Fender has partnered with Brothers Osborne guitarist John Osborne for a radical new signature guitar inspired by his workhorse 1968 Telecaster – and, yes, it comes complete with a B-Bender.
A factory B-Bender-equipped Telecaster is something of a rarity these days. The popular modification, which, as the name suggests, lets the player bend the B string of their guitar via a gizmo attached to their strap button, hasn’t been seen in the Fender range for… well, quite some time.
Usually reserved for custom mod jobs and boutique builds, the B-Bender hasn’t been used on a standard run Fender electric guitar for over two decades, after the B-Bender Telecaster went out of production in the early 2000s.
Article continues belowYet they’ve always had something of a cult following. The mechanical device raises the pitch of the B string by a whole tone, producing slinky, sinuous bends that are often likened to pedal steels.
Popular in country music, B-Bender guitars feature some pretty extensive engineering under the hood, with a spring-loaded lever that pulls the B string when the guitar neck is pushed down.
One player who’s particularly fond of the B-Bender is, of course, John Osborne, whose very own 1968 Telecaster is fitted with the gizmo. It comes as no surprise, then, that his signature model comes appropriately spec’d, capable of the sweeping and steel-inspired bends that define his sound.
Notably, it’s Fender’s first-ever in-house designed B-Bender, replacing the Parsons/Green model found on those earlier models.
Speaking to Guitar World about Fender’s own take on the B-Bender, Tim Shaw says, “We made some tweaks along the way to make sure this thing was as robust as it could be. We let John take this out and beat it up for a while. This is about as robust a unit as we can make – because it needed to be.”
Closely modeled on his personal, road-tested Tele, the John Osborne signature model also features a Road Worn Olympic White finish on its alder body, and a custom-designed pickguard, giving it a distinctive and oh-so-country silhouette.
There’s also a 1968-style maple neck with a maple cap, a three-saddle bridge, and custom-voiced John Osborne pickups that provide “shimmering clean tones to growling overdrive”. Interestingly, the usual blade pickup selector is also swapped out for a three-way toggle.
“There are a lot of amazing guitars in this world, but none are as versatile as the Telecaster,” says Osborne. “It just works with every song, works with every genre; I want someone to pick it up and take this instrument that I’ve played for so long, and blaze their own trail with it.”
“Working with John Osborne was really about honoring the way he plays and finding a way to bring that into a guitar other players could connect with,” adds Max Gutnik, Fender’s Chief Product Officer.
“We began with his original ’68 Tele and collaborated closely with him to shape a signature model that feels true to who he is as a player. From the B-string bender to the road-worn feel, it’s unmistakably John’s guitar, but it’s built to inspire anyone who wants to explore that sound and make it their own.”
The John Osborne Telecaster is available now for $2,199.
Head over to Fender for more info.
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