five-string StingRay bass, and we don’t have to make any adjustments because they sound exactly the same. The other four-and five-string basses I had before had totally different tonal characteristics. That can be cool, but for a live show I want something more consistent. I brought other basses out on tour with us, but I’ve only played the StingRays so far. Why change something when it’s so great?”

The world occasionally produces one of those rare thinkers whose name becomes iconic. Thomas Edison lit up the world; Albert Einstein altered the study of physics; Walt Disney reimagined entertainment; and Leo Fender designed the Telecaster and the Strat. Need we say more?

In a new book, Leo's wife, Phyllis Fender, provides a memory-packed look into the world of this quiet genius. Leo Fender: The Quiet Giant Heard Around the World was co-written by Randall Bell, who grew up in Fender's neighborhood and whose father was the head of the R&D department at Fender's company.

"This short yet captivating book is required reading for any true Fender aficionado," says Vintage Guitar Magazine's Vaughn Skow. "While much has been written about the work of Clarence Leonidas 'Leo' Fender, precious little has been written about Leo Fender the man. This book is a game changer.”

Fender grew up in Fullerton, California, where his interest in electronics lead him to open a radio repair shop in 1938. It wasn't long before musicians and band leaders turned to him for help in repairing their equipment. And the rest, as they say, is history. Fender's revolutionary guitar, the Stratocaster, has been the preference of Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, David Gilmour, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, Eric Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Rory Gallagher and Jeff Beck, to name just a handful.

Fender was a shy, unassuming inventor who was nearly deaf and had one glass eye. In 1946 he founded Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing Company—the launch pad for his most iconic designs—and later on, G&L Musical Instruments.

Fender's game-changing contributions to the music world have been widely recognized. He was presented with the Country Music Association Pioneer Award in 1981; was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock Walk of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His accomplishments were also acknowledged with a Technical Grammy Award in 2009. Fender died in 1991.

"When other companies made electric guitars, that is all they did," says the Rolling Stones' Keith Richards. "Leo had the whole concept in mind. He made an amplifier to match. It is, after all electric. This left the other guys with half an egg. So simple, so complete whether you prefer a Stratocaster or a Telecaster. If you used a Fender amp, you had the whole deal. Sturdy, reliable and beautifully made, they remain the standard that others strived to reach, let alone the bass!"

Phyllis Fender volunteers at the Fullerton Museum, where she shares with visitors stories about her life with Leo. She also serves as Honorary Chairman of G&L. Twenty-two years ago, two different doctors told Phyllis she had six months to live. Today, both of those doctors are dead, and she's here to tell this remarkable story.

LEO FENDER: The Quiet Giant Heard Around the World
Leadership Institute Press, November 2017

Ernie Ball Music Man offers its 40th Anniversary edition of the StingRay, nicknamed “Old Smoothie.” Named for a prototype from 1976 — designed by Leo Fender and gifted to Sterling Ball — and featuring a one-of-a-kind design and unique tonal characteristics, the bass features a rare ten pole piece pickup design, resulting in a smooth, full tone that gives Old Smoothie its name and is reminiscent of the highly-sought-after vintage 70’s Music Man StingRay sound.

The StingRay is an American classic, used over the last four decades by such diverse players as John Deacon (Queen), Robert Trujillo (Metallica), jazz great Marcus Miller, Garry Tallent (Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band), Mark Hoppus (Blink-182), Randy Jackson (Journey, American Idol), Benjamin Orr (The Cars), Carol Kaye (session musician legend), Lenny Kravitz and many more.

“Since its introduction in 1976, the Music Man StingRay bass has been embraced as one of the world’s classic electric bass designs, and Old Smoothie was an interesting – and great-sounding – variation given to me by Leo Fender during the time I spent testing and developing the original prototypes back in the 70’s,” said Sterling Ball, CEO for Ernie Ball. “We recently revisited the bass and were knocked out by its rich, deep, beautifully sweet tone. We knew we had to make it available to today’s bass players and celebrate one of the most iconic instruments of our time.”

The Ernie Ball Music Man “Old Smoothie” 40th Anniversary bass is a faithful reproduction of the original, with its custom-made ten pole piece pickup design precisely reproduced. “We analyzed the original with a spectrograph, micrometer and other measurement tools and examined and re-created it to the smallest detail to deliver the exact tone of the original,” said Ball. All the other attributes of the original Old Smoothie have been duplicated, including its body, headstock and pickguard shape, 34-inch scale maple neck and fingerboard, frets, active electronics, hardware and exclusive chocolate-burst finish.

The Ernie Ball Music Man Old Smoothie Bass is supplied with a hardshell case and is now available at a U.S. MSRP of $1999.

You can watch a video of Sterling Ball discussing the history of StingRay, his relationship with Leo Fender, and “Old Smoothie” below. For more information, visit music-man.com.