History
During the 1950s and early 1960s Fender's twangy single-coil sound enjoyed considerable popularity. This began to wane by the mid-1960s as new stars like Eric Clapton and Mike Bloomfield plugged their humbucker-equipped Gibsons into over-driven Marshall amps. Many players began to look for a thicker, creamier sound that the standard Telecaster didn't deliver. To achieve this sound, many players replaced the standard single coil pickups on their Telecasters and installed aftermarket humbuckers (a good example of this is Andy Summers' modified Telecaster). Another reason for replacing the Tele neck pickup was that many players felt it lacked a "Rock and Roll vibe". The original single coil neck pickup excels in jazz and blues tones but players felt replacing it with a more powerful humbucker pickup would give the Telecaster a second rock voice to match the Tele's popular bridge pickup.
The Telecaster Custom (along with the Thinline and Deluxe models) was an attempt to enter the humbucker market largely dominated by Gibson. Fender's first humbucking design was the wide range humbucker created by Seth Lover, who had overseen the development of the original Gibson humbucker. When Lover's association with Gibson came to an end Fender approached him to design a pick-up which would enable them to compete with his previous employer. The resulting pick-up first appeared in the Thinline and Deluxe range of Fender Telecasters introduced in 1972. Lover's Fender humbucker is felt by many to be brighter with more bottom end than his Gibson versions, and a better match for the classic Fender bridge pickup.
The original Telecaster Custom was in production from 1972 until 1981, sporting a curly "Custom" logo (until early 1973, when the "Custom" logo was updated to the standard italicized block typeface used on most Fender guitars and basses of the period) and "Witch-Hat" volume and tone knobs until the first half of 1977, when the knobs changed to Stratocaster types.
Fender used denser wood for this model, resulting in a significantly heavier instrument (nine lbs versus the average Tele's seven) with inherently greater sustain. The resulting sound is much thicker and less sharply defined. Though the Telecaster Custom was in production for only 8 years, many felt it was the perfect combination of the Fender and Gibson sounds.
Few well-known players of the time picked up on the Tele Custom apart from Keith Richards, who used a couple alongside his modified Gibson humbucker-equipped Teles and Mick Green (guitarist for The Pirates, Johnny Kidd, Bryan Ferry, Van Morrison and Paul McCartney) who wielded a natural-finish 'second-version' Custom.
Read more about this topic: Fender Telecaster Custom
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.”
—Imre Lakatos (1922–1974)
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)