Fender Telecaster Custom - History

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.