The Fender Stratocaster

From its introduction in 1954 through today, along with the Gibson Les Paul, the iconic Fender Stratocaster has remained the electric guitar of choice for a vast majority of the world's most recognized guitar players.

Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jeff Beck, Ritchie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen, the list of legendary names associated with the Fender Stratocaster goes on and on.

Leo Fender, its principal designer, conceived it as the futuristic sucessor to the Telecaster.
In other words, Leo fully expected that every Tele or Esquire player would trade up the perceptably superior Stratocaster.

Fortunately for Telecaster fans, this did not happen. In fact, initial Stratocaster sales were surprisingly weak.

It became clear that Leo Fender had conceived a design that would take some time for the average player to appreciate, but ultimately the guitar was to become Leo's most successful. If not seen by player of the day as being 'better' than the tele, the Stratocaster certainly represented an evoloution of design.

Plastic pickup covers were used to help eliminate microphonic feedback, cutaways were borrowed from the precision bass to make higher notes more accessible, body contours were added to make the guitar more comfortable to hold and play and of course, there was the revoloutionary tremolo design, in truth added to appeal to the fashionable guitarist of the early fifties.

Needless to say, the Stratocaster has gone on to become without a doubt the world's most popular electric guitar, and one that has been used with great success in inumerable different forms of music.

From 1959 to 1967, the Stratocaster was refitted with a rosewood fretboard, as well as color choices other than sunburst, including a variety of colorful car-like paint jobs that appealed to the nascent surfer and hot-rod culture, pioneered by such bands as the Surfaris, and the Beach Boys. Dick Dale is a prominent Stratocaster player who also collaborated with Leo Fender in developing the Fender Showman amplifier.

In the early 1960s, the instrument was also championed by Hank Marvin - guitarist of the Shadows, a band which originally backed Cliff Richard and then produced instrumentals of its own. So distinctive was the Hank Marvin sound that many musicians - including the Beatles - initially deliberately avoided the Stratocaster and chose other marques. However, by 1965, George Harrison and John Lennon of the Beatles both acquired Stratocasters at about the time of the Rubber Soul recording sessions.

The one-piece maple neck was discontinued in 1959. However, a maple neck with a glued-on maple fretboard was offered as an option in 1967. The rosewood fretboard over maple neck remained as the other neck option. In 1969, after a ten year absence, the one-piece maple neck was again made available as an option.

The primary reason for the switch to rosewood was to meet increased demand, as one piece maple necks required more work to manufacture and more work to finish. Since the introduction of the Ultra series in 1989, ebony was selected as a fretboard material on some models. In 1965 the Stratocaster was given a broader headstock, matching the size of the Jazzmaster and Jaguar.

Many artists (including Buddy Guy, Rory Gallagher, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and Mark Knopfler) discovered that the three-way pick-up selector could be lodged in between settings (often using objects such as matchsticks to wedge it in position) for further tonal variety. Hendrix would also move the switch across the settings while sustaining a note, creating a characteristic 'wobbly' sound. Since 1977, Stratocasters have been fitted with a five-way switch to make such switching more stable.

Other subtle changes were also made to the guitars over the years, but the basic shape and features of the Strat have remained unchanged. In the 1970s and 1980s, some guitarists began modifying their Stratocasters with humbucking pickups, especially in the bridge position, to create what became known as the Superstrat. This was intended to provide a thicker tone preferred in the heavier styles of hard rock and heavy metal.

Notable early examples of this are Allan Holdsworth and Iron Maiden's Dave Murray (also Eddie Van Halen's home made guitar, Frankentrat, was essentially a single-humbucker Strat). The popularity of this modification grew and eventually, Fender began manufacturing models with a bridge humbucker option, denoted and separated from the original triple single coil by the title of "Fat Strat", as a reference to the humbucker's distinct sound.

Players first perceived a loss of the initial high quality of Fender guitars after the company was taken over by CBS in 1965.

As a result, the late-'60s Stratocasters with the large "CBS" headstock and (from the mid 70s) the 3-bolt necked models (instead of the conventional 4 bolts) fell out of fashion. However, Jimi Hendrix and many other blues-influenced artists of the late '60s soon adopted the Stratocaster as their main instrument, reviving the guitar's popularity.

George Harrison used a Stratocaster in the 1971 Concert For Bangladesh, (though Eric Clapton had started using Stratocasters at this time, he used a Gibson during the concert) giving the Strat additional high visibility in rock circles. Also, so-called 'pre-CBS' Stratocasters are, accordingly, extremely sought-after and expensive due to the huge perceived difference of quality even with contemporary post-CBS models.

In recent times, some Stratocasters manufactured from 1954 to 1958 have sold for more than US$175,000. Many now reside in Japan, cached away as collectible pieces of Americana.

After a peak in the 1970s, driven by players such as David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Ritchie Blackmore of Deep Purple, Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, Robin Trower, Bob Dylan and Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits, another lull occurred in the early 1980s.

During that time, CBS-Fender cut costs by deleting features from the standard Stratocaster line, despite a blues revival that featured Strat players such as Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray and Buddy Guy (a Stratocaster player since the mid-1960s, sometimes credited with influencing Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan in their choice of the Stratocaster as a primary blues-rock guitar).

By 1982 the company had started producing Stratocasters in Japan. They built the cheaper "Squier Stratocasters" for the European and American markets. These models, again, weren't as high quality as before or even their American counterparts. All of Fender's guitars in the 1985 catalog were made in Japan. Some estimate that as much as 80% of Fender's sales between 1984 and 1986 were Japanese models.

In England, The Shadows' lead guitarist Hank Marvin who used the very first Stratocaster, which was ordered and owned by Cliff Richard to be exported to Europe (a '58 Fiesta Red model that started the huge success for this color's sales for Fender), played vintage Strats until the end of the 80s, then turning on his own Signature Stratocaster model.

However, when the Fender company was bought from CBS by William Schultz in 1985, manufacturing resumed its former high quality, and Fender was able to regain market share and brand reputation. This sparked a rise in mainstream popularity for vintage (and vintage-style) instruments.