The Telecaster in the ’60s

The 1950 arrival of the first mass-manufactured solidbody electric guitars – Fender’s Broadcaster and Esquire – stands as a watershed moment in the history of popular music. And while its transition to “Telecaster” and the story of its early years have been well-documented and even romanticized, less understood – but equally compelling – are the changes in design and materials the Tele was subject to from the late ’50s through the decade that followed. Furthering our homage begun in the October issue and continuing with “Messin’ With Perfection: 7 Heretics Of The Telecaster” this month, we also present an excerpt from Dave Hunter’s new book, Telecaster 75 Years, now available from Motorbooks and VintageGuitar.com. New Looks, Fresh Features The course of the 1960s saw dramatic shifts in several arenas in the United States and around the world. Music, culture, and the political climate were all very different heading into the dawn of the new decade than they were heading out of it, and the Telecaster experienced significant changes in that tumultuous ten-year period, as well. Many of the features of the guitars we think of as typifying “an early-’60s Telecaster” were actually enacted upon it in the late ’50s – the rosewood fingerboard, the Custom model, changes in plastics – but many are still seen as helping to define what we think of as “an early ’60s Telecaster,” with the model’s 1950-’58 features thought of as typifying its first decade. The addition of the rosewood fingerboard is often considered the most obvious feature of an early-to-mid-’60s Telecaster, even though it arrived with more than a year remaining in the previous decade. For about the first two and a half years, these separate fingerboards were sawn with a flat underside and glued to a flat neck face, a style that has since been dubbed the “slab board” for its thick, flat-bottomed appearance. Part way through 1962, Fender introduced the practice of rounding the face of the maple neck as well as both sides of the fingerboard, enabling the use of a thinner piece of rosewood. The result was what is now often referred to as a “laminated” or “round-lam” fingerboard. Maple fingerboards would again be available by request from the mid ’60s and as an official option from 1967. Until 1969, however, necks were made much like the rosewood fingerboards – with a separately milled piece of maple glued to the face of the neck – a construction now known as a “maple cap” neck. Many fans of early-’60s Telecasters and Stratocasters alike have expressed a preference for the “slab-board” necks, usually in the belief that the thicker piece of rosewood is somehow superior. Discussions with former Fender Custom Shop Master Builder Chris Fleming, however, provide a different perspective on the issue. “Somebody asked me why I thought Leo decided to do round lams, and although I can’t know for sure, I think it was for a couple of reasons. One is that he liked the idea of the maple being more of a majority of the wood, and he liked the idea that it was kind of a custom way to do it, it was proprietary. And I’d also like to think that he liked the sound of it. I feel like the slab ’board was the way that they did it because they had to figure out how to do it quickly. Then they had to tool up to make the rounded ’board and never turned back.” (The Electric Guitar Sourcebook, Backbeat Books, 2006) The Jazzmaster, which introduced the rosewood fingerboard partly to appeal to jazz players, never made much of an impression on the genre for which it was intended, other than perhaps being played by a few artists who were offered examples for promotional purposes. The Telecaster, on the other hand, has had a long-standing place in the jazz world, proving a surprisingly good fit for several prominent jazz artists. Ted Greene, Ed Bickert, and Jim Mullen were noted Tele enthusiasts. Joe Pass used one on several of his early recordings, and later players such as Mike Stern, Bill Frisell, Jim Campilongo, and Julian Lage, were also devotees, as of course were Danny Gatton and Roy Buchanan, whose virtuosic playing arguably defies classification in any one genre. Custom By Name Around the same time as the rosewood fingerboard was arriving on the Jazzmaster, Fender was planning a line of Telecasters and Esquires with more-deluxe appointments that would also ally them slightly more closely with the traditional crowd. The Esquire Custom and Telecaster Custom were introduced at the summer NAMM show of 1959, and were originally characterized by a rosewood fingerboard, an ash body with sunburst finish trimmed with a traditional white body binding around its top and back, and a three-ply white/black/white pickguard made from nitrate. In his book Fender: The Inside Story, former factory manager Forrest White talks of some of the difficulty Fender had getting the binding process right, and the help he received from an unexpected quarter. “Fred Martin,” he writes, “of the Martin Guitar Company, had been kind enough to show me through his factory. He showed me the special tool they made to cut binding strips, and what material and what adhesive to use.” Although sunburst was standard for the Custom models, several were finished in a variety of custom colors by customer request, resulting in proportionally more custom-color Customs than standard Telecasters and Esquires. While Teles were generally less often ordered in custom colors than were Strats, Jazzmasters, and the new Jaguar of 1962, it seems that players willing to break tradition and play a Telecaster with a bound body were also more likely to be enticed by the custom-color option. Meanwhile, beneath those custom-color and sunburst Telecaster and Esquire Customs, a new timber option was in evidence. In use on sunburst Stratocasters since 1956, alder was making its first regular appearance in Telecaster bodies, signaling, if not an entirely new direction – an alternative tributary, at least. Lumber yard Ash has long been the wood most closely associated with the Telecaster body. When found in relatively light stocks, its resonant characteristics can suit the tone of the model while its distinctive broad grain, seen through a semi-translucent blonde finish, is a big part of the classic look of the instrument. With Fender production hitting unforeseeable heights in the late ’50s, however, quality lightweight ash – found in the form of “swamp ash” taken from trees with their lower sections growing below the waterline – was proving harder to come by on a consistent basis. Alder provided a good alternative, particularly in guitars where the finish concealed the grain, and is a good resonant tonewood for guitar construction. Alder-bodied Teles still sound very much like ash-bodied Teles, but that wood does change the character and the look of the guitar ever so slightly. With the look of an ash grain beneath a semi-translucent blonde finish having defined the Telecaster aesthetic since its introduction, Fender might have been saving the better stocks of this wood for the standard-issue model. Having introduced alder into its production in 1956, that wood suited the Stratocaster’s “standard” finish – sunburst – perfectly well, and as a rule only custom-color blonde Strats were made using swamp ash. Other custom-color Fenders, including Telecasters, Stratocaster, Jazzmasters, and eventually Jaguars, were made with alder also, since its plainer grain sat happily beneath these opaque paints. Considering the extent to which electric-guitar aficionados like to debate the merits of different tonewoods today, it’s interesting to note that Fender promotional material of the day generally made no mention of the species of wood used in its guitar bodies. Multiple reports indicated that Leo Fender himself thought there was very little sonic difference between the two woods, so to him it made sense to use what was suitable, on hand, and affordable. Red alder grows along the West Coast from central California to southern Alaska, so it was plentiful and more readily available than swamp ash, which was more often found in the southern central and eastern parts of the country. Red alder, as a material, is also more consistent and will likely sound more similar from piece to piece, whereas ash can be dramatically different from one board to the next. In very general terms, the typical swamp-ash-bodied Fender is often characterized as somewhat airy, resonant, and scooped, with full lows and sparkling highs. Alder-bodied guitars are often described as being smoother and more balanced throughout the spectrum, but sometimes with a slight emphasis on the upper-midrange. Such descriptions are far from consistent, however, and most experts agree they shouldn’t form a basis for choosing between guitars, since the more specific sonic characteristics of any instrument can vary more greatly than this from Telecaster to Telecaster or Stratocaster to Stratocaster, even when comparing guitars made from the same woods. Plastic Fantastic Another end-of-decade alteration visited upon the Telecaster and Esquire as the ’60s approached was the addition of three more screws to the original five used to affix the pickguard. The screws were also repositioned slightly in an effort to correct the minor warping that was occurring with many of the original single-ply white ’guards which would noticeably lift along the upper edge between the bridge and the neck. It was a relatively minor shift, but another that is noted by some collectors as a demarcation point between the decades… and perhaps as a sign of greater attention to be paid these plastics in general very soon. In late 1963, Fender altered this minor adornment further by adding the three-ply nitrate pickguard of the Custom and custom-colored models to all Telecaster and Esquire guitars. Early in 1965, however, these flammable nitrate ’guards, often called “green ’guards” for their faint green hue, would be superseded on all models by three-ply plastic pickguards. Less likely to burst into flames in the warehouse, these pickguards would also prove more resistant to the warping and shrinkage that would plague original nitrate ’guards. At the midpoint of the decade, greater changes would come to Fender Electric Instruments as a whole with its sale to CBS. Although the Telecaster would hang on in much the same form for another few years, the first half of the ’60s would forever mark the last of the golden age of Fender’s iconic original solidbody. This article originally appeared in VG’s November 2025 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. 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